Building heights stall push for Longboat code changes

How high should new buildings be on Longboat Key? How far should they be from Gulf of Mexico and each other?

As town staff aim to update the Key’s building code and comprehensive plan to encourage redevelopment of aging structures and bring properties into conformity, those questions have bounced between the Town Commission and Planning and Zoning Board. And at Tuesday’s meeting of the latter body, board members tabled discussion until next month.

Town staff and consultants have been busy rewriting development standards for the last two years, because dozens of properties don’t conform to the current regulations. That’s because in 1984, a Town Commission bent on controlling growth down-zoned the entire island to six units per acre or less, leaving properties with more density unable to redevelop at their current amount of units.

“Some properties are two or three units over the limit, and some are all the way up to 100 or more or over,” said Planning, Zoning and Building Director Alaina Ray. “To try to come up with a zoning district that has a hard cap, we would end up with 40 or 50 or 60 zoning districts.”

The antidote for bringing them into conformity: flexible planned-unit developments that property owners can opt into to allow more height or density than currently allowable if certain conditions are met — and the Town Commission finds it to be compatible.

But how flexible should they be?

At Tuesday’s P&Z board meeting, staff presented more stringent regulations recommended by the Town Commission than previous iterations. Specifications included the need for “shadow plans” to show the new buildings won’t cast shadows on neighboring structures or the beach and the requirement for a two-to-one setback from GMD if a developer wants to build above 65 feet.

That means to redevelop a property at the 80 foot maximum height allowable under the current draft, the building would need to be 160 feet away from Longboat’s main road. Town staff also added regulations requiring setbacks from the closest neighboring property.

“Isn't that a little crazy,” board member George Symanski asked. “You ask for one floor, and you double or triple the setback?”

Ray said she didn’t take personal ownership of the new ordinance language, and was only following recommendations from the Town Commission.

“I can tell you our consultants looked at this and said, ‘boy, it’s going to be difficult for people to get additional height’,” Ray said during the meeting.

The P&Z board ultimately asked for staff to return with photographic examples showing heights and setbacks of existing buildings to better illustrate the issue.

“This feels kind of arbitrary to me from an architecture standpoint,” said board member Mike Haycock. “Driving down Gulf of Mexico Drive you can tell what’s in scale and what’s not in scale.”

Further, some board members thought more discussion was needed due to the seemingly more restrictive nature of the latest draft of the ordinance. 

“The original proposal didn’t have a cap on height, it just had compatibility with areas and scenic vistas,” Ray said. “It’s morphed and changed over the past few months.”

As concerns about traffic and potential overbuilding continue to fester, concerns over what PUDs will ultimately allow will likely drag through the summer.

“I think the height issue and the density issue will probably be one of the toughest things we deal with in the entire code,” said Ray. “Once we have these issues resolved, the rest of the code may seem boring.”