County approves rezoning of 8-acre parcel on U.S. 1 to medical district after traffic review

The Board of County Commissioners on Feb. 25 approved an ordinance rezoning roughly 8 acres on the east side of U.S. 1, south of 40th Street, from CG (general commercial) to MED (medical) zoning.

Cindy Thurman, senior planner for Long Range Planning, told the board the parcel is undeveloped and located within an established commercial/industrial future land-use node. Thurman said the MED district is intended to protect and support major medical facilities and to prohibit uses that could cause noise, vibration, odor or other impacts on neighboring properties. She said the rezoning is consistent with the county's comprehensive plan and the county's land development regulations, and the Planning & Zoning Commission voted unanimously to recommend approval.

Joseph DeFranzo, the county engineer and traffic reviewer, told the board how warrant processes operate for signals and left-turn treatments and said site-level traffic studies are required when a property advances to site-plan review. Commissioner Moss read from the project's Kimley-Horn cover letter: the consultant's trip-generation table estimates a net decrease in daily project trips under the proposed MED zoning compared with the existing CG designation (the submission lists the existing zoning's trip estimate as 34,339 and the proposed zoning estimate as 5,133, per the Kimley-Horn table provided to staff).

A resident, Tom Sullivan of West 16th Square, urged commissioners to consider cumulative traffic in the medical corridor and to slow approvals until road improvements and development build-out are better aligned. Sullivan said left-turn access at 40th Street and U.S. 1 lacks a protected turn and that queued traffic and development approvals in the corridor warrant extra scrutiny.

The board voted 5-0 to approve the rezoning. Staff advised that further, more detailed traffic and concurrency reviews will occur at the time a site plan for development is submitted and that appropriate mitigation or improvements would be required through the development-review process.

What happens next: any development on the property will require submittal of a site plan and the traffic impact study methodology must be approved by county engineering; utility connection fees and customary concurrency reviews will apply.