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Meetings on how to alter Sarasota County's 2050 land-use plan are generally heated affairs, with shots fired from commission critics who say board members are doing the bidding of developers and from commissioners who say opponents represent a small fraction of county residents. The Wednesday, March 5, meeting on a series of 2050 alterations that will affect 4,672 acres along Clark Road was nothing like that. It barely lasted a half-hour. The new changes to 2050 include reducing the amount of open space that will be preserved on the property — from 50 percent to 33 percent — and allowing the neighborhood's commercial buildings to be located outside the development rather than inside it. Requiring commercial businesses to be located in the center of a new village was added to 2050 as a way to incentivize the instruction of walk- able, mixed-use communities. The changes will also dramatically increase the density allowed on the land, opening it to the possibility of 9,334 units, "or approx- imately 5,500 to 6,300 more units than otherwise would be allowed under 2050 development incentives," per a staff report on the issue. The alterations come on top of whatever other changes to 2050 the county eventu- ally approves. County staff is in the midst of reviewing large swaths of the plan, which developers say contains too many onerous regulations and is stifling new growth. "2050 doesn't work for us as it was meant to," Jim Turner told the commission. Turner is a partner with LT Ranch, which, along with 3H Ranch, owns the large majority of the acre- age in question. The "improved pasture" that occupies most of the land is "environmentally benign," Turner said, meaning that preserving it as open space would do little to positively impact the environment. He also mentioned the expense — $79 million, he said — of pur- chasing development rights to make a village work under the original 2050 rules. Robert Koski, a neighboring property owner, criticized the changes, arguing that when he moved to the area he imagined that only five- or 10-acre ranchettes would be built nearby. "That's a very, very large number of parcels and the reduction of open space to 33 per- cent, I think, seriously affects everything around the area," he said. "And between the effects on traffic and the effects on density and the effects on wildlife, I don't think that's a good idea." Commissioner Nora Patterson was the lone dissenting voice on the board. "Open space in the plan was intended to include pasture land and not just environmen- tally sensitive land," she said. "It was intended to preserve some agriculture, actually." Patterson is the only current commissioner to have voted for the 2050 Plan when it was adopted in 2002. Among board members, she has been the most consistently skeptical of the decision to revise 2050. "I feel like this is a really serious departure from the intent of 2050," Patterson said right before casting her "No" vote. The motion to approve the changes passed 4-1. % THE COUNTY COMMISSION OKS BIG CHANGES TO SARASOTA 2050 FOR ALMOST 5,000 CLARK ROAD ACRES By Cooper Levey-Baker Associate Editor Sarasota News Leader March 7, 2014 Page 33