Agenda - Planning Commission - 06/03/1997

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areas later in a more thorough and timely fashion, and to do a better job of identifying those lots that were really suitable for development. In an article in the Florida State University Law Review ("Planning for Platted Lands: Land Use Remedies for Lot Sale Subdivisions," Fall 1983), Frank Schnidman and R. Lisle Baker studied three Florida counties-Charlotte, Lee, and Sarasota-where almost.900,000 subdivision lots were platted between the late 1950s and the early 1970s. Most were carved out in just five huge tracts covering approximately 277 square miles. Moreover, because of Florida law, these empty lands were crisscrossed with roads and canals, producing "an astonishing vista of treeless blocks of land stretching to the horizon, marked off by hundreds of miles of roads, often without a house in sight." Schnidman and Baker outlined a series of options for state and local government action to address the issue-some involv- ing the reassembly of platted lands and others involving land-use regulations-but, fundamentally, they urged that local govern- ments decide how they wanted the land to be used as a prelimi- nary step to choosing the most effective approach for a particular area. Much of the undeveloped land, they noted, might make wonderful parks if the public sector chose to acquire it. Fourteen years later, the vista they described remains largely intact, says Wayne Daltry, director of the Southwest Florida Regional Planning Commission, which includes those three coastal counties plus Collier and two rural inland counties, Henry and Glades. Daltry says the region contains 1.1 million lots and 1.1 million people. He wryly adds that 900,000 lots remain unbuilt, 700,000 of which are "visible when the tide rolls in." Only two subdivisions (Cape Coral and North Port) have ever incorporated. Cape Coral, which contained 11 people in 1960, now has 80,000, with the ciry council hoping to cap the population "at no more than 350,000." Helping to drive that growth, however, is the subdivision of newer lots that more or less equal in number the older lots that are developed, leaving the unbuilt inventory about where it has been since the 1970s. Daltry says many of the "most egregious" subdivisions, often involving submerged lands platted in the 1950s and 1960s, have been eliminated through the creation of new state forests that have absorbed the lots in question. Swampland is not sold as easily in Florida as it once was, but the consequences of those earlier sales live on. Everyone Owns a Piece of Paradise Schnidman, who heads the University of Miami's graduate program in real property management, says the first problem planners today confront in trying to rationalize the development of many antiquated subdivisions is that of identifying the thousands oflot owners who have a stake in the solution. It is one thing to convince the sole owner of a previously platted subdivision to red~fine the lot lines for properties that were never sold. The process involves some legal and planning work, to be sure, but is otherwise relatively straightforward if the developer is cooperative. It is another matter, however, to convince hundreds of owners of largely undeveloped lots to cooperate in redrawing lot lines, selling some lots to neighbors for lot mergers, or accepting new lots in exchange for current lots. Even if the lot is inherently undevelopable, nothing may happen without notice to the owner. In the case of the southwestern Florida subdivisions, Daltry notes that the owners are literally scattered "all over the world." Popular resort areas like Lake Tahoe in Nevada also attracted large numbers of dispersed land buyers. 2 . . . Or Is It Purgatory? Significant problems accompany such dispersed land ownership in antiquated subdivisions, even as many local governments look upon the lots in the short term as tax revenue generators that make no service demands. The most pervasive issues related to prematurely platted lands fall into two large categories: . Leapfrog development. The fact that these lands are already subdivided deters their development for anything but single- family residential use even though other forms of development might prove more appropriate. Development is driven away to other sites where lot-size impediments do not yet exist, exacerbating urban sprawl and forcing development into some areas that might better be left undisturbed. This is quite possibly the most pernicious impact of all, for it stretches public expenditures for services and the extension of infrastructure, and abortS opportunities for achieving a more compact urban form. . Natural resource degradation. Whether the land in question consists of wetlands, hillsides, or deserts, many antiquated subdivisions involved the platting of land at densities that were never sustainable within the local environmental constraints. In Arizona and New Mexico, many might lack an adequate water supply. In Florida, the canals already built in anticipation of development allow salt-water infiltration into fresh-water fisheries and drinking water sources. In the Lake Tahoe area, until a regional plan slowed such growth, development of wetlands and stream environment zones imperiled the lake's water quality through excess nutrient loading. Until these areas are replatted, they remain essentially unbuildable even as their limited infrastructure wastes away from neglect. In addition, the mismatch between current regulations and existing lot lines tends to produce patchy development patterns. In some cases, individual owners may have acquired a combination oflots that become adequate in size to meet current standards, resulting in the issuance of a building permit for isolated homes in an area that even current z.oning envisioned as a denser development. The owners of neighboring lots trapped between unwilling sellers and/or unwilling buyers may find themselves in a regulatory purgatory, indefinitely holding the bag with substandard lots. Courts have varied both by state and with regard to various public harms from development in considering the rights of single-lot owners facing such circumstances. Schnidman notes that, in some cases, the problem with the subdivision may not have been lot size at all but the overall density of a large tract. In other words, allowing all the platted lots to be built may produce too many negative impacts on the area in question, but allowing one portion to be built with small lot sizes while preserving the remainder as open space may yield a "perfectly good neotraditional subdivision." Producing that result, however, requires either negotiating such an option with the developer long before the lots are sold or bringing together the hundreds or even thousands of scattered landowners who have acquired property rights in the antiquated subdivision. Otherwise, the lines already drawn across the land will forestall the kinds of clustering that can be sensitive to the environment. Because the legal and administrative barriers can be so daunting, the result is often a pattern of unplanned, dispersed development that leaves the community with the worst of all possible solutions. ?~