Seminole County wants the zoning on 28 of its own parks, libraries and recreation sites to match what is actually on the ground, and the first public vote on that cleanup comes Wednesday night.
The county Planning and Zoning Commission meets at 6 p.m. Wednesday, Nov. 4, in the board chambers of the County Services Building, 1101 E. First St., Sanford. Two of the five public hearings on its agenda are county-initiated rezonings of park and library land, filed by the Parks and Recreation Department and described in the staff reports as remedial.
What would change
Over the years the county bought and built on park sites that kept whatever zoning they had before, so today the list includes land zoned for agriculture, rural homes, retail, planned developments and single-family or duplex neighborhoods.
Staff says those labels do not fit how the sites are used, and that the county has been fixing them one at a time whenever a park came in for a new site plan.
The first request would move 22 sites, about 482 acres, into the Public Lands and Institutions district.
The list includes Red Bug Lake Park, Boombah Soldiers Creek Park and its six baseball fields, CS Lee Park, Lake Jesup Park, Sylvan Lake Park, Sanlando Park, Wayside Park and Boat Ramp on the St. Johns River, the Seminole County Softball Complex, Bookertown Park in Sanford and the Jones Trailhead.
The second covers six sites, about 214 acres, that also need a change to the county's future land use map. They are the Boombah Sports Complex soccer field on Moore's Station Road, Deer Run, Greenwood Lakes Park, the Northwest Branch and West Branch libraries and the roughly 144-acre Wekiva Golf & Country Club.
Because that map change tops 50 acres, it is treated as a large-scale amendment and must go to state reviewing agencies before the county can adopt it.
The staff reports say the change would wipe out the old development rights attached to the current zoning and limit the land to the uses the public-lands district allows. No construction or change in how the parks operate is proposed, according to staff, which recommends approval of both.
