Plan for 5,500-home development south of Lakewood Ranch

July 9, 2009; Sarasota Herald Tribune; Plan for 5,500-home development south of Lakewood Ranch; by Doug Sword.

Plans for a 5,500-home development south of Lakewood Ranch are moving forward after a county commissioner switched her vote and the developer threatened to pull the plug on the project.

Sarasota County Commissioner Carolyn Mason changed her vote Wednesday on a pair of concessions that developer Schroeder-Manatee Ranch said it needed to proceed with its planned village south of Lakewood Ranch. While the move was urged by business groups, opponents pointed out that this was not the first time SMR has engaged in brinksmanship to win concessions for the project.

Wednesday's was the first of a long line of approvals the project still needs.

And the company does not foresee building the first home on the huge tract until 2012, and that start date depends on market conditions.

On June 10, the day after she cast the deciding vote in denying the two concessions, Mason asked for a revote, noting that this is her first year as a county commissioner and that she needed more time to consider the complex project.

She denies suggestions from project opponents that she was pressured by the developer to switch her vote.

Wednesday's vote is a first step in making changes to the county's land-use plan, also known as its Comprehensive Plan and Sarasota 2050.

Those changes now will be reviewed by state planners, who may accept or object to them. The changes come back to county commissioners in several months for a final vote. The project would still face a series of votes over zoning and other issues.

But after the June vote, SMR "ceased all work on the project," said Todd Pokrywa, the developer's vice president of planning.

About $1.5 million had been spent putting together plans for upcoming local and state approval applications, and work on those documents had stopped.

"This gives us the ability to move to the next step," Pokrywa said.

But Wade Matthews with the Sarasota Audubon Society said the developer hoodwinked county commissioners. SMR had asked that commissioners consider waiving the requirement in Sarasota 2050 for a wide buffer along the project's southern end and cutting the size of the buffer on a portion of the eastern border from 550 feet to 200 feet. Smaller buffers leave more land to develop.

Commissioners paved the way for giving SMR the right to build on large swaths of land, but did not win written commitments in return, Matthews said.

Normally, commissioners are able to negotiate for more landscaping, more environmental protection or other concessions during the rezoning process.

"I thought they were pushovers," Matthews said.

But Commissioner Joe Barbetta, who supported SMR's proposals in June as well, pointed out that there had been a major change just this week regarding the project.

On Tuesday, the owner of a property to the south of SMR's land sent a letter to commissioners saying that it planned to apply to link its lands into the proposed Villages of Lakewood Ranch South.

The idea behind the villages plan was to require wide buffers separating these communities from surrounding rural land. But if the owner of the property to the south adds that land to the village, that eliminates the requirement for a buffer on the SMR land.

Commissioners supporting the changes said they were willing to give up the 550-foot buffer on the east side of the property, which is mainly farmland, and rely on SMR's verbal promises to create a true buffer by planting vegetation throughout the narrower 200-foot corridor.

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