Conditional Use Request (Consent) – Tahitian Multi-Family/Shree Ram Investment, Inc. – Conditional Use for Multi-Family Dwellings in a C-2 General Commercial District – Southwest Pasco County – West Side of US Highway 19 at the Intersection of US Highway 19 and Tahitian Gardens Circle – Containing approximately 3.04 acres. File Number PDE26-CU07
What the county recorded
Staff recommendation
Approval with Conditions
No disposition in the minutes
The approved minutes do not say what became of this item. That is a gap in the record, not a decision. It is the normal state for 24% of items. Most of those are regular business and board reports that the minutes do not dispose of in writing. This archive never infers an outcome from the fact that someone called a vote.
The source document
The county’s agenda for Planning Commission, Apr 16, 2026
The published PDF, as served by the county. This item is one entry in it.
What was said
Machine transcription of 24m of recording, with speaker names inferred from voice matching. 86% of 81 lines carry a name. It shows what was said, not what was decided, and both the words and the names can be wrong.
Back to A B C three.
Yes, sir.
Item PDE twenty six cu oh seven is a conditional use request in the name of Tahitian to be presented by staff.
Mr. Chairman before we get started, I'll be abstaining from voting on this matter. Uh um the engineer on the project.
Okay. Um before you start also, and maybe you're gonna say this so I might be jumping a little ahead here, I believe that we received experte communications and it was sent to the clerk's office already?
Joseph Ryanwald, Planning Development Economic Growth. We did get two late ex parte's that have been submitted to the court already.
Good afternoon.
This is PDE twenty-six-cu oh seven. It is a Tahitian conditional use. Applicant is Shree Ram Investment Incorporated.
Zoning of the property is C2 General Commercial District. The future land use designation is ROR Retail Office and Residential. So the purpose of this conditional use is for multifamily dwellings in the C2 General Commercial District in accordance with LDC section 526.3.0.3. The location is on the west side of US Highway 19 in Holiday at the intersection of US Highway 19 and Tahitian Garden Circle.
Here's the site location map. Property is located in the West Market area and in the Sir Urban Service Area.
Here's the Met for Context. You have Darlington Road to the north, U.S. Highway 19 along the east side of the property. and then mile stretch drive down to the south. zoomed in aerial of the property. You can see Tahitian Gardens condominiums there to the west. You have a quick service restaurant up to the north and a charity retail store down to the south.
The future land use map, there is as said, is in ROR, and then you have residential 24 to the west. And here we have the zoning. The areas C2 to the north, east, and south. You have MF2 Multifamily High Density District to the west. And there's a little pocket of MF3 there just to the north, but that's actually the access drive.
Subject site consists of a 148-room defunct motel on almost or on just over three acres. The motel rooms will be converted into apartments of various sizes. Pursuant to LDC section 526.3.0, multifamily dwellings in the C2 General Commercial District are possible if a project complies with one or more of the following. One, if it's defined
as affordable by Florida statutes. Two, if it's vertically integrated mixed use, and three if it's located within the West Market area. So this project actually complies with number three being located in the West Market area.
So the number of units will not exceed the maximum density that's allowed by the ROR flu, and in no case shall that number exceed 96 units. Um there Is a proposed comprehensive plan amendment CPA twenty six oh one which is for ROR designated properties in the West Market area. If adopted, the maximum density allowed will go up to 32 dwelling units per developable acre. As of
right now, the maximum density is 24 dwelling units per developable acre.
Subject site is on the active bus route. It's conveniently located between two stops. There's one 500 feet to the north and another 600 feet to the south, and both of those are on the same side of 19 on the west side as of the project. US Highway 19 was identified as a conceptual trail corridor from alternate nineteen north up to Sunray Drive, but there are currently no plans to design or construct that trail. There is though an existing five-foot sidewalk
that goes along the the east side of the property as well as the east side of US Highway 19.
The buildings in the and the site were built back in 1969. Um So there is some constraints to the the to the property the way it's laid out. As as such, there will be alternative standards needed for the requirements of LDC section 907 parking and LDC section 905 905.1 neighborhood parks. And those will help uh be handled at the time of site planning.
This project does align with West Market area's vision and mission as well as the Harbor's Redevelopment and Illfill Infill Plan. Both of those look for redevelopment and increased housing choices in this area of the county. Um also aesthetically improve this corridor which is uh the gateway to West Pasco.
Here's just an overview of the of the site plan. Uh there's not going to be any demolition or new buildings there. It's renovation and refurbishing, adaptive reuse of what is there. uh the office building which is right to the north That will be d turned into a clubhouse and uh will have various amenities like a fitness center.
Status recommendation, recommend approval to the Board of County Commissioners of the conditional use. Request with conditions as set forth under the recommended conditions section. I'm here for any questions.
Mm-hmm. Any questions? Maybe a better question for the applicant, but I um would be curious to see what the um proposed look to what an apartment would look like and how the rooms are gonna be converted. All right, the applicant's present. Get your win.
Am I allowed to click today or am I I can click out. Barbara Will Heights sixty three twenty-seven Grand Boulevard for the applicant. Who is the contract purchaser of this property? I'm really glad this was pulled. Really want to tell you about this project. Um Mr. Pollis, wees we have the the layout of the different uh units. We have renderings, we have all sorts of goodies in here, so. Let me go through and introduce you. This is going to be Harbor Pointed Holiday, the Harbor Point apartment homes. I
was born in 1969 and from the west side of Pasco County, so my whole life this has been here. Um when I got the opportunity to represent this client, I s I actually kind of begged him like I really want to do this because this is something different. Um it's something very needed, and I hope you'll agree after you see this presentation. Site context, I think staff went over this. We're just south of Darlington. You can walk to Aldi, you can walk to the drugstore, you can get to two different bus stops, you can get down to the to the stockyard if you want to go country line dancing, all within walking distance. Property
view, this is a little bit dated 'cause now it's got a nice chainling fence up on it because uh the county revoked the certificate of occupancy for the motel. As we talked about, constructed in 1969. It's four buildings, 148 motel units, and it's a lobby building with a restaurant and bar that closed long ago. There's a capital city. Courtyard with a with a pool. It uh has operated as a motel under various owners until the county revoked the certificate occupancy. I'm not sure that I even recall the county
doing that before. I've been doing this a long time. And there were significant building and safety violations and the strain on county services. As you can see, 700 plus 911 calls in a 15-month period. This project will take those, take the resources that have been spent chasing after this motel, and they can go to other projects, and my client's going to come in and do something great here. The guest profile before the closing, transient guests, economy
stay, and local residents we see a lot of utilization of these older motels for actual housing. What we plan to do is have ninety six workforce housing units Everybody debates like what does that mean? I'll as you go through this you kind of get an idea of of how this works. Forty-five studio units, we furnish those, fifty-one-bedroom units. We've talked about the lobbies and staff has talked about the lobby building. The green space has a really nice pool
already. And we're going to add So the green space that exists, a playground and uh some dedicated space for the a tenant park. He just kinda goes through some of the improvements. Um
Maintaining a safe community.
No transient stays, all tenants are pre-screen screened, 12 month lease terms. When you when a ro motels run, you cannot background screen 'em, you can't income qualify 'em, you can't do any of those things. So you go from a project where anybody can be there with sex offender criminal to a project where people are screened, they sign leases. That alone is a big change. Credit checks, criminal background check, professionally managed, as you can see, third party management
company, on-site manager maintenance. And local ownership, my client is is local. Harbor Island Capital is the name of my client's firm. This is something that they have been working on. They develop attainable workforce housing for middle income earners through adaptive reuse of obsolete commercial properties, whether it be a hotel, an office, a school.
What's interesting is when you look at representing affordable um housing developers, which I do. There's AMI, the adjusted medium income, average medium income, excuse me. And there's a lot of programs for people developing 60% AMI, 80% AMI, and then you really there's not tax credits, there's not bond deals, there's not the same programs on a federal level available to help get these things financed. So what happens is when you're
exceed the 80% AMI or 60% AMI, you're out in the market. For market rents. two thousand a month, whatever it might be. What's unique about this is because we're doing adaptive reuse of an existing building, your the cost is lower, so the units can be rented for lower.
You can see there the adaptive reuse, the percentages there because you're reusing you're not building from ground up, a brand new project, you're ad reusing um a building that was actually built in nineteen sixty nine and Because I I've heard somebody say like a truck. It's it's all um It's all uh block construction. So it's actually got a pretty good construction. And yes, it's been there since nineteen sixty nine. And then the time period to be able to to get these renovations done and get people moved in. I know Chuck Lane and I have been in on calls,
you're he's now over uh disaster recovery funds funds, but he's asked the client, How can I get when can I get people moved in? There's a need for housing and this brings that to market so people can get moved in much quicker than a ground up project.
This is the the layout. If you could see that slide, maybe you can better than I can, but it just shows where these different units are. Studio, one bedroom, one bedroom small. how they're allocated throughout the building. This is the lobby how we're gonna redo the lobby building to have an office, a tenant gathering area, a gym. This is a typical studio.
the one bedroom, you can see you're taking it. So if we go back for a second, you'd see that the studio is in the footprint of a hotel unit. So it's just redoing the hotel unit, adding the kitchenette. So there's a kitchen.
the one bedroom or two hotel units, take the wall push the wall down in between. Make one of the restrooms the kitchen. And then the other side where the bedroom and the and the bathroom is it's currently a bathroom, you just renovate all those renovate those spaces. This is the typical bedroom small. And these are the renderings. Of what the it was going to look like.
You can see the landscaping is coming alive. It's cleaned up. It's painted.
This view is from US nineteen. We're still working on what we can do with along US nineteen, whether we can do anything We have probably gonna need some help with F DOT to let us do these trees. We're our parking is right up against the right-of-way, the existing parking.
But you can see we're adding new trees, planter boxes where we have areas that we that are have currents have pavement and we want to add some green to those areas.
Really nice courtyard and pool again just making that even more green. It's already As I hear it's already been renovated, so the pool area is pretty nice.
So with that. Adaptive reuse. Something new for me. If you have any questions, John can answer them.
Okay. Any questions for John? I I do have a question. I attended a Florida APA conference maybe three years ago that presented a project very similar about adapting and reusing old motels for this exact kind of use. And I'm recalling back to that. I didn't see in the conditions they when when they presented that at the Florida APA conference, especially in Orlando. They actually talked about specifically having
conditions on how many occupants can be in a unit. Is that something that you thought about or maybe staff has thought about?
Aye. I think my point might be able to answer that, how that works. Okay. Um Would be beyond me.
If you wanna come up and speak, we need to come up to the microphone. So we can get it on record. Could you please just give your name and address? Sure.
Uh Chris Claby, I'm the uh managing partner of Harbor Island Capital, uh 14549 Eurobell Vista Circle in Tampa, Florida. I'm happy to hear that. Take an interest in these and the these projects vary. So I I can't speak specifically for that project. Some of these hotel conversions are one-for-one and they're truly affordable housing at the lower end of the AMI. These will be apartments and we follow HUD
guidelines, right? So studio is typically one person and then uh one bedrooms are I I don't know how you do it, one and a half, uh, but those are the limitations that that we do on that. So we find that we have either single individuals or couples.
Okay.
Thank you. Any other questions while I'm up here?
Uh I was gonna ask about parking, uh but I don't know who's that's best directed towards. Go ahead. I think that that's yeah we'll call you back up with you. Thank you. About the parking. Uh so um I guess the L D C requires we're gr we're slightly over half of what the L D C requires for that number of units. So I understand that um the applicant that you guys are going to request an alternative standard time of site plan review, but um I'm
guessing the argument will be made that some of those spots will be offset by proximity to mass transit, but I you know I still have some reservations about the number of you know 114 parking spaces for 96 units.
So as you heard from the developer, first off, the majority of the units are studio apartments which are limited to one person. So it's not likely that an occupant of a studio apartment will have more than one vehicle. The majority of the one bedroom apartments are anticipated to be occupied Right. single residence. All right. And then
we also have proximity to transportation services. And there's an affordable component. We didn't stress we didn't talk too too much about that, but fifty percent of these units are reserved for people making 80% of the AMI or less. So it's likely that some of these folks will be regular users of the transit system rather than drivers. We will have uh somewhere around 100 to 110 parking spaces.
after things are complete. Um the applicant has already Studied. multiple apartment complexes in the area, some market rate. some affordable and what we've determined from that study is that the Pasco County Land Development Code. as it relates to the number of parking spaces needed for multifamily
is actually far in excess of what is actually used. um in these places. Right now our code would require generally about 2.25 spaces per unit. Um and we're finding that that number is significantly less with the parking study that's that's been done. And this has been done for this has been done for more than one project. that I'm working on with this developer.
What's interesting about those parking studies is not just how they were approved. They got, you know, it doesn't just say this project was approved at 1.4, 1.1. It's actually going out on a Saturday night. and studying the utilization. They're actually utilization studies. What's your occupancy? What's your utilization of the parking?
Yes, the study went out and actually counted physical parking spaces on the properties and then they mounted cameras to monitor every parking space. on the property to find out When when were the peak hours of utilization and what was the total amount of parking utilization during the highest demand period for parking.
So what kind of ratio are you guys seeing in practice?
So we're seeing that it's actually closer to one to one point one Um I will tell you that for this particular project the transportation engineers have recommended 90 parking spaces as being adequate. But we'll be providing actually over a hundred Depending on How we work out some landscaping in the parking lot with the development review department.
Okay. The other point I would like to make is that ninety six is a max. Right. So if they're gonna entitle to ninety six, so for some reason they can't get an alternative standard approved it gives them ninety six, I mean maybe they just won't get ninety six. So is my other concern about the easy thing.
Yeah,
I felt like the twenty four density made more sense on this property than thirty two, but I guess if it's you can make a case for it, then I understand.
It's high bar to get an alternative standard for parking. That's why there are actually utilization studies. It used to be just tell us how you've been approved and what's been approved before, but very high bar. So
Right. And these are apart local apartment complexes that have all been studied.
Yeah.
Well.
Yeah, that's all I had. the mess has a question, so Thank you.
Alright,
do you have any public comment? We have one individual pre-registered, one Ms. Margaret O'Brien. Okay.
Good afternoon. My name is Margaret O'Brien. I live at [address removed]. This hotel is our neighbor.
And I'm on the president, I'm the president of our board currently. And we have spoken with the developer and are very excited about the change. because that has been closed down since October and prior to that police, ambulances, overdoses, prostitution, We've had it all. And they come in our facility. and
break into elderly people's condos. We're not all elderly, we're all fifty five and above, but there's some that are quite old that live alone and they're very scared. And so I think this would be a great addition to this property because I sure don't want it to go back to the way it was.
Thank you for your time.
Thank you very much.
So is there anybody else that comes to speak?
Right. See no one. Um do Iar motion. Motion to approve. Second. A motion to approve and a second. Is there any further discussion of the motion? Not all in favor signify by saying aye. Aye. Those like aye.
Let the record reflect that I abstained.
You're still in the hot seat, Barbara.