BY MARK J. CRAWFORD
Telegraph Editor
STARKE — City commissioners rejected the rezoning application for 25 new homes over concerns about drainage and traffic from citizens in the Westmoreland neighborhood.
The decision was unanimous.
Sandcastles Foundation Board Chairman Christopher Crowder said they would spend $7.5 million in mostly state housing funds to construct 4-bedroom rental homes for working professionals who met median income requirements, including teachers and correctional officers.
Sandcastles requested a zoning change to a category that allowed multifamily housing in order to decrease lot sizes for the homes. Representatives testified the six-plus-acre parcel could accommodate 25 homes without the zoning change, but the engineer for the project said it would be a “god awful looking layout of houses” that wouldn’t provide the proposed buffers to the existing neighborhood.
Testimony about the drainage plan and even a water resource permit from the water management district weren’t enough to alleviate doubt.
Several residents discussed the flooding that already takes place in the neighborhood and whether the street could survive the home construction progress, let alone the additional traffic to and from the neighborhood. Because the homes were rentals, they didn’t feel like the tenants would be invested in the neighborhood and said each home could have a dozen or more tenants over the next 50 years.
City commissioners found that while the proposed zoning change met the requirements of Starke’s comprehensive plan, it was incompatible with the surrounding properties.
