VENICE — The real estate agent representing the owner of a 29.9-acre parcel on Knights Trail Road, once envisioned as a site for workforce apartments, says he has another investor committed to build there.
Jon Greco, a commercial associate broker at Merritt Realty, said that while he has an investor interested in developing the property — once envisioned as the site of the 510-unit John Nolen Gardens — the current working concept is for a “conventional market-rate luxury apartment community, utilizing the current zoning density and special exception through design.”
Though not the developer, Greco is serving as an adviser for the investor, who has retained attorney Jeff Boone and consultant Kimley-Horn and Associates to get up to speed on where the previous developer, Edward Pinto, left off.
Greco said market studies are underway to help determine the density, size of development and potential rents. He stressed that the goal is to work with the community to ensure compatibility.
“I don’t plan on going against the grain,” Greco said. “If, in fact, we move to the finish line, I want to develop something that’s very nice there.”
Within that framework, Greco said, he hopes to work with the city of Venice and Sarasota County to provide some apartments priced for entry-level workers.
“This property is located next to the two largest employers in Sarasota County; it’s removed away from any other development, and there’s a need,” Greco said, referring to PGT Industries and Tervis Tumbler. “If there’s a way to solve the problem, I’ll try to advise the buyers to go in that direction — as long as it turns out to be a quality product.”
That was good news of Venice Mayor John Holic. Original interest in developing the property grew out discussions by a group Holic formed in late 2016 to quantify the need for workforce housing in South County.
The group included representatives of PGT and Tervis Tumbler, along with the United Way of South Sarasota County.
"I am absolutely tickled,” said Holic, who received an email update from Greco on Saturday. “I don’t know what the outcome will be. It’s a long way from fruition, but I’m glad somebody is looking again.”
Greco noted that the property is zoned for up to 18 multi-family units per acre, with restrictions that structures are limited to three stories, with no under-building parking.
When Pinto, a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and former top executive at mortgage giant Fannie Mae, sought the density increase with those stipulations, he envisioned building only one parking space per apartment.
Greco said that currently, the investor, whom he declined to name, is interested in following current guidelines that call for two parking spaces per unit, and possibly build garages — something that would reduce the number of homes.
Sarasota County is devising regulations to encourage workforce housing. Recently, the County Commission approved reducing the number of required parking spaces from two to one for residences 900-square-feet and smaller.
Jeff Shrum, the development services director for Venice, said the city would have to adopt similar rules in its land development code for that option to be available.
Greco said he won’t recommend pursuing that benefit.
“Just because you have a smaller unit and there’s an entry-level person living in that unit or someone living on a fixed income, it doesn’t mean they don’t have more than one car,” Greco said.
"Having said that, the density will more than likely be lower than what the prior developers were trying to develop,” added Greco, who developed similar complexes in conjunction with the Urban Land Institute in southeastern Wisconsin before moving to Florida.
In addition to the parking space reduction, Sarasota County is considering two other changes to foster construction of workforce housing. One change would count residences 900-square-feet and smaller as a half-unit, thus doubling the allowable density. Another change would include a corresponding cut in county impact fees.
In its new comprehensive plan, the City of Venice allowed a bonus for up to 500 attainable housing units, Shrum noted, so any attempt to follow suit with the county on the density change would require a comprehensive plan amendment.
But if the county were to institute a cut in its impact fees for homes 900 square feet or smaller, that would essentially be a pass-through, both Shrum and Holic noted, since most impact fees are imposed by the county.
Last October, Pinto withdrew his application to develop John Nolen Gardens because he didn’t get the sense that the Venice City Council was willing to waive roughly $12,000 in impact fees collected on each new dwelling unit.
In December, Pinto told the Affordable Housing Symposium hosted by the Commercial Investment Division of the Realtor Association of Sarasota and Manatee that those fees would have meant a $70-per-month rent increase in his project.
Greco did not comment on the necessity of reduced impact fees to produce affordable rents and stressed it’s too soon to say how that could be achieved.
“They don’t have a platform that they could use for a vehicle to help with this issue,” Greco said, then cited a surtax currently levied by Dade County on every commercial property as one way to offset development costs so that lower rents could be achieved.
“Personally,” Greco said, “it would be my recommendation to the developer of the property to just follow the guidelines that’s zoned and develop a quality product so the neighbors are happy with it, and the community is happy with it and the city is happy with it.”