03B - Conditional Use Permit - Wilderness Resort Villas

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STAFF REPORT L. Application: Conditional Use Permit for a commercial Planned Unit Development in the Waterfront Commercial zone. Applicant: Wilderness Point Resort, LLC Background: Since our last meeting, your staff has had some considerable discussions with the development team on their concepts. Their concerns after the meeting were based largely on maintaining the type of development they want to market while being restricted on the number of boat lifts and garages and having to present an unknown financial obligation as part of the sale if a system of fines were enacted. The Wilderness Point development team presented two concepts to us for consideration. The first would be to continue on with the current resort development but with some _ modifications to the docking and garages. The hope with this concept was that there might be some movement by the Planning Commission on what they could accept. The second concept was to rezone the property for residential use and construct a residential PUD. As Staff, we were not eager to recommend either approach. The Planning Commission had made itself fairly clear with respect to the first approach, and a rezoning request would be completely contrary to the City's Comprehensive Plan,which singles out Wilderness Point Resort as an important component of our economic well-being. _ u In our discussions, a hybrid approach was developed. This is what is being presented with this staff report. The approach develops the property at residential density while maintaining the commercial zoning,meeting the commercial performance standards and providing for ongoing commercial use. The philosophy behind this approach is as follows: Residential PUDs are allowed increased density over a standard development because there is an offset in green/open space as well as some other design considerations (clustered sewer, stormwater management, etc...)that mitigate for the increased density. Commercial PUDs are allowed even higher density because they provide an added economic development benefit to the community. The offset is that the commercial design standards are even higher than the residential standards. For this development,they are proposing to develop at residential density. This would reduce the number of units proposed from 54 to 45. All of the units would be new and would meet all of the increased setbacks as well as all of the commercial design criteria. They intend to operate the property as a resort and will market them as units with a rental option, but there will be no obligation to rent. In a worse case scenario, if none of the units are rented,the expectation of a residential density will still be met. If all of the units are rented, the commercial design standards will be met and the economic benefits of commercial development will be met, despite the density being at a residential standard.