The Volusia County Council voted Tuesday to greenlight but another selection little bit of sprawling improvement alongside the scenic street often known as the Loop. It’s arduous responsible the council members as a result of they have been hemmed in by many years of dangerous previous selections that inspired improvement on that roadway, a route beloved by cyclists, motorcyclists and Sunday drivers.
The vote was 5-1, with County Chair Jeff Brower in his acquainted function as lone dissenter.
The majority mentioned the developer’s plan may have been an entire lot worse. Which is the low bar each space developer is held to. If they don’t seem to be constructing an oil refinery, auto junkyard or state jail, then it is a victory for high quality improvement. “Could have been worse” may as properly be the motto on the county seal.
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A improvement may not depart a single blade of grass standing in its clear-cut land clearing, but when it may need been constructed with just a few extra homes nearer collectively, every thing’s OK. Throwing up just a few bushes close to the street helps, too. It’s a uncommon and particularly defiant developer who cannot meet the might-have-been-worse customary.
The zoning modifications and land use amendments permitted by the Council pave the best way for the 144-home Dixie Ridge improvement. (There may need been extra!) County employees dutifully outlined the lengthy historical past of permitted improvement in this a part of the county, one thing growth-hungry officers have waved alongside since 1973 when Atlanta-based builders first boasted of plans for a “community which is expected to have twice the population of Ormond Beach” as newspaper accounts on the time reported. That space’s improvement of regional influence approval in 1986 OK’d 3,930 new properties on 2,000 acres, whittled right down to 1,577 by 2002.
And it was in 2002, that the Council as soon as once more waved by way of improvement plans on the Loop.
“In effect, the County Council’s 4-3 vote is a death knell for the Loop, allowing the development of 1,577 homes on 1,033 acres in Plantation Oaks and an access road carved into the natural beauty of that unique stretch of Old Dixie Highway,” a News-Journal editorial lamented on the time.
A longtime scenic attraction
I’ve at all times thought that one purpose the Loop has at all times been taken as a right was as a result of a scenic drive with a tunnel of oak branches was no person’s concept. It was no person’s Big Plan for drawing in vacationers, but it does.
It simply type of occurred beginning when Dixie Highway went by way of there in the Twenties. The Loop has been boasted about in our tourism literature, displayed on postcards and written up in guidebooks since someday across the Nineteen Thirties.
I bicycle on it regularly though much less so recently due to the more and more heavy visitors and the pace of the vehicles and vans roaring by way of there. (Why do folks hassle to take a scenic route after they’re going 60 mph with tinted home windows tightly rolled up?) I’ve been run off the street there greater than as soon as.
But one of many issues that gave this improvement might-have-been-worse standing was that it’s going to not have a street emptying into Old Dixie Highway, which is a aid. The developer additionally may have a 13-acre buffer between the utility easement and Old Dixie Highway. This will save just a few oaks and preserve the roadside wanting inexperienced for drivers passing by way of quick on their method into city from all the assorted Loop developments permitted over time. Could have been worse.
For longtime residents, the one-development-at-a-time breaking apart of the Loop drive has been a heartbreak to witness. Trees go down and lawns pop up. Each time for the reason that Eighties that “Save the Loop” indicators pop up and folks fill a gathering room to object they’ve been informed they arrived too late to be listened to.
No marvel so few folks spoke towards the plan at Tuesday’s assembly. What’s the use? Besides, it may need been worse.
Mark Lane is a News-Journal columnist. His electronic mail is [email protected].