Controversial Venice shopping center proposal to face first public hearing

VENICE – A controversial plan to build a supermarket-anchored shopping center at the intersection of Laurel Road and Jacaranda Boulevard will finally be discussed at a public meeting Tuesday, when the Venice Planning Commission will hear a request for needed approvals for the project to continue.

The North Venice Neighborhood Alliance, a group that formed specifically in response to developer Pat Neal’s proposal to build the center, expected to hand out up to 150 T-shirts, with the words “FOLLOW THE LAW” printed on the front to show their unity against the development.

Related:Venice homeowners form group in opposition to shopping center proposal

Ironically, if the Venice Planning Commission and Venice City Council adhere to that directive, they would approve the request to set aside that acreage for commercial development.

The Planning Commission's decision will only be a recommendation for the City Council, which will make the final decision on the shopping center.

Neal – president of Neal Communities, and manager of  Border and Jacaranda Holdings LLC, which technically owns the property – submitted the application for the change before the city’s adoption of new land development regulations last July.

That move preserved the vested rights to make such a change to the development plan for the area, called the Milano planned unit development.

All so-called planned unit developments can have up to 5% of the site developed as commercial property and must also have at least 50% of the land reserved as open space.

Neal suggested the possibility of a shopping center on the southwest corner of Laurel Road and Jacaranda Boulevard in 2017 but didn't proceed with it.

The possibility of adding up to 5% commercial development into any planned unit development – even after a binding master plan has been approved by the city – technically exists until buildout.

But the neighbors are relying on the presumption that the January, 2018 developer’s agreement indicated that there would be no commercial development in Milano.

The request the Planning Commission will discuss asks for the 10.42 acres at the southwest corner of Jacaranda Boulevard and Laurel Road to be changed from open space to commercial and for commercial development standards to be added to the binding master plan.

That acreage represents 2% of the overall 503.9-acre development.

That portion of the property contains a wetland, so other off-site mitigation for the impact to the wetland will be required as well.

The proposal includes a limitation that no single user would exceed 65,000 square feet.

The site plan filed on June 14, 2022 included a supermarket, restaurant and a gas station.

In meetings at the Venetian Golf & River Club, Neal suggested he was less interested in building the gas station.

Then, the developer floated the concept of building a 47,240 square-foot supermarket and another 18,000 square feet of stores and a 5,000-square-foot casual, eat-in restaurant that Neal said would be “like a Carabba’s.”

Though Publix does not have a contract to build a supermarket on that site, Neal referenced the popular Lakeland-based grocery by name in his presentations to Venetian Golf & River Club residents and pointed to the fact that the closest Publix to the Milano corner site is 2.5 miles away at the intersection of Pinebrook and Laurel roads.

The Publix at Jacaranda Boulevard and Venice Avenue is 2.8 miles away.

Mixed messages

In a move possibly designed to counter the neighborhood alliance's efforts, texts and postcards supporting the shopping center were sent to Northeast Venice residents by a group dubbed “Improve Our Quality of Life,” urging people to demonstrate support by signing an online petition.

There is no way to discern how many people have signed the petition at venicegocery.org.

The web page carries a copyright note from “We The People,” a Tampa-based nonprofit operated under the auspices of Willliam Stafford Jones, who oversees several political action committees that frequently have been linked to pay for political campaign literature in support of candidates favored by Neal and his associates.

Earlier:Text promoting planned grocery store catches Northeast Venice residents by surprise

Jones told the Herald-Tribune in December that the organization had not paid for the effort.

Venetian Golf & River Club Property Owners Association president Steve Thomaston recently told the Venice City Council that the association opposes the proposed shopping center.

One of the major concerns has been congestion on Laurel Road, scheduled to be widened from two to four lanes.

More optimistic residents had hoped Neal would install a light at the intersection of Laurel Road and Veneto Boulevard – the subdivision's main entrance – since the shopping center entrance would be across the street.

Sarasota County Public Works Director Spencer Anderson wrote in a Jan. 10 letter to Matthew Crim, an engineer with Stantec, that the intersection is too close to a planned traffic light at Jacaranda Boulevard and Laurel Road. Sarasota County’s guidelines call for a distance of at least 1,320 feet between traffic lights. The distance between Veneto and Jacaranda boulevards is about 690 feet.

That decision can be appealed to the County Commission.

The planning board meets at 1:30 p.m. Tuesday in council chambers at Venice City Hall, 401 W. Venice Ave.

The court-like hearing on the zoning map application is the only item on the agenda.

This article originally appeared on Sarasota Herald-Tribune: Controversial plan for Venice shopping center faces first public test