Mango Street parking lot: stalled
The Fort Myers Beach Town Council was left frustrated with an application that asked for more than it was prepared to give.
The parking lot on Estero Boulevard and Mango Street, adjacent to Mom’s Fresh Produce, has been allowed to act as a seasonal parking lot since 2008. However it was supposed to come to council with a request to be allowed to be a permanent shared parking lot, as parking lots are not allowed in the lot’s current “commercial boulevard” zoning.
So council reviewed a commercial planned development request at Monday’s meeting – but it left several of them concerned with what was before them.
“I don’t understand this,” said Council Member Anita Cereceda.
The application included a condition that listed uses of the property that the applicant believed are “by right” for him to build on that property – besides a parking lot, such as a residential home, a multi-family home, timeshares, an office building, a bed and breakfast, a restaurant, and many more. Ronald Yanke owns the property; he was represented at the meeting by Greg Stuart of Stuart and Associates in Fort Myers.
Another condition also said that any development other than a parking lot would require the applicant to submit a new master concept plan – Sarah Propst, a town planner, said the property wouldn’t have to go through another rezoning, but an amendment to the master concept plan.
“I have a huge problem with this,” Mayor Tracey Gore said. “They came in to get a CPD to be a permanent shared parking lot. Wherever did we talk about nightly rentals, a bed and breakfast, a restaurant?”
Gore also pointed out that the notice sent to residents within 500 feet of the request didn’t mention anything about a schedule of uses, meaning those residents and property owners were aware of the property being anything but a parking lot.
Stuart said his applicant just followed the council’s instructions, and that the condition 10 “downzoned” the property as it stripped many commercial uses from its list of uses by right.
But since the property is requesting to be rezoned, it loses the former by-right land uses in its old rezoning and changes its by-right uses to the zoning it’s requesting, unless the applicant asks for certain uses to be added.
“Commercial boulevard does not allow a shared permanent parking lot which is why they had to rezone to CPD,” Gore said. “Once you rezone to CPD you’re no longer looking at commercial boulevard, we’re now deciding what we’ll allow in the CPD.”
Gore said she didn’t understand how the application had got to this point. In late 2017, the council had discussed the parking lot and its rezoning, but the conversation revolved mainly around buffer requirements and safeguards to the residential neighborhood behind the lot.
At the time, the council agreed at the time to delay a hearing until after the holiday season parking demands at the applicant’s request.
“It is a major issue because since day one, the only public conversation relevant to this property has been a parking lot. No other, it’s going to be a parking lot for five years and on year six, we’re going to start construction,” Cereceda said. “I thought we were rezoning this to a parking lot. It threw up a huge flag.”
Stuart said he believed the condition would allow the property to come back at a later time to ask for an amendment to the plan to do something else besides a parking lot. But some on council felt the list of uses would allow the property owner to make that change without coming back to council.
The council decided it would continue the application to another hearing. Gore wanted to re-notice the neighbors with the list of uses. But Cereceda suggested waiting for the staff and applicant to “clean it up” with the uses council thought were appropriate, rather than what the applicant had requested.
The council voted to continue the hearing to May 7, and have Propst bring back a list of commercial boulevard use rights, plus the shared parking lot.
“We’ll look at that and then go to second hearing,” Cereceda said.
Yankee said he didn’t want to lose his commercial boulevard zoning, but to just be allowed to keep his parking lot so if he sold the property later, those rights wouldn’t be lost.
But by rezoning the property, he would be losing those rights, Cereceda said.
“That’s a very different conversation than we’ve had. This is a whole different case,” Cereceda said. “I just wish I knew what the heck you wanted to do.”