BZA approves SIMTRA sign and interior-landscaping variances, requires Liberty Drive sidewalk

The Monroe County Board of Zoning Appeals on June 4 approved three variances for the SIMTRA site at 617 South Curry Pike, allowing changes to how interior parking landscaping and a pair of gate signs are implemented while carving out the sidewalk requirement for Curry Pike and requiring a sidewalk along the site’s South Liberty Drive frontage.

Staff and the petitioner said the changes respond to operational needs at the campus and to engineering constraints at the site. Planning staff recommended approval of the landscaping and sign setback variances and recommended denial of the sidewalk variance for Curry Pike; the board accepted staff’s landscaping and sign recommendations and approved the sidewalk variance only as conditioned to require SIMTRA to construct sidewalk on the west side of South Liberty Drive.

Daniel Brown, planning staff, told the board the site plan approved in February 2024 had called for converting 41 parking stalls into interior landscaping islands but that the petitioner later said those spaces are required for operations. Brown said the site-wide landscaping plan still provides a large excess of landscape density value and that staff supported relocating landscaping to other on-site areas rather than installing islands that would remove parking in a special flood hazard area. Brown said staff calculated the large south parking lot would provide 0 trees, 28 shrubs…