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Planning Board Rejects New Subdivision On Highway 97 In Molino
August 8, 2018
The Escambia County Planning Board voted Tuesday to recommend the denial of a plan for 210 acres in Molino to allow the construction of a new subdivision.
Blue Water Creek Estates, Inc, applied to change the future land use of the acreage in the 900 block of Highway 97 just northeast of Sunshine Hill Road. The request would have ultimately allowed a zoning change from agricultural allowing one housing unit per 20 acres to rural residential to allow a density of one housing until per four acres.
The company wants to divide the 210 acres into 38 lots ranging from four to 12 acres to accommodate a single-family residential subdivision, according to county documents.
The planning board found the land use request was not consistent with the Escambia County Land Development Code (LDC) and does not fit the character of development on Highway 97 where parcels are larger is size, creating a less dense development pattern. The LDC says all new or expanded land uses should avoid the loss of prime farmland. The parcel’s current primary use, according to the county, is timber production, and forestland is defined as prime farmland.
The development is compatible with existing uses, but a change would create spot zoning different from all adjacent land.
The planning board’s denial recommendation will go to the Escambia County Commission for a final decision.
Photos for NorthEscambia.com, click to enlarge.
Comments
32 Responses to “Planning Board Rejects New Subdivision On Highway 97 In Molino”
@fltom—- What would you say in December seeing a family cutting down a Christmas tree on numerous acres full of them. Might you call it a Christmas tree farm like most normal folk ? I can guarantee they aren’t eating them Christmas trees. Doesn’t mean it ain’t a farm.
I agree completely with Mike. The Yankee’s and yuppies will eventually get their way. Unfortunately, Molino even breeds yuppies with through media and just the way the world is. Sad that I’m the third generation (in my 40’s) living on family property in Barrineau Park, and I’ve considered moving for a few years now due to the changes of lifestyle amoungst residents. Won’t be long you won’t be able to fire your gun in your yard anymore. And it ain’t crime or drugs doing anything here, it’s all the sheeple.
Commissioners – Support your planning boards decision. Reject this request. There is no infrastructure to support this type of development.
First of all people should attend these meetings. You could find out a lot more about the zoning and how it works if you don’t know. That was me the first time I went. So this time wasn’t to terrible to understand. What you don’t understand is that this is one part that got shut down. If they take it further, they can win and divide the subdivision how they want to, whether it be four house’s per acre or one per four. Everyone is thinking affordable homes. Let us just keep our agriculture and farmland the way it is and let the building go toward Centery where they have more commercial buildings
As for Mike you talk noise,18wheelers and dust. Do you know anything about Hwy 97or the area? It is probably one of the most dangerous areas on Hwy 97 with posted speed limits of 45 – 50 which at any given time people are speeding. So now I say we don’t need a subdivision.
My family has lived on Sunshine Hill Rd. for 124 yrs.Even now there are too many people.Why must all land be over used? Greed is all this was,Money runs everthing.Thank you for stopping urban sprawl.Just go to Santa Rosa County & Build all you want. One house pre Ac. Atmore Hwy is a hard road to drive as it is.Like one person said Please go up & Build in Century area,they need itThank you & Mvto
If this land use plan is in place, then how did the subdivision on Sunshine Hill get approved? Let the developer build.. just require the lot minimum to be 5 acres or more. This small area isn’t going to impact traffic, schools, emergency services anymore than what already exists.
While this discussion is going on I would like to remind/point out that Escambia County does not have an impact fee for new building. Impact fees help pay for law enforcement and fire protection. [We have no traffic enforcement now]
This means that existing land owners pay extra taxes for these services, for the new building.
Also means more new building because it is cheaper than building in well managed counties.
Only 40 lots on 200 acres? Looks like another lawsuit to me. How is Molino any different from Beula? 40 lots on 8 acres. Oh, I get it…There is no Navy Federal to please. This is pure hogwash…No person or government body should have any control whatsoever over the ability of a tax paying landowner to develop his property in a respectable manner such as this. As for the issue of taking away farmland…I did not realize that there were people in Escambia County, Fl living on a diet that consisted of mainly pine nuts and acorns. The sad facts of this issue are that the landowner will have to hire an attorney to protect his right to develop and We, as taxpayers, will have to pay for the County to be represented in what is sure to be a win for the developer in the end. Hopefully in the end we will have 40 more taxpayers to help shoulder this unnecessary financial burden.
This request was an amendment to the future land use element that was in place on the property *when the owner purchased it.* No ‘confiscation’ here. The board is just saying that they are not upzoning the property.
Florida Statute 163.3177 (6) (a) 9.
“9. The future land use element and any amendment to the future land use element shall discourage the proliferation of urban sprawl.
a. The primary indicators that a plan or plan amendment does not discourage the proliferation of urban sprawl are listed below.
(snip)
(V) Fails to adequately protect adjacent agricultural areas and activities, including silviculture, active agricultural and silvicultural activities, passive agricultural activities, and dormant, unique, and prime farmlands and soils.
(VI) Fails to maximize use of existing public facilities and services.”
This request violates these two indicators and maybe more.
The existing public facilities (roads, utilities, stormwater conveyances) already exist further south for housing.
Silviculture is timber, so it is not just talking about growing corn and other crops.
The person granting the deed upon sale reserved the rights to the timber.
I would like to see the developer go further north to Century and develop a subdivision that will bring more money into that community. Not destroy or interfere with the farming area.
We should have seen this coming when people who lived out there for years were told they had to close their roadside stands. Farming needs to be done for each community. My new task in buying food is to see where it came from. Thanks, but I don’t want an orange from Brazil.
this will eventually go thru, don’t fool yourself.
Looking at the aerial photo, it appears that the property is currently timber so it is not being utilized as a farm producing edible crops or cotton. Maybe the land is not suitable for edible crop farming or cotton?? If you can’t grow anything other than timber, why not allow some folks to live in the area? 38 lots ranging from 4-12 acres is not what I would call a subdivision. It would be more like country estates, hardly cookie cutter homes with no lot lines within spitting distance of each other. 38 homes spread out on those size lots would hardly contribute to any type of congestion and would allow folks to enjoy what current Molino residents already enjoy. That would 38 more residents paying property taxes rather than the minimal agricultural taxes currently being paid. Of 38 homes, some may or may not have children, I highly doubt it would create a situation to need another school. There would still be a vast amount of agricultural acreage in the area left for timber and farming. Let the area improve. It could be worse. Share the love!
i bet if one of those commissioners owned it there would be houses on there.its a shame the goverment has control of everything. no matter who owns it,you should be able to do what you want to with the land.
One of these days a powerful antigen will come through, and wash all these problems away.
SUBDIVISION? I live on 5 acres and 8 other houses next to me on 2 1/2 acres or less. I don’t consider this as a subdivision. There is no sewer there so here comes 40 more septic tanks. 97 is as dangerous as a king cobra to drive on so lots of luck there without a traffic light. Oh well,let 5 people decide on our fate. Thanks
Subdivided land all around the proposed site. Thank goodness America has a constitution which under the 5th and 14th amendments allows Americans to own property and be protected from confiscation. Calling timberland farmland….just because you can needs to be challenged as does the arbitrary and capricious restrictions on this low density subdivision.
There will come a day….when our farmers, who are struggling to keep up with consumer demand for food and other products, fighting for survival to be able to even stay on the farm, will not be able to continue. What happens then? Who and what will be our source for foods and by products? WHY are we allowing encroachment of such valuable acreage for residential? It will be a sad day when we have houses everywhere, with no agricultural enterprises around for food and sustenance; I am thinking it is a real possibility of another Great Depression.
This is farm land and and tree farming is part of that. Keep Molino free of housing developments. The land needs to be available for farming.
I feel this development would be helpful to people trying to move to the Molino area. A lot of the property that far North will never be for sale. It’s either family owned or used for necessary farming. The rest of our county is becoming a circus and several families from areas becoming so congested (Beulah, Cantonment) are looking for that rural homestead. With 4-12 acre lots, I feel that is anything but a “subdivision”. Seems like the prime opportunity for a nice large “neighborhood” if nothing else. I hope the BOCC will take those things into consideration.
People move out of town to keep from being so close to their neighbors. There’s a subdivision close to the road prison that the houses do not look like they’re 15 ft apart.
Commissioners and especially commissioner Barry, please keep voting this down.
With the economy picking up and the population growing the demand for housing is also picking up.
The same thing happened in south and central Florida in past years.
When land owners see large profits from developing their land the pressure will overcome government objection.
Government will try to play both sides for show.
It is just a mater of time regardless of which side you are on, it will happen.
I agree with Jennifer! I live in Molino because I wanted to live in the country. Keep subdivisions out!!
this was a bad idea from the beginning.
@Resident
Those lots would be an average of 5.5 acres each, so I doubt those homes would be very “affordable”, more likely McMansions.
Just look at the area map in this article and notice the parcel sizes across highway 97 and around the rezoning request. I don’t think even the casual observer could agree with the planing board’s argument “where parcels are larger is size…”.
What are they going to do now since they started putting a road in on this piece of property. And now they can’t build the subdivision?
Please tell me what kind of affordable homes will be built on 4 to 12 acres per home. What is your definition of affordable homes? If I had to guess I’d say these homes would be $250,000 – $500,000 on the low end. Hardly affordable.
if it was some nasty, dusty, stinky industrial dev involving noisey 18 wheelers rolling thru night and day i bet rezoning would be no problem.
The FL statutes (163.3177) and the Escambia County Comprehensive Plan call for the preserving of land for both agriculture and silviculture (tree crop) and the avoidance of sprawl. This denial by the Planning Board did just that.
The properties around this parcel were all zoned Agricultural in an Agricultural Future Land Use. To change this Future Land Use that was adopted in the Escambia County Comprehensive Plan 2030 Future Land use Map, there has to be some type of planning analysis or studies that show that changing the use of this land is needed for a valid planning purpose, like a shortage of housing and areas to locate housing. There was anecdotal testimony given at the hearing but nothing was submitted with the application that showed we need more housing up there.
South of this area is the Mid-West Sector Plan that the BCC passed in 2011. In that 15,000+ acre plan, they rezoned a lot of previously agricultural lands to open them up for home and commercial development there. At the time, Escambia County told the state that they would preserve agricultural and silviculture ready land and the most recent purchasers of this property knew those zoning restrictions when they bought the property.
There is already a lot of land available for homes to be built in the Sector Plan and some of them can be larger lots, if desired. There is also still a lot of land south of this area that is outside the Sector Plan that can accommodate home development.
We need to do a lot more infill before we can say that preserved agricultural land needs to be torn up for new homes.
What we need to think about is that approving subdivisions way up here will increase the costs of government and ultimately to the tax payer as Escambia County does not charge impact fees to the developers nor do they require that the roads be ready to handle the development before it is approved. The Commissioners took ‘traffic concurrency’ and “school concurrency’ requirements out of the land development code as soon as the state no longer required it..
That is why the area around Beulah is struggling to keep up with the roads and traffic among blossoming residential and commercial development.
Once a development is done, the infrastructure (think roads, stormwater ponds, utility lines and lift stations, etc.) is turned over to the County and the utility companies (in this case Molino Water and ECUA) to maintain forever and the cost for maintaining that is born by the taxpayers and rate payers.
The more houses that are developed in the more rural and agricultural communities, the more tax payer funded schools will be needed to be built, along with increased fire and law enforcement presence.
I think the Planning Board made the right decision by supporting the long term planning that Escambia County committed to in their Comprehensive Plan 2030.
I hope that the Escambia County Board of County Commissioners uphold this decision when it comes before them in September.
If you agree, send them a note:
https://myescambia.com/elected-officials/commissioners
Too much government control. I support this development with affordable homes on land this is just timber. Won’t bother anybody. I will contact my commissioners and ask them to approve it.
Thank God. Keep Molino country and stop taking away farmland for subdivisions. If people want to live in subdivisions then move into town. I know many of us that live in Molino that feel the same.