City approves Rosemary District rezoning

Bradley Ellis can’t say what’s going to end up on a 1.8-acre assemblage of land in the 1200 block of Boulevard of the Arts and Fifth Street, but he can tell you the property owner is entitled to build more than city regulations allow.

Ellis is an attorney representing Cocoanut Arts, the owner of five parcels east of Boulevard of the Arts and Cocoanut Avenue. Today the land is home to a hotel, four homes and three duplexes.

To facilitate the future development of the site, the property owner asked the city to rezone the land from the downtown edge classification to downtown core. The new zoning would increase the maximum buildable height on the property from five to 10 stories and the maximum residential density from 25 to 50 units per acre.

The City Commission reviewed the rezoning application at its April 20 meeting. Despite pushback from some neighboring residents, the board voted 4-1 to approve the proposal.

Ellis and other representatives for the property owner said the commission was obligated to rezone the property to comply with the city’s comprehensive plan. The future land use map — a document guiding long-term development in the city — designates the land in question as downtown core. City Attorney Robert Fournier echoed the argument Ellis made.

“It’s just irrefutable that the zone that’s being requested … is consistent with the comprehensive plan,” Fournier said.

Residents from the nearby 18-story BLVD Sarasota condominium objected to the idea of approving more intense building entitlements on the property without knowing what a future development might look like. Ellis said the property owner was seeking a rezone without a site plan to help inform the process of putting together a project on the site at some point in the future.

To assess traffic impact of the proposal, the city evaluated a hypothetical project with 90 residential units — the maximum allowed on the site under the new zoning — along with 2,000 square feet of commercial space and 31 hotel rooms.

Although Ellis and city staff said the 10-story downtown core height limit was part of an intended transition from 18-story bayfront buildings to structures as tall as seven stories in the Rosemary District, neighbors argued the rezone could lead to a project that is not compatible with its surroundings.

“The community does not want to see the neighborhood destroyed by a line of new high-rise towers,” BLVD resident Donald Goldsmith said.

Despite the city attorney’s guidance that the property owner was entitled to the rezoning and city staff’s assessment that the land use change did not pose a compatibility issue, Commissioner Jen Ahearn-Koch voted to deny the application, stating she did not believe the proposal met the established standards for review.

“Just because they can rezone doesn’t mean they have to rezone,” Ahearn-Koch said, citing input from a speaker at the meeting.

The rest of the commission disagreed, following the recommendations of the city attorney and voting in favor of the rezoning application.

“It’s something that we have to do according to the law, really,” Commissioner Liz Alpert said.