Conditional Use Request (Regular) – C&M Lowe Limited Partnership and Port Hudson Marina LLC/Old Dixie Highway Marina – Conditional Use for a Commercial Marina in a C-2 General Commercial District – Northwest Pasco County – North and South Side of the Intersection of Harbor Drive and Old Dixie Highway – Containing Approximately 2.68 Acres File Number PDE25-CU01

1:28:22Uh good afternoon, Amy Toll with Planning Development and Economic Growth. Today is a conditional use request in the name of CNM Low Limited Limited Partnership and Port Hudson Marina LLC, Old Dixie Highway Marina. So before you is a conditional use request. The existing future land use is ROR Retail Office Residential and Res 6 Residential 6, 6 Dwelling Units per gross acre. The existing zoning district is

1:28:53C2 General Commercial, and the applicant is proposing to develop the property. as a commercial marina, which will consist of 125 dry boat storage spaces and eight wet slip boats boat lifts with ancillary facilities typical to a marina. The location is north and south of Harbor Drive at the intersection of Old Dixie Highway. Here's the subject site location within the county being in the Hudson District of the West Market area.

1:29:22Context map showing you the proximity of the subject site along Old Dixie Highway and Harbor Drive. Here's a zoomed in aerial to depict where the marina will be located and situated.

1:29:39Future land use map depicts uh Res Nine and R O R to the south.

1:29:46The current uh zoning is current is C two on all the properties.

1:29:56Uh here is the conceptual plan.

1:30:01And for note, uh so within the comprehensive plan, there is policy COA 2.1.5, which requires development conditions for marinas. Uh, within those policies, the findings of fact have met some of those standards or a portion of those standards. The other standards that have not been met at the time of the findings of fact or currently are Subject to the conditions of approval set forth in the proposed amendments or proposed petition. The

1:30:31conditions of approval will include a hurricane preparedness plan, a fuel management plan, additional signage to designate the marina basin as an idle speed zone, compliance with applicable Pasco County Manatee Protection and Preservation Plans. And demonstrate adequate sufficient upland areas to accommodate all necessary supported facilities. And that with that we recommend approval of the conditional use request from planning and development as well

1:31:01as the Planning Commission. I'd be happy to answer any questions you might have for this one. Uh I don't have any questions. I see the applicant coming up. I did also want to make note that there were emailed expertise and an opposition that were sent to the clerk's office this morning as well.

1:31:22Good afternoon. Barbara Wilhite, eighty six twenty-seven Grand Boulevard, New Port Richey for the applicant. We are prepared to do rebuttal. Um I think staff covered all the highlights. Um and we'd like to just save and make sure we answer any questions depending on what the questions are, if that's acceptable. Yep. Thank you.

1:31:42Okay. Madam Chair, I'm sorry, I I have two people signed up for this item. Okay. Um Elizabeth uh Donatello and then followed by Pete Fido.

1:31:57And if you when you come up to the podium if you state your name, address, and whether or not you've been sworn.

1:32:01I have not been sworn. Okay. Um my name is Elizabeth Donatello. I live at [address removed]. Could you raise your right hand?

1:32:10Do you swear or affirm the testimony you're about to give is the truth, so help you God. I do. Thank you. You may proceed.

1:32:16Um So I live Almost directly across from where the proposed marina site is. The impact that marina will have on our properties is I it can't be overstated how negatively it can potentially affect those properties. Our quality of life. The property value Um there was a lot of planning that went into the land portion. but there was kind of some

1:32:47over they they just Didn't really look at the Canal portion. When you're talking about that canal, right now it is Dead quiet. There's um There's there's no boat traffic except for kayaks and paddle borders. there is um there were some fishing boats that were there that were a huge problem. But those boats over the past couple of years, there were maybe four or five, they went out

1:33:17two or three times. Um they were ended up being good neighbors. There were some issues with the um leaks, but The current proposal has 14 and a half hours of open operation. The Planning Commission changed the hours till dawn till dusk. Yesterday, dawn till dusk was 612 in the morning till eight forty-five at night. There that means for those fourteen hours we'd have trailers

1:33:47and tractors going back and forth across the roadway, entering into the canal. Boat motors, boat engines, boat lifts, all contributing to the noise in a canal right now that is dead quiet. Um the I know that um Miss Wilhite will address that and she has a proposal to address that, but I wanted to put it on the record. Also, um our properties took a hit during the hurricane. This isn't gonna help. Um, I've talked to Miss Wellheight.

1:34:18My concern is with the hurricane preparedness, you've got a hundred and twenty-five boats. Some of you were down there for our um directly after And you saw our homes.

1:34:35Sorry. You saw what the hurricane did.

1:34:41There were boats everywhere, there was debris, there were hot tubs, there were docks. There is no way to describe the stench and the smell of oil and gas from those boats on the canals. And that mixed with the sewage, mixed with the floodwater, and inundated the exterior and interior of houses all along Clark Street, all along Harbor, that whole area. It destroyed that area. And now we're gonna put 125 votes

1:35:11at the end of a canal. at the only access point, evacuation point, for Harbor Drive And the only entry point.

1:35:22But I I understand I'm That call was because I'm still trying to get my house back together from the hurricane. That's my e-hall being re delivered.

1:35:29I'm sure you understand that. We had fires. Yes. And that's the only that's the only entry point for emergency vehicles. Thank you. Okay.

1:35:50Good afternoon. My name is Pete Vito, [address removed]. Uh my wife just Mr.

1:35:58Vito, you've been sworn?

1:35:59I have.

1:36:00Okay, you may proceed. Thank you.

1:36:01My wife just spoke very briefly about the disaster that we just went through for actually two hurricanes in a row. Now you're gonna put a hundred and twenty-five additional boats. In a small area. Where the majority of those boats are gonna be in front of our house either idling or being put in or being removed seven days a week. Additionally, a gentleman that was on the Planning Commission

1:36:32has got a financial interest in this project and expressed so as he sat up in your seats. I mean this is wrong. I've talked to a number of homeowners on Clark Street where we live and also on Harbor Drive. There is not one person Who is in favor of this? If we were at the end of the canal by the Golf of America. No question. God bless 'em. Do whatever you want to do. But to have these go

1:37:02back and forth. in front of over a hundred houses? That's ridiculous. I realize that this was granted back in the seventies. Well Hudson doesn't look anywhere near like it did in the seventies today. I mean these are expensive residences. We've put hundreds of thousands of dollars into our property. Do you have it turned now into a boat yard? Commissioner Mariano was tremendously helpful in getting

1:37:32that corner cleaned up. We were told right out it was like that for twenty-five years and it'll be effing like that for the next twenty-five years. Well, we don't want another disaster. I talked to the maintenance person that was responsible. Working for Lowe's, whether it was Lowe directly or a tenant of his. And I said, When are you gonna clean this up? He said, Well, I've got a push lawnmower over there that hasn't worked in three years. I mean, this is this is not

1:38:02right. This absolutely should not occur. You're looking at the interest of one person. as opposed to the interest of hundreds of taxpayers. Commissioners, I'm begging you. To take another look at this and a hard look at it, the traffic is going to be a disaster in that area. It is a disaster now. You have a school bus that stops and you got

1:38:33traffic backed up on Old Ditsy, you got traffic backed up on Hudson, you got traffic backed up on Clark. Now you're gonna add a hundred and twenty-five potential additional vehicles. I mean this this project really needs to be reevaluated. before any approval is getting. And once again, you're looking at the interest of one person as opposed to hundreds of people that live in that neighborhood. Thank you.

1:39:03Madam Chair, that is all that I have signed up and I have no one on WebEx for this item. Okay. And I will um ask

1:39:10if there's anyone else here that wishes to speak to this.

1:39:15Okay, we'll have the applicant's attorney come up. I'm just looking at the map here.

1:39:25Good afternoon again. So at Planning Commission we brought forward and we actually wrote a lot of mostly all the conditions. I wrote them to make sure we had good writ well written binding conditions. So if we said we were gonna do something, we were conditioned to do it. What we had requested was seven A. M. to seven P. M. for the hours of operation. No earlier than seven a.m. and no later than seven PM. Um Then at the Planning Commission we realize there's dawn to dusk and so the Planning Commission changed

1:39:55it to dawn to dusk. But then, as the first speaker has stated, that extends the hours even longer, or could extend the hours even longer than we were requesting. So we did work, I did show her some language before the hearing here, and we can change the language of condition seven to hours of operation for the boat ramp shall be no earlier than 7 a.m. and no later than 7 p.m. That's what we had requested. No event before or after daylight. So I think that was addresses

1:40:25the issue of not making the hours even longer, but actually can make them shorter if daylight falls before those hours of seven A. M. or seven P. M. With regard to the dead quiet, we do have you have a noise ordinance that we have to comply with. Um I'd also note that that property is zoned C2 currently, so there's some pretty intense uses that can go on that property. Um With regard to emergencies and and and people evacuating, there's also Apple Street, which

1:40:55we c our boats have an emergency access, our storage um yard will have an emergency access to Apple, so Apple can be used as well. Um Tim Lowe is here if you want to hear about his statistics from his marina he operates is high and dry and how many people actually use the use their boats there versus how many are stored. It's a very low percentage. Yes, there is a tenant on the property that has not cared for the property. a commercial

1:41:26tenant, but that tenant will go away when when this property is redeveloped for this marina.

1:41:33Okay, I have I have some questions. Board members. Okay. Right. Um so in regards to um similar to a travel park.

1:41:45If we declare a state of emergency, they're supposed to Hitch their homes, whatever. up to a truck and leave. Right. Um I think we should have a condition here that if the If there's a hurricane that the boat should have to Leave if they're stored on the ground. What does that make sense?

1:42:08Well you don't want you

1:42:08don't

1:42:09want boats to be there when a hurricane

1:42:11You can, but if you're operating a traditional high-end drive facility.

1:42:14No, no, it's not. They're stored on trailers. At ground level. I don't know. I don't know if that's makes sense or not, but I'd sure hate to see all the boats going people's yards and in

1:42:25the

1:42:26water. So question.

1:42:28Tim Lowe, [address removed], um Portet Smarina. Madam Chair, Commissioner in response to your question about requiring the boats to leave in a storm, I don't know that's necessary. I I would imagine that most of the boats, if not all of the boats, Boats uh would be removed well in advance of the storm because it's easy to do so being on a trailer. Yeah. These boats will be stored on a trailer across the street from the waterfront parcel, um far enough away from the canal to where residents

1:42:59on the canal vacating their boats will not be affected by our customers. removing their boats uh in the event of a storm.

1:43:06So are they on their own trailers or are they on your trailers?

1:43:09They'll be on their own trailers, but the marina staff will actually launch the boat for the customer with the marina

1:43:14I was just wondering if I mean if if most people in Gulf Harbors, and you have a place in Gulf Harbors. I mean my boat was too big, but if you had a boat of a smaller size, they got 'em the heck out of there. So I would think people would want to get their boats out if we had another monster coming.

1:43:29Absolutely. And we will have a hurricane plan. We have one at Port Hudson Marina just less than a mile away. We can store up to three hundred boats there. We communicate to our uh customers well in advance of our plan of when we recommend that they remove their boats. We did have a lot of damage with the storms last year, but we did not have any boats relocated off of our property.

1:43:50Okay, um you know, I have a question. Did we lose Commissioner Oakley?

1:43:54Uh he had another engagement to be at, so he uh had to leave the meeting.

1:44:00Madam Chair. Yeah. I I don't know. Um we have to find out if you've been sworn or not.

1:44:05I have been sworn in.

1:44:05Okay,

1:44:06great.

1:44:06Thank you.

1:44:07Okay. Sorry to interrupt I just was one wonder if we should wait for him to come back. But um Okay, uh okay, that that was my question. Well I'm I'm sitting here looking at the map and I see one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, Uh seven commercial vehicles in the water, but then there's property to the south and on this map up here, C two and C one are on the south that aren't pink. Those are that's not your property? Correct. I know I met with you but I don't remember. Yeah. That was ours,

1:44:35yeah.

1:44:36Well that that doesn't look like it's very nicely kept. I would agree

1:44:40with that.

1:44:40But is are you gonna have, you know, landscaping and a nice fence and all those things that I care about it. I mean make it a And it you know, enhance the neighborhood rather than that looks kinda derelict.

1:44:54Most certainly yes. We'll have landscaping, uh shell, fencing, we'll apply with all the ordinances. And then some go a little bit above and beyond. We wanna improve the area. We've been in the neighborhood for twenty-five five years. And um we're we're not going anywhere anytime soon.

1:45:08Right. And are these homes on septic?

1:45:11No.

1:45:12Good. That that's the end of my questions.

1:45:17Uh Madam Chair?

1:45:19Yeah.

1:45:19So I I I think it'd be good to put a hurricane plan in in in place just to give some comfort to the residents as far as the th those issues go. Um you know, this this plan was actually shown to me twenty some odd years ago and then It just never came back, um as the time went on. Uh I went out to the site. Um With Tim, with uh John Moody as well. This is the area where I talked about earlier from O Dixie and Hudson, this is just above this. where there's some drainage issues without the water needs to come down. Uh they're willing

1:45:49to work with us to fix that drainage to open up what what swales we need to bring it down through. Uh there's some trees in place that if we get moved over they can actually make the landscaping good going along O Dixie, which they've um said they will do as well. Um So I think they can help the drainage in the area. They've also agreed it's not in any condition here, but they've agreed to uh entertain with us as far as if we do the canal res when we do the canal restoration that they will use that y make that site available to us to consider to

1:46:20uh be able to store some of the debris which will save the taxpayers and actually help the the dredging get done quicker and less expensively which will help everybody uh which I think is a is a benefit. Um

1:46:33The the property itself, the building that's there is really decrepit. Uh it needs to be torn down anyway, uh with what's probably gone on from the previous uh people in there. So I I know that's gonna help the area. I think Tim, if you could do some extra landscaping, say in front of uh let's say the let's say the northern piece on the sea twos around where the water is to put some like land nice landscaping to make it look better as well. Um I don't know which

1:47:01trail coming up, Old Old Dixie?

1:47:03Old Dixie there will be. We're gonna work we're gonna work they're gonna work with us on that too. Okay. Um But I I think if you can dress up the landscaping in there, come back with a plan that staff likes and so I think that would be a benefit to the area too. if there's some way to minimize what's going on. Now now keep in mind the shrimp boats that were in there before

1:47:24It was a tough, tough s tough setup for people. I mean I had I had many, many complaints with votes going up and down um and what they were leaving behind what was going on, et cetera. So I think this could be a a lot better, uh though it's gonna be a little bit more busy, hopefully the boats would be quieter than what those shrimp boats were and uh less obnoxious. So if you can uh work to be a good neighbor with it. I think that uh

1:47:49a series of shrimp boats which could which you could go back to, which I think was detrimental for everyone I talked to up and down the canals. Um I know you don't own other property. Something else we did talk about a little bit was uh if we have like fire rescue that needs to launch. Yeah, rather than Strickland could be pretty crowded, people trying to get the boats out of the water and get 'em out of the way. if they can launch our boats if we need to with the be fire rescue sheriff deputy even code enforcement. Uh that can be a benefit to us as well as we kind of like try to keep the waterways clean and maybe protect some people that are out

1:48:19there. Even in search and rescue missions, it could be a pretty handy setup for us. Um so I'm gonna say it's like I it's it's um It is gonna be a use. I'm glad we're gonna shorten the hours. Um

1:48:39We're open eight to five. Eight

1:48:41to five.

1:48:41We requested that seven to seven. Just we don't know what the future's gonna hold. We may have one or two customers that say, Hey, I want to go out fishing early this this weekend because of the tides. We'd like to be able to drop his boat in at seven or seven thirty, potentially. We just didn't want to restrict ourselves.

1:48:56And most people are now at dark, I mean.

1:48:59Dangerous. No. Now we we we don't want to pay the staff to be there that long. Remember the staff launching and retrieving these boats, right? Our our labor would be through the roof. So our intention is stick to the eight to five like we're doing at our other location.

1:49:12So eight to five and then you'll you'll just on special exceptions allow people in for an earlier takeoff because of tides which are sensitive to getting in and out.

1:49:20Honestly that's not our intention at the moment, but if things change down if we had a a large customer base that was adamant about going out a little bit sooner, we want wanna entertain that option.

1:49:33Okay. Um well let me ask this. As far as the um Vehicle is going to be towing the vehicles back and forth. Is there any noise associated with that?

1:49:43I mean it's g it would be a uh compact tractor, so it'd be a diesel engine compact tractor, so the noise would be similar to that of a full size diesel pickup truck. Right.

1:49:52What about beeping sounds?

1:49:56Um no lives up here. Beeping sounds that you say?

1:49:59Right. Like sometimes you have a truck that moves and it has a beep on it that's

1:50:03it.

1:50:08Okay.

1:50:11Um Commissioner Oakley for a hurricane plan. It is condition number seventeen. We staff and I anticipated that and we put that in.

1:50:22Okay.

1:50:24Seth, any questions? Okay, um

1:50:28I do have a I I I have a question for the County Administrator just looking at the map. I'm I'm on Google Earth. And across the street is an RV park. Not That's the one that's travel park. That's the ones where they're supposed to hook their homes up and leave in a hurricane. So we need to make sure we need to see what's going on over there.

1:50:58I don't have any more questions, so Do you want to give a motion? I will move approval.

1:51:03Second.

1:51:04I'm all in favor.

1:51:06Aye. Aye. I believe it's a little bit more than a little lighting. I was gonna say Commissioner Yeager is online.

1:51:11Yes. Okay. Oh then roll call vote. But I I do I do have a question. Lighting. I want to be sure that you have lighting that does not affect the neighborhood. But I think it's in our ordinance already, but I I heard a comment once that made me think maybe we're not doing it everywhere, but the lighting needs to be shining down and not into any of these houses, right?

1:51:35District One, Commissioner Oakley. District two, Commissioner Weightman. District four, Commissioner Yeager. District five, Commissioner Mariano. Aye. District three, Chairman Starkey. Aye.

1:51:49Mm.

1:51:56Next item would be P fifty six. P fifty six.

1:51:59Madam Chairman Absolutely. If I could just clarify on the past vote, was that including the condition of approval that Ms. Will Hight offered on the

1:52:08seven to seven?

1:52:08Yes. Yes. Yes. Okay. Thank you. Thank you.