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| There existed a panoply of zoning designations for properties located in the Northwest Portion of Escambia County's District 1 prior to 2015. After 2015--these designations were consolidated. The plan was to not diminish the property rights of existing land owners while simultaneously simplifying the zoning designations. This change in 2015 was a contributing factor in the out of control growth of this section of District 1 |
to what the zoning districts look like today, below, we now know what the thought process was that drove the decision making. This is, below, what the zoning for this same section of District 1 looks like today.
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| Today's current zoning in District 1 is much less complex than it was before 2015. This was done by the board deliberately in an attempt to streamline the zoning designations while simultaneously NOT taking any rights from, nor diminishing, property rights from existing area property owners.... |
Unfortunately-----this well-intentioned, well-meaning strategy also led to the conditions that we are seeing today in Beulah.
Growth that is out of control.
Below is a table describing, in detail, the "before and after" zoning designations and changes.
A quick read of these will illustrate, very quickly, the conditions by which the growth was facilitated by this well-intentioned action.
What we see today in 2019 is a result, in part, of this change. See the before/after zoning changes below....
2 comments:
My property (and some surrounding area) was changed from Agricultural to higher density areas with the stroke of a pen. One of the reasons I always appreciated my place was the protection that the AG provided against higher density areas adjacent to my property. So yes, it most definitely has the feeling of lost property rights. I do however understand some the reasons why it was needed, but getting the buy-in a the the property owner prior to zoning changes should definitely have occurred.
Zoning changes like these make existing landowners suspicious that developers are somehow involved in planning issues, since it paved the way for massive development.
This is informative, thanks. It is hard to determine by color what the zoning is on these maps, but you can go to the county's website, Planning and Zoning Department, and see the old as well as the new zoning named on the map.
A large part of Beulah has Low Density Residential zoning. In 2015, six categories of the old zoning were combined into the new Low Density Residential zoning category that allows up to four dwelling units (DU) per acre. Only two of old six categories had four DU, which was retained. The other four got 1 to 3 more DU in 2015. That meant four out of the six categories were effectively upzoned - so more houses could be built on that land.
The other thing that affected the number of houses that could be built per acre in Low Density Residential is the BCC change in the minimum lot width a couple of years ago - from a minimum of 70 feet wide to a minimum of 60 feet wide. Previously, the amount of land needed for roads and drainage ponds and lot width and setback requirements limited the actual number of homes that would physically fit on a site. But with less lot width required, developers can now get nearly all the maximum four DU on a site - even while building drainage ponds and roads.
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