The controversial plan to allow thousands of new homes along the Peace Creek Drainage Canal east of Bartow suffered another setback Monday night.
The Bartow Planning and Zoning Commission tied on whether to annex one of the project sites and unanimously voted to deny plans to develop the site seeking annexation and a site that is already in the city limits.
The votes, which came without discussion, capped a five-hour hearing and drops the issue in the lap of the Bartow City Commission. which will consider the development package at a hearing Nov. 3 at the Bartow Civic Center.
The county planning staff has recommended approval.
The hearing involved requests by neighboring landowners to win approval for a proposed 2,245-unit residential development.
It lies within the city’s electrical service area and has access to city water and sewer, which would be necessary to make the development of the site practical because of the amount of wetlands and poorly drained soils on the site, according to the city staff report.
Part of the property is already in the city, but was earlier proposed for industrial development that dates from the time when a second leg of the Central Polk Parkway was proposed to run through the property south of Bartow Municipal Airport.
The other part just east of that site has been the subject of repeated attempts for development approval before the County Commission, which denied the request.
Bart Allen, the lawyer representing the landowners, argued the vote should not be a popularity contest and should instead be based on facts.
However, he acknowledged there were still some details of the project regarding everything from flood zones to school capacity that have not been worked out and will not be unless the project gets the initial zoning approval to move toward eventual final development review and platting.
The crowd of Bartow residents and property owners who live in adjacent rural homesteads gave commissioners a long list of reasons to deny the requests.
They included the flooding potential, which was bolstered by an artist’s rendering of the project that depicts dense subdivisions located on islands surrounded by flood retention areas and accounts of the effects of recent hurricanes, claims there is a housing glut in the area that makes it unlikely the market can absorb more houses. the compatibility of small residential lots 40 to 60 feet wide with adjacent rural homesteads containing five to 20 acres and questions about whether the project will increase overcrowding of local schools unless students are assigned to schools as far away as the outskirts of Auburndale.