Charlotte County approves Harbor Village plan and PD zoning with new conservation and dock limits

Charlotte County commissioners on July 22 adopted a package of land‑use changes and a planned‑development rezoning to govern the long‑discussed Harbor Village project, the successor to the older West County Town Center approvals.

The action formalizes a proposed buildout that reduces the project’s maximum residential entitlements from 3,960 units under prior approvals to 3,475 and reduces non‑residential square footage while enlarging the preservation area from roughly 92 acres to about 163 acres. The rezoning applies to about 840 acres of the roughly 1,174‑acre site. The board transmitted and then adopted text and map amendments and the PD ordinance after public hearings, passing the measures unanimously.

The applicant and its consultants said the changes respond to updated market conditions and to community concerns. Rob Bernsen, the applicants’ attorney, told commissioners the team had worked extensively with neighbors and had agreed to a set of binding PD conditions “to ensure the project is an environmentally sensitive mixed‑use waterfront community,” including removing dock entitlement from individual lots and concentrating all marina slips within a single marina basin. Bernsen…