Brooksville projects housing surge; city and county discuss student-generation and capacity coordination

Brooksville’s community development director presented a multi-year development forecast that projects continued growth in the city and prompted questions from county and school officials about school concurrency and student-generation assumptions.

David Hainley, Brooksville community development director, said the city expects development to remain concentrated in Southern Hills next year and called out several upcoming projects. “The projection’s going to go up to 235 units, of which 210 are going to be contributing,” Hainley said, referring to units the city expects to evaluate for school concurrency (he noted 25 of the 235 would be in the age‑restricted Cloverleaf community and therefore exempt from student-generation consideration).

Hainley and county staff described a larger spike in year three driven primarily by Arden Apartments, which the presentation listed as a planned 290-unit build on Cortez; with other developments in rezoning or plan review, the total citywide production for that year could exceed 500 units. Hainley said the city requires developers to submit five‑year plans as part of development agreements to help the school district project student generation and facility needs.

School and county staff stressed that the number of dwelling units considered for concurrency does not equal an exact student count. Michelle Miller, county staff, explained that a nonbinding reservation of capacity is provided at rezoning for planning purposes but that actual capacity is generated at the conditional plat stage. “Capacity is not reserved at the time of the rezoning,” Miller said; the nonbinding reservation merely informs the developer and planners of potential student generation. County staff said they perform annual updates of capacity reservations and are aligning reservation expiration dates with city concurrency windows to reduce lags in information.

Officials discussed student-generation rates: the county and school staff referenced a commonly used planning rate of about 0.3 students per single-family dwelling, noting that multifamily and townhome rates tend to be lower. Presenters said the city’s current materials show potential student‑generation from 210 dwelling units but that final student counts will depend on the mix of unit types and the formal generation rates applied at development review.

Several board members raised questions about the treatment of previously developed properties whose use or demographics changed (for example, units converted or marketed as 55+), asking whether that affects reserved capacity; county staff said reserved capacity is reduced when developments are withdrawn or expire but that already built, occupied dwellings do not require a reservation. No formal action was taken; staff said they would continue coordinating updates between county, city and school district planners.

The presentation included no new policy enactments or votes. Next steps identified by staff include continued alignment of concurrency and capacity reservation expiration dates, annual (or more frequent) updates to capacity reservations, and sharing developer five‑year plans with the school district to improve projection accuracy.