by Joel Addington
Staff Writer
Efforts by the City to set maximum development densities in the Comprehensive Plan — the document used to steer future development — caught the attention of The Jacksonville Regional Chamber of Commerce last week.
When Jeff Evans, the chairman of the Chamber’s Commercial Industrial Development Task Force, heard the Department of Community Affairs (DCA) was pushing City planners to make the change, he penned a memo adamantly opposing the action.
The Department of Community Affairs is the state agency tasked with approving changes in Comprehensive Plans throughout the state.
In his memo to Mayor John Peyton and City Planning Director Brad Thoburn, Evans said the adoption of density maximums “could have severe negative ramifications on the economic growth of Duval County.”
Evans went on to say that in light of other regulatory constraints on development such as wetlands and stormwater retention requirements, the maximums are unneccesarry.
Currently, City planners use what are known as “development impact standards” to guide densities and measure the impacts of land use changes in the Comprehensive Plan’s Future Land Use Map (FLUM).
But the standards are not steadfast restrictions.
“DCA came back and said that’s not sufficient,” said Thoburn.
He added that DCA is not pushing for specific density numbers — like restricting light industrial development to no more than 25 percent of a site — only that some standard is identified in the Comprehensive Plan.
“The challenge for us is, if we set a maximum too high, then everyone has to show they can mitigate for impacts that are not likely to occur,” said Thoburn. “But if we set the maximum too low, we unduly restrain development potential rather than setting a site-specific policy. We’ve got to find the right balance.”
For properties designated light industrial, that balance could be limiting development to no more than 45 percent of the site, which Thoburn said would capture almost all of the development in that category.
“At the end of the day, we want to get the right number,” he said.
But beyond working with the state and the development community to find acceptable density standards for each land use category, Thoburn is not fully convinced such standards should be used so early in the development process.
“A maximum sort of leads you to concurrency (ensuring adequate infrastructure like roads and utility lines are in place concurrent with development) on the front end, which I don’t think is where we want to go,” he said. “It’s something we’ll have to work through with DCA.”
Once drafted, density maximums in the Comprehensive Plan will need DCA approval, likely in January, and final adoption by City Council could come in May, Thoburn said.