Planning Commission approves amendment to Parrish Commercial Overlay District

To go before county board of commissioners for approval

By CARL MARIO NUDI

A group of residents in the Parrish area are working with officials of Manatee County and land developers to establish how their community will look in the future.

“We wanted the Village of Parrish to be a really good place,” said Alan Jones, owner of Jones Potatoes, and a member of the Rural Development Committee of the Parrish Civic Association.

The committee has drawn up plans, which include the construction of a county park, incentives for the creation of a main street, and promoting business development along U.S. 301 to achieve that goal of a “good place.”

Since the community of Parrish in northwest Manatee County was established in the late 1800s and until the end of the last century it was mainly a sparsely populated, rural, agricultural area.

At the staggered intersection of Erie and Wauchula roads at U.S. 301, a few businesses and a train station were established.

But starting in the 1990s and continuing into the beginning of the early 2000s the urban sprawl taking over the eastern part of the county had begun to creep north of the Manatee River into the agricultural acres surrounding a small cluster of businesses referred to as the Village of Parrish.

All that planning and building activity slowed down significantly in the late 2000s with the recession.

Now that the real estate market has recovered, the Parrish zip code area of 34219, which stretches from Erie Road on the west to the eastern county line, and from the Manatee River on the south to the Hillsborough County line to the north, has experienced an explosion of permitted and planned subdivisions of between 8,000 to 10,000 new homes.

This was why the Rural Development Committee formed about three years ago to draw up plans of how residents wanted the Village of Parrish to grow.

“It takes time to get everyone to see the vision,” Jones said. “We want to keep the rural nature of the community.”

The committee held meetings with county officials, business owners, residents, and developers and asked what they wanted in the plan.

After gathering input from these groups, the committee hired Bob Schmitt, a land planner, to help amend the Parrish Commercial Village Overlay District.

The overlay, which the Manatee County Commission approved in the early 2000s, established an area along U.S. 301, from Moccasin Wallow Road on the north end to about the intersection of Fort Hamer Road on the south end, with a large tract of land along Wauchula Road.

An overlay district imposes specific development restrictions on property owners.

Parrish Civic Association President Gretchen Fowler said when the organization asked for the overlay, they were looking “to create a walkable, cute village.”

The problem was that mom and pop businesses couldn’t afford to meet the requirements, Fowler said.

“Most property was bought by investors who could afford to go to the county and ask for exemptions from the overlay rules,” she said.

So the Rural Development Committee looked at what overlay rules were hampering property owners from developing businesses in the Village and found one of the main obstacles was a requirement limiting the size of any building to only 5,000 square feet.

“We changed it from a maximum of 5,000 square feet to 20,000 square feet,” said Jones, “and we relaxed the landscaping requirements.”

Manatee County’s Building and Development Services Department Director John Barnott said the county planning commission approved the amended overlay plan, and it will be presented to the county board of commissioners in December or January for approval.

Barnott said he met with some of the committee members early in the process to let them know what they can do.

“I told them to dream big,” he said. “It’s your community; it’s what you want, not what the county wants.”

The committee added a sub-area plan in addition to the overlay, which hopefully will encourage the development of a main street area in the village.

“The plan will not say where anything will go, but will help facilitate the main street concept,” Jones said. “We got the wheels in motion to develop a sustainable plan for the village.”

He said the plan provides incentives and ideas of what is possible for property owners.

“It’s getting everyone on board and talking about where we’re going to be three, five years down the road,” said Jones, who lives in Sarasota but owns large tracts of property in Parrish for his agricultural operations. “We have to know: What’s the 10-year plan? What’s the 20-year plan?”

One thing Jones said everyone knows is that a main street has to be somewhere besides along U.S. 301.

He said the four-lane highway had too much automobile and truck traffic and would not be conducive to a walkable main street.

That property can be developed for the larger retail and office buildings, Jones said.

“We want the village to be a place people are excited to visit,” he said. A (walkable) place to take the family out to eat or take a walk in the park.

He envisioned a narrow street with parking, retails stores and restaurants with residential living areas above.

The main street concept has Rural Development Committee member Evan Guido excited because it can tie in directly with a new park the group was working on.

“The park was the catalyst to get all the different factions to come together,” said Guido, who lives with his wife, Britney, and their three children near the site where the new Parrish Central Park will be located.

The committee was working with the Manatee County Parks and Natural Resources Department to develop the park on about 30 acres of county property immediately east of the new high school being built on Erie Road.

Guido, who has been involved with the Parrish Civic Association since he and his family moved to Parrish in 2007, said the park would be a public and private partnership.

“The county committed to only doing the mowing and providing electrical power,” he said.

A concept plan for the Parrish Central Park by planner Ed Dean with Kimley-Horn in Sarasota showed fitness trails, a band shell, playgrounds and festival grounds on the property the county already owns.

Dean also designed 4-foot by 8-foot signs that will be located around Parrish to drum up enthusiasm for the park.

“The idea of walking my family of five to the park, or riding our bikes there, and my wife and I listening to music while the kids are at the playground” has Guido excited to have the park become a reality.

For more information on the Parrish Civic Association, visit its website at www.parrishcivicassociation.com.

To learn more about the Parrish Central Park and to view an animated video of the planned recreational area, check out the website www.ParrishPark.com, or “like” the Facebook page, www.facebook.com/parrishcentralpark/.

The Rural Development Committee is seeking a volunteer grants coordinator. If you are interested in helping, call Evan Guido at 941-313-0875.