Riviera Beach planning board reviews major changes to future land use plan, calls for neighborhood focus and height study

Principal planner Soni Simon introduced a workshop on changes to Riviera Beach’s comprehensive plan that would shift future land use direction from broad, citywide categories to neighborhood-level planning and specific urban-form analysis. "This is our favorite time of the month where we get to go over our comp plan update, draft language," Simon said, describing six or seven focus areas staff and consultants want input on.

The draft land use element would explicitly tie the city’s community redevelopment agency (CRA) policies to neighborhood planning, add a new general mixed‑use future land use category to allow more flexible combinations of commercial and residential uses, and require an urban‑form (height) study for sensitive places such as the downtown and waterfront. David Dixon, a consultant with CGA, described the urban‑form study as a technical tool to visualize zoning envelopes and more realistic building masses so the board can judge where taller buildings would be appropriate and where limits are needed.

Why it matters: the comp plan guides later zoning and land‑development code changes. Simon and staff said the policy language would give the city a basis for neighborhood plans,…