Developer Gets Go-Ahead: But Land Needed to Offset Impact

By Alyson Crean, Florida Keys Keynoter, Marathon

Mar. 29–The Monroe County Commission voted unanimously to reserve 16 affordable housing building-permit allocations for Big Pine Key landowner Richard Beal, but the project is a long way from happening, Beal said.

“The issue at this point is mitigation,” he said, “and I see no hope for settlement on the horizon.”

Beal has been working for more than a year to put affordable housing on his property, which currently houses Skeeter’s Marine. He said the land, which faces U.S. 1, is an ideal location to build workforce housing but the environmental sensitivity of Big Pine is making it tough.

Growth on Big Pine and No Name keys is limited by a habitat conservation plan imposed as a means to protect the endangered Key deer and its habitat. The plan requires a certain amount of land be set aside for conservation for every construction project.

The past year, the county has been using publicly owned land in exchange for mitigation for new and redevelopment on the island.

Beal’s plans stalled last summer when county Growth Management Director Drew Trivette noted the county does not have enough land in its “mitigation bank” to offset the project, which would be named Caya Place.

“After they offered Habitat for Humanity to reserve allocations in the Upper Keys,” Beal said, “I pinched Drew and said, ‘How can you give them the consideration and not me?’”

Now that the commission reserved the permit allocations March 19, Beal has a year to break ground or he’ll have to give them up.

The county Planning Commission meets April 9 to take another stab at coming up with a fair formula for mitigating new development because, as Trivette says, the county does not have enough land to donate.

Even though the habitat conservation plan limits to 200 the number of new houses that can be built over a 20-year period on Big Pine and No Name, redevelopment and even repaving the roads must be mitigated and the bank will eventually run dry, according to Trivette.

Beal says he’s going to ask the County Commission at its April meeting in Key West to pony up the land or money for conservation land he needs for Caya Place out of its bank.

“If they say the allocations are good,” he said, “why can’t we use the mitigation if the county has it?”

Trivette says projects need to be ranked and the land left in the mitigation bank handed out according to that ranking.

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Copyright (c) 2008, Florida Keys Keynoter, Marathon

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