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07-18-1968 Conference MeetingCONFERENCE MEETING OF THE PLANNING AND ZONING BOARD WITH MR. FREDERIC ROBINSON OF HARLAND BARTHOLOMEW & ASSOCIATES, JULY 18, 1968. A conference meeting of the Planning and Zoning Board was held on July 18, 1968, at the Miami Shores Country Club, with Mr. Frederic Robinson of Harland Bartholomew & Associates. All members of the Board were present, as well as, the Village Manager, the Village Attorney and the Building Inspector. Mr. Robinson stated thathe understood that the property had been proposed to be used originally for town houses which had been turned down and the owner wanted to do something with his land and has made alternate suggestions and the one at the moment is to build an office complex on the property, which poses the question for the Village, what is the best course, what is a reasonable zoning for this property, considering the effect on the Village and welfare of the Village? Mr. Robinson thought it is fairly obvious that, regardless of anyone's intention to keep the Village purely single family, it is most unlikely that anybody would invest in single family develop- ment in that locality. If we don't find anything reasonable we will be con- tinually beset with applications for things that are unreasonable and maybe anticipate difficulties in court. He continued: It should not be detrimental to the property to the west and we must take into account the railroad, the shape of the property and the abutting development on the other side of the railroad. It appears that the town house proposal was not a bad one if the quality of the construc- tion were kept high. Mr. Robinson stated in a preliminary judgment, town houses could be one of a series of possible uses, another would be some type of office development. He stated the owner proposes to create a new zoning district, which he thinks would be unfortunate at this time; it is badly timed on the onset of a complete replanning of the city. He stated it would be possible to build office structures on that strip which could be built and operated without detriment to the residential property across the street. Mr. Robinson felt that the proper kind of office development there would probably cause less activity than a multiple family development. It must be determined what is a proper office development and how would you take care of it and what kind of restrictions would you place on it. Uses permitted in the "O" zone are very limited and those we have maybe violations in the professional office sense. He stated we should look first at changes in the permitted uses in the "O" Zone to include certain 7/18/68 -2- types of commercial offices that can be operated in this zone. He thought the "residential character" of a building was ambiguous. He thought a two- story office building could be built and would do no violence to the neighbor- hood, that it would be possible to adapt "O" zoning to broader purposes, more permissive in use and raise the height, providing, you make very sure that the things these uses infer, such as traffic congestion, are taken care of. There must be a restriction on on -street parking with adequate parking off-street and that access and service to the buildings would have to be off residential streets. Lighting the property becomes very im- portant, open space surrounding the buildings is very important and treat- ment of this space with landscaping. This is more useful than limitation of height and use, and Mr. Robinson stated he would rather see a two-story development than three-story, that he believes this would be a compatible use if parking can be adequately handled and not in the front yard. With proper controls written into a change of the "0" District you could permit a reasonable development without relaxing too much the controls in the other districts. After a general discussion by the members of the Board, the attorney and Mr. Robinson, the meeting was adjourned at 9:30 P. M. Respectfully submitted, Village C1e