The Hancock County Plan Commission granted a continuance to a proposed Planned Unit Development just south of the Hancock Health Gateway district at its Sept. 24 meeting, citing lack of time to review the proposal.
The development, proposed by Lennar Homes and presented by attorney Brian Tuohy on behalf of Lennar, would be located at CR 200N and Mt. Comfort Road and was described as a buildout of an existing neighborhood, Heron Creek.
County Planning Executive Director Kayla Brooks said that the county’s staff gave the PUD a favorable recommendation on the condition that there be landscaping plans added and some kind of restriction on rentals within the PUD. She gave several potential limitations to rentals that could be included in the PUD itself, including restrictions on short-term rentals such as Airbnbs, a requirement for any rental properties to be approved by the new neighborhood’s homeowners’ association or a requirement for a home to be owner-occupied for a number of years before it can be used as a rental.
Tuohy said that the proposed neighborhood would help to connect streets and trails within the Heron Creek neighborhood. In the area adjacent to the existing neighborhood, the PUD proposed single-family homes, with multi-family housing in the form of townhomes as the development moved away from Heron Creek and towards the gateway.
The PUD would have stricter building and architectural requirements than most housing within the county, including larger square footage for each house on the plan and additional requirements for windows. The exception was the lot square footage for each house, which was smaller than the county requirement, creating smaller outdoor areas for each individual home.
The development also featured a large park area along Buck Creek, where the floodplains make the area largely undevelopable. The area would turn into a large nature park, which would be maintained by the HOA and feature an eight-foot wide trail to be installed as part of the neighborhood construction process.
Plan Commission member Renee Oldham suggested several times throughout the hearing that the development was not unique enough to justify a PUD, which she said was designed for unique developments, rather than a traditional subdivision approval. Tuohy argued that the nature park was a unique enough feature to justify the PUD.
Heron Creek HOA President Kali Cooper spoke during the opposition portion of the hearing, highlighting that the existing neighborhood was in favor of the rental restrictions mentioned by Brooks at the beginning of the hearing, specifically in favor of the proposal requiring homes to be lived in for a period of time before being converted into rentals. There were potential fair housing concerns with that proposal, though, which officials hoped could be figured out during the one-month continuance.
Tuohy indicated that a letter was received on Friday, Sept. 20 by Lennar, just four days before the hearing, with concerns on the development from businesses in the Hancock Gateway District, which Lennar made efforts to address, leading to the final documentation being received late by members of the commission.
Due to the late receipt of the documentation, the Plan Commission voted unanimously to grant a one-month continuance on the project, giving a list of clarifications and improvements they wanted to see concerning the proposal.
Plan Commission President Michael Long listed documentation on density, a finalized rental restriction, comparison of current to proposed architectural standards, verifying that exhibits match wording (as pictures of garage doors within the PUD did not match the written requirements for garage doors) and clarification on subsidized housing, which Harold Gibson, representative for the Hancock Gateway District, said was initially restricted in the PUD and was removed. Those restrictions also had potential fair housing issues.
Commission member and County Commissioner Gary McDaniel also said that the PUD needed to change its requirements for HOA meeting, saying that a 60% homeowner quorum requirement would prevent the HOA from making any changes, suggesting that a quorum should only be 10% so that plans could be discussed and drafted, with 60% of residents required for any majority vote.
The PUD will return to the commission for another hearing at its next meeting on Oct. 22.
