Lee County commissioners will be asked Wednesday to delay acting on a hearing examiner’s recommendation that the board refuse 42 additional single-family homes as part of a 108-unit affordable housing development in Harlem Heights.
Habitat for Humanity of Lee and Hendry Counties has asked that “bonus density” be added to the number of units allowed under zoning and land use changes up for commission approval.
Bonus density is an incentive offered developers to build affordable housing.
Chief Hearing Examiner Donna Marie Collins recommended commissioners reject the extra units for two reasons.
It would increase traffic through less dense nearby neighborhoods. Collins also found that the additional units would violate county rules prohibiting bonus density in coastal high hazard areas — places where hurricane storm surge is considered a significant threat to lives and property.
Habitat wants the delay because of the denial recommendation and the expected absence of Commissioner Brian Hamman, said Habitat President Kathrine Green.
Habitat can spread some of the expenses common to the development to more homes if it wins the 42 bonus units it is seeking.
Habitat has promised extensive work to get rid of invasive agricultural species that have taken over some of the parcels.
The housing organization also claims that the coastal high hazard restriction was created before new building rules that require an extra one-foot elevation on new construction in hurricane-prone areas.
Habitat’s plans include the higher elevation.
“It’s an additional foot, and we will comply with that,” Green said. “It’s not a case of density being restricted, it is a case of more density being allowed if it is for affordable housing.”
In reviewing the effects of Hurricane Irma recently, county officials noted that the higher elevation had protected many buildings from flooding from the hurricane and the epic August 2017 rainstorms.
Granting the 42 bonus density units would conflict with “Lee Plan policies that discourage increased density in the coastal high hazard area,” and conflicts with a policy of “protecting public health, safety and welfare," Collins said.
The Harlem Heights development is planned for a 23.8-acre site in south Fort Myers. A project was approved for 96 units on about 20 acres at the site in 2004 but wasn’t built. The 2004 county commission rejected 64 bonus units requested in that proposal.
Habitat bought the largest parcel and combined it with nearly 4 acres that it already owned.
In recommending denial of the 48 bonus density units, Collins determined that the new units would produce too many vehicles traveling through the existing neighborhood to reach Gladiolus Drive.
Collins wrote that Habitat presented “inadequate testimony/evidence comparing the proposed project density with the density of the adjacent Harlem Heights neighborhood.”
Green said Habitat will ask the commission to put off the decision until its May 2 hearing date. Several supporters of the project spoke at the hearing examiner proceedings and are entitled to address the commission at the hearing.
The county has another matter on its agenda for Wednesday, the highly controversial proposal for the development of Gully Creek in North Fort Myers.