St. Augustine could add zoning to help marine industries (SAR)

Another shallow article in The St. Augustine Record, only four days after the meeting. Pitiful.

Posted August 18, 2017 12:02 am
By SHELDON GARDNER sheldon.gardner@staugustine.com
St. Augustine could add zoning to help marine industries

The city of St. Augustine is trying to hang onto what’s left of its commercial — and publicly accessible — waterfront.

To that end, the City Commission could adopt an ordinance that would add another, less restrictive, maritime use zoning district.

The idea is that more flexibility might keep property owners from selling, and prevent residential development that could shut off public waterway access indefinitely, officials said.

“It’s been a problem starting back in 2001 when we started having the boom in Florida and we were losing a lot of commercial public-access-type marinas,” said Carl Blow, Planning and Zoning Board member and commissioner with the Florida Inland Navigation District, a taxing district that protects the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway. “What was happening is those marinas were being bought by developers who were basically building condominiums.”

The City Commission still needs to make a final decision on whether to adopt the ordinance, which the Planning and Zoning Board helped craft and recommended.

The zoning district, called Maritime Use District-A, would allow the same uses allowed by the existing Maritime Use District but would add offices, hotels and motels with 25 units or less, and art studios and galleries, city Planning and Building Department Director David Birchim said.

Water-dependent uses such as seafood houses, boatyards and marinas, would have to make up at least 55 percent of the gross land area, according to the ordinance. Buildings could be 35 feet tall, and the district would allow non-marine-related retail space and hotels and motels of up to 50 units as a use by exception, according to the ordinance. A use by exception requires approval by the city’s Planning and Zoning Board.

The ordinance wouldn’t rezone anyone’s land but would add another zoning district that people could apply for their properties to be a part of, according to Birchim.

Mayor Nancy Shaver questioned allowing hotels, but Birchim said they’re part of the state’s definition of working waterfront and the idea is to allow a place where boaters could dock and spend the night.

Riberia Street, which runs alongside a portion of the San Sebastian River, is home to some of the city’s commercial waterfront with boatyards, marinas and a marine supply shop.

It’s also home to the Seafood Shoppe, where crews working for John Weeks on Thursday prepared to offload thousands of pounds of shrimp from a boat.

While demand for his product has grown over the years, the supply has been harder to get, he said. Federal and state restrictions on fishing tightened up many years ago.

Relying on local supplies would mean operating only a few days a week, he said. Still, the business brings in about 20,000 pounds of shrimp a week and about 10,000 pounds of fish locally. They import in addition to that, he said.

“Just not enough boats. … In 1995-‘96, in the fall of the year, we might have 50 or 60 shrimp boats here. Now we only have 10 or 12,” Weeks said.

The city’s proposed ordinance recognizes the area’s “long history of marine uses, such as boat building, fishing, and seafood processing along its waterways” and seeks in part to preserve what’s left of those uses.

“The problem is we have a very limited amount of deep-water access, commercially zoned property [in St. Johns County],” Blow said.


COMMENTS

Edward Adelbert Slavin · 

Bete noir at Community Activist

Mayor Shaver and other Commissioners rightly questioned this proposed ordinance. Not enough detail in this article.
Since it was a first reading of an ordinance, no public comment was allowed.
St. Augustine's overly restrictive rules keep us from commenting on first ordinance readings, presentations, resolutions and other matters.
It's all the People's Business.
City Hall burghers devised uncool, unfair rules to keep democracy a spectator sport. I agree with Steven Cottrell's column, on Monday, which I quoted to Commissioners Monday night. He stated local governments forget they'respending our money. He wrote: "The St. Augustine City Commission, for example, seems especially resistant to meaningful public participation. Not allowing a free-flowing exchange of ideas at public meetings reflects an attitude of supposed superiority, as if they are smarter than you. Well, they're not."
Reporters covering meetings omit a lot, or else their editors do -- very seldom to we get a feel for the "exchange of ideas" in public meetings. Public speakers are rarely quoted, and sometimes not by name, as if our thoughts were of no interest to the putative "journalists" who too often print handouts from City Hall. Pitiful.

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