MPD Alert: Another Revision
Next week the Planning and Land Development Regulation Board hears the Westward Expansion MPD. This is not a preview of the hearing. It’s how the storyline got shaped.
The Westward Expansion storyline is about to move. Next week — July 15 — the Planning and Land Development Regulation Board (PLDRB) takes up another revision of Raydient’s MPD, a document that would let a four-and-a-half-billion-dollar company off the hook for close to a hundred million dollars — the road it agreed to build for a new city out west — while keeping the right to build Palm Coast 2.0.
New to the storyline? One story is the catch-up: “Stiffed on the Loop Road”.
Overall, this revision of the MPD barely moved the needle. A couple of industrial buildings got bumped a phase earlier — a million square feet, which sounds like a lot, but most of those distribution centers you see off I-95 around Daytona run more than a million square feet apiece.
The biggest change was in abandonment. It went from a “whereas” to an agenda item that could hit at any time.
From:
“WHEREAS, portions of the Property were subject to the Old Brick Township Development of Regional Impact Development Order approved by City Resolution 2010-114, as amended by Resolution 2011-56, and the Neoga Lakes Development of Regional Impact Development Order approved pursuant to City Resolution 2010-138 and the City Council contemporaneously with this MPD and Development Agreement abandoned these prior development orders and they have no further force or effect;”
To:
“To proceed with the proposed expansion, a series of applications will be presented through a series of public hearings as required by Florida Statutes and the City’s Land Development Code. These applications will include: an Annexation, a Future Land Use Map Amendment, a Zoning Map Amendment which will include a Development Agreement, and Abandonment of two (2) Development of Regional Impact (DRI) Development Orders.”
We looked back and found a recent abandonment. It was different, though — nobody was trying to walk out on a tab. But we learned how the city does it: one application, one public hearing, one vote.
The council reads it, decides it, and once someone walks the notice to the clerk of the circuit court, it’s done. With the next meeting being a work session, it’s reasonable to assume a vote won’t take place next week, but we’ll be watching the agenda. Closely.
Perhaps the conversation we should be having isn’t about this deal at all. Perhaps it’s about an ordinance — one that prevents the city from paying for stuff that’s already paid for. And we continue to deeply ponder, why are we even dealing on the western expansion?
— Johnny Diamond
PalmCoastStorylines.com