The changes would let those developers get more units per acre if they commit to pay for certain public uses like affordable housing or multi-modal transportation.<\/p>\n
TAMPA, Fla. \u2014 The Tampa City Council took another step forward Tuesday night for proposed land use changes that will shape the city for decades to come, voting six to one to send modifications to the city’s comprehensive plan to the state for approval.<\/p>\n
But the councilmember who voted no said the public largely didn’t know tonight’s meeting was happening.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe public has not had a chance to weigh in on this proposal,\u201d District 4 councilmember Bill Carlson said, frustrated that the Hillsborough Planning Commission only gave the public a week’s notice before the hearing. \u201cThere would have been 200 more people here had they known that we were going to do this.\u201d<\/p>\n
Those who did show up mostly wanted their neighborhoods put back in the plan to increase housing density bonuses for developers along major roads throughout the city, especially in east Tampa.<\/p>\n
The changes would let those developers get more units per acre if they commit to pay for certain public uses like affordable housing or multi-modal transportation. Several roads were removed from the plan after a meeting in August, where adding and removing \u201cTransit Ready Corridors\u201d were traded back and forth.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt may attract new, smart development by providing the much-needed bonuses that developers look for when considering their next projects,\u201d one resident said Tuesday.<\/p>\n
At one point, staff broke out a highlighter to update the roads that would or wouldn’t be included following comments from neighborhood groups.<\/p>\n
\u201cI love that this sort of turned into a little bit of a workshop,\u201d another resident said. \u201cI don’t know that that’s what everybody planned on, but I think it was helpful to kind of collect everything.\u201d<\/p>\n
Still others said Tampa\u2019s growth is slowing and the city needs more restrictions on development, but a state law passed last year, Senate Bill 180, prevents cities from doing that, even if in some places councilmembers hinted it may be needed.<\/p>\n
Council voted to send the changes to the state for approval, and may enact the new policy in May.<\/p>\n
Overall, Florida\u2019s growth in population due to people moving here from other states slowed sharply last year, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Still, Tampa\u2019s population has grown nearly 8% in the last five years to about 420,000 people.<\/p>\n
Also a part of the discussions, language will be put back in that describes the \u201ctypical\u201d height for different residential zoning areas.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Some in south Tampa voiced concerns that it could lead to high-rises in their part of the city, which is already stressed with flooding and emergency response problems.<\/p>\n
And one particular kind of residential zoning, R-50, will not have language using the word \u201chigh-rise,\u201d after those same residents cautioned councilmembers that south Tampa is mostly R-50 and has never seen a building taller than 8 stories.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The changes would let those developers get more units per acre if they commit to pay for certain…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":159702,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[135,137,136],"class_list":["post-159701","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tampa","tag-tampa","tag-tampa-headlines","tag-tampa-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159701","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=159701"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/159701\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/159702"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=159701"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=159701"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=159701"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}