by Kent Jennings Brockwell
Staff Writer
Though The Shipyards project has faced its share of trouble and set backs in the past, it looks like LandMar’s development project is seeing a few new signs of progress - literally.
The fence surrounding the vacant fenced-in Shipyards lot on East Bay Street has recently been plastered with several bright orange “public hearing” signs, denoting an upcoming round of planning commission and city council meetings. The meetings are being held to discuss a number of changes LandMar has made in a recently amended Planned Unit Development rezoning application filed with the City’s Planning and Development Department last month.
According to the updated PUD, LandMar wants to increase the number of marina boat slips from 150 to 400. The developer also wants to change vehicular access plans, underground storm water drainage plans and several other items in the old PUD.
Bruce Lewis, a senior planner for the Planning and Development Department, said LandMar’s new PUD application was put together to mainly amend a lot of little things in the previous PUD that are no longer applicable to the project.
The new amended application will be introduced to the City Council on April 12 and will go to the Planning Commission on April 14. On April 19, the PUD will go in front of the City Council’s Land Use and Zoning Committee.
If all goes well at these meetings, The Shipyards will be one step closer to the construction process, but Lewis said it could still be a while before any shovels break ground.
“After the zoning is in place, they will still have to go through some engineering reviews and those kinds of things,” he said. “So even after this is in place it could still be several months before you see any dirt turned.”