Destin debates development at the water's edge

If you move into a single family Destin neighborhood, you shouldn’t have to wake up and find the lot next door is crowded with multiple homes, City Councilor Sandy Trammell says.

At Monday’s meeting, the council voted to have staff draft an ordinance that would, if approved, make the smallest allowable lot in the Bay Estates zoning along the north Destin waterfront 39,000 square feet, rather than 15,000. The council also voted to have staff draft an ordinance requiring homeowners be notified when someone within 300 feet divides their property.

“When you work really hard and you build something you want to live in your whole life, you don’t want someone to move in next door” and change the neighborhood, Trammell said. “I think the citizens along Choctawhatchee Bay and Joe’s Bayou that paid good sweat equity to have those properties need to know they’re single-family lots.”

 In February, the council approved landowner Rod Wright’s request to subdivide his 4.5 acre Bayou Drive property into eight to create the Safe Harbour gated community. Although the lots are above the minimum size for Bay Estates zoning, several owners have told the city that widespread subdivision could kill the character of the neighborhood.

“It’s not a neighborhood,” Councilor Sam Seevers said Monday. “It’s an entire coastline.”

Mayor Craig Barker said one owner had told the city that subdividing the lot next to hers had devalued her property. Bay Estates lots average 39,000 square feet, the city says; City Planner Hank Woollard told the council that subdividing could increase density 8.8 percent, or triple it if lots were also replatted.

“I could apply the phrasing used here — protecting the character of the neighborhood — and apply it all over town,” Councilor Jim Wood said, adding that  people who couldn’t subdivide their lots could claim their property had been devalued too.

Councilor Dewey Destin said several Bay Estates lots already had two houses on them, and increasing the minimum so much was unfair to landowners: “I know a number of old families who were only able to stay on those lots by dividing … I’d hate to see those people of restrictive means no longer be allowed to stay in Bay Estates.”

The council voted 5-2 to have staff draft an ordinance on lot size, with Councilors Destin and Seevers voting no. Mayor Craig Barker said the public hearings before voting on the ordinance would be the best way to find out what the owners wanted and what changes would have to be made to the ordinance to satisfy them.

The council also voted unanimously for staff to draft the notification ordinance. Councilor Jim Bagby said while there was no legal requirement to notify the neighbors, “people deserve to be informed that one lot just became eight.”

City Manager Greg Kisela said that notification could add months to what’s now a routine administrative process; also, if the subdivision proposal meets city rules, the notified owners would have no grounds to challenge it.