The wait is finally over for the start of the North Park Isle subdivision development.
Commissioners approved a final plat for North Park Isle Phase 1A during last week’s commission meeting and now the developer is officially ready to start the vertical development on the initial phase. The applicant also requested a waiver to allow dead-end streets in lieu of cul-de-sacs for areas that will connect to future phases, which commissioners also unanimously approved.
North Park Isle has a long and complicated relationship with Plant City. The development was first approved by commissioners in 2006, then modified in 2016 and again in 2018. Then the applicant asked commissioners to approve the Planned Development District as a mixed-use residential development allowing maximums of 1,100 single-family lots and 250 multi-family lots. Construction plans for Phase 1A and 1B were approved by staff in January 2020.
In December 2020, the applicant was back asking for commissioners to approve the increase in acreage from 460.19 to 694.8 acres.
The PD is currently approved as a mixed-use residential development allowing a maximum of 2,250 single-family lots and a maximum of 250 townhome lots.
That long meeting in December led to one overarching theme: the desire to compromise. There were things in the PD commissioners didn’t love — case in point, the proposed lot sizes — but there was much the commission was thrilled to see.
Mayor Rick Lott said the developer was listening to the city’s desires and believed they were almost at the point to take that next step. Flash forward to last week, when the applicant presented the Final Plat for Phase 1A, and it appears Lott was right.
The sewer, water, roads, retention ponds and other preliminary construction were almost complete on the property at the time of the commission meeting, so the main focus of the developer will soon be bringing the homes and green spaces to life. The development has plans to also create a pedestrian path from the property to McIntosh Park, a neighboring passive park that is expected to soon be a massive asset for the community.
Phase 1A involves 363.86 acres and is approved for a 283-lot single family residential subdivision. According to the report, “The construction plans for this portion of the site show 111 acres of wooded land being preserved (which exceeds the requirement of 35 percent) and approximately 3,000 inches of required replacement on site could not be placed on this phase, but was proposed to be placed on future phases.”
It’s important to note that while the decision made last Monday does give the developer the go-ahead for the construction outlined for Phase 1A, the other phases of development that are planned for the rest of the property still have to go through the same steps as Phase 1A to be approved.
During last Monday’s meeting, the applicant also proposed to commissioners that they wanted to incorporate and rezone 24 acres into the existing North Park Isle Planned Development District. The plan was to rezone the subject parcels from Hillsborough County ASC-1 (Agriculture Single Family) and Hillsborough County Agricultural Rural to Planned Development District (North Park Isle PD). This change would modify the PD to add 100 units and also asked for specific approvals to permit 30 units to be 50-foot wide lots with “side yard setbacks be 5 feet, and for driveway requirements to permit spacing 5’ from property line (3’ relief), spaced 10’ edge to edge (30’ center to center, relief of 30’) and center 25’ from intersection (relief of 25’).”
The PD modification would shift that initial plan of having a maximum of 2,250 single-family lots and a maximum of 250 townhome lots. Now it would have a maximum of 2,350 single-family lots. There would be no change to the maximum townhome lots.
The change also led to an increase in overall open green space for the PD and the access to those lots would be through the already established community connecting via the already established access at Wilder Road.
Commissioners also approved this North Park Isle request in an unanimous 5 – 0 vote.