Commissioners approve NC Square amendment reducing required affordable units to 30% and removing daycare in exchange for larger neighborhood commercial area

Collier County commissioners on Tuesday approved companion amendments to the NC Square planned unit development and the county's future land use element, allowing a previously approved 129-unit project to meet a 30% (rather than 100%) income-restricted affordability requirement while preserving roughly the previously approved commercial component.

The board's unanimous vote adopted both the growth management map amendment (item 9a) and the PUD amendment (item 9b). Commissioners also approved a staff-recommended change that removes a proposed 12,000-square-foot day care from the site plan and increases neighborhood-oriented commercial square footage to 50,000 square feet in trade.

Rich Ivanovich, representing the applicant, told the commission the developer had returned the project to the originally approved 129 for-sale units and "brought forward the change to reduce the percentage of affordable units to 30%." He said the changes kept the approved unit count, heights and buffers while restoring the previously approved 44,400 square feet of commercial uses and the originally proposed daycare in the earlier plan; the applicant later offered to remove or reduce the daycare if doing so would reduce daily vehicle trips.

Audubon Western Everglades, through Brad Cornell, urged the county not to allow market-rate units to be exempt from purchasing transfer-of-development-rights (TDR) credits. "We don't believe the intention is to exempt market rate housing units from the required TDR credit purchase," Cornell said, warning that exempting market-rate units could reduce protections for wetlands, Florida panther habitat and other natural-resource protection-area lands. Audubon recommended a "glitch" amendment to clarify that only income-restricted units should be exempt from the TDR purchase requirement.

Neighbors who live in the adjacent Valencia Trails subdivision were the meeting's most numerous speakers. Lisette Scott, speaking for Valencia Trails, described the community's history and said residents prefer the previously approved 129 owner-occupied townhomes. Many neighbors pressed the commission on traffic safety, noise and wildfire protection; one resident told commissioners the proposed 25-foot buffer between homes and commercial uses would not be adequate for a community with private yards and pools.

Commissioners discussed the TDR question and the tradeoffs between affordable housing incentives and resource protection. Commissioner McDaniel said the county had previously allowed an affordability incentive in the rural fringe mixed-use district that limited use of TDRs, and pointed out that a statutory or policy change would likely be necessary to alter that exemption prospectively. Commissioners also focused on the expected traffic impacts of a day-care facility, with several saying a daycare can generate large numbers of peak-hour trips and that converting some of the planned daycare floor area to low-impact commercial uses could reduce overall peak congestion.

After discussion, a motion was moved and seconded to approve both amendments on the condition that the daycare be eliminated, total commercial square footage be raised to 50,000 square feet, and the affordable housing commitment be reduced to 30% of the 129 for-sale units. The board voted "aye" on the motion and the measures passed unanimously.

What the board approved is a change to the county's growth-management plan and a companion amendment to ordinance 2021-18 (the NC Square mixed-use PUD). The approvals preserve the unit count and most site dimensions the neighbors said they wanted while lowering the proportion of income-restricted units and adjusting commercial and childcare uses as a traffic-mitigation trade.

Next steps: The applicant will work with county staff to finalize the site-development plan and any conditions of approval. Audubon and other stakeholders requested the board study the county's TDR exemption language prospectively; commissioners discussed potential future policy language changes but did not adopt any new TDR policy at the hearing.