Cape Coral City Council approved an amendment Dec. 6 revising the development cap table for the Pine Island Road District by removing all development caps on retail, office and warehousing square footage and hotel rooms. The amendment also increases the development cap for residential units.
This approval isn’t for adoption but for transmittal of the amendment to state and regional agencies for review. The state has 30 days to review the amendment, and it will return to Council for adoption in late January or February.
The Pine Island Road District was established in 2002 and bisects the city, comprising about 2,600 acres. The roadway is the primary east-west corridor in the city.
When the district was established, the then-state land planning agency, which was called the Department of Community Affairs, required the city to create a development cap table, which provided limitations on uses.
Current development caps include a retail cap of 4.4 million square feet, 1.6 million square feet for office/warehouse, 790 rooms for hotels and 5,030 units for residential.
City staff said the amendment revises and removes restrictions upon the city’s primary east-west commercial corridor to ensure that the role for providing commerce and industry is not abridged.
“The current situation based on what we have existing, what we had approved as of November and what’s under review today gives us a total of 8,615 dwelling units,” Cape Coral Planning Team Coordinator Wyatt Daltry said. “That’s 3,585 units above our existing development residential cap.”
In order to avoid an issue with the city’s comprehensive plan, Daltry said city staff proposes to strike out all caps relating to retail, office, warehouse, light manufacturing and hotel units, as well as increasing the residential dwelling-unit cap from 5,030 to 8,615.
The amendment would essentially stop more residential projects in the district if approved. However, affordable multifamily rentals will not count toward the residential development limit.
Attorney Eric Feichthaler, representing a property owner for a parcel on the northwest corner of Pine Island Road and Chiquita Boulevard, spoke in opposition of the amendment, asking Council to increase the residential cap to include a 1,362-unit residential project the landowners had planned.
BJM Consulting President Joe Mazurkiewicz spoke in favor of the amendment on behalf of Blue Waters Development Group’s Victory Park, a 138-acre, master-planned development in the northeast region of the city, and asked Council to expedite the process.
“We just recently found out because of the way the uses are clumped together in the caps, we have exceeded the office warehouse and light industrial,” Mazurkiewicz said. “If you don’t do this and do it quick, we cannot build the medical office buildings in Victory Park.”
