Simonton project avoids affordable rule

Despite complaints that an applicant isn't following city guidelines that encourage affordable housing, the Key West Planning Board on Thursday approved construction of 20 market rate units on a vacant old town parking lot.

Board member Barry Barroso Jr., who had the only dissenting vote, said the project should fall under new development - a designation that requires property and construction company owner Richard Jones to construct 30 percent affordable units of the 20 proposed.

The project is planned for 119 to 135 Simonton St., on a site that once housed a lumberyard.

Board Chairman Richard Klitenick and Assistant City Attorney Larry Erskine said that because the ROGO allocations - distributed by hurricane evacuation standards - were transferred there more than a year ago, the project is considered redevelopment, because it doesn't require any new units on the property.

“If you ask 100 people on the street- any laymen will say that's new development,” City Community Housing Committee Chairman Omar Garcia said. “They should be doing something for affordable housing.”

“We have to look at what our legal standards are,” said Klitenick, an attorney. He told fellow board members: “Do I think this is redevelopment? No, not really, but legally, it is.”

While an existing ordinance requires 30 percent of the units in a new development project be affordable, the housing committee is pushing one that would enact the same rule for redevelopment projects.

The first reading of that ordinance was passed by the Key West City Commission, but was denied its second reading, after committee members voiced disapproval of the Planning Department's changes to the ordinance. They claim it's a “watered-down” version.

“I think the city's history is clear as not triggering the affordable housing requirement” in treating redevelopment, said attorney Ginny Stones, who is representing Jones. “There is no net increase of ROGO allocations in the city of Key West for this site.”

Barroso was adamant in requiring Jones to contribute a percentage of affordable units or funding to the city's affordable housing trust fund.

“Affordable housing is not something we can no longer talk about,” Barroso said. “We have to do something about it.”

But Klitenick is wary of repercussions.

If approved, he said, “that's gong to go to court, or the city commission, and it'll be overturned in nine seconds.”

Planner for the project, Owen Trepanier, said most of the ROGO allocations came from transient units, which equal a .58 of a ROGO allocation, whereas single-family home allocations, like the ones being proposed, are a full allocation.

The applicant “actually had to get 30 units that he had, to reach ... the equivalent of 20 single family unit homes.”

In order for the 30 percent rule to apply to this project, the applicant would have to ask the city for ROGO allocations, which city officials say aren't available.

The item still needs to go before the city commission, which Garcia said he hopes will vote differently than the planning board.