Looking to 2045: Ormond Beach holds first public meeting for its comprehensive plan update

Ormond Beach Observer
News

Affordable housing. More trails. Roadway expansions projects.

What should Ormond Beach prioritize as the city looks toward 2045?

The city continues to seek input for its comprehensive plan update. A community engagement meeting was held on Monday, Aug. 26, at City Hall, where residents had a chance to learn more about planning elements such as future land use, coastal management, capital improvements and cultural and historic resources by stopping at 14 different stations. The meeting was the first opportunity for the public to participate in updating the Comprehensive Plan Evaluation and Appraisal report, which is a state-required.

"The community engagement meeting is exactly that — it serves as an engagement opportunity for citizens to come out, to voice their opinions in a survey that we have, digitally or handwritten," City Senior Planner Sarah Motes said. "... We're going to take the information we receive tonight, along with the information from the surveys, to compile that and make changes to the specific elements."

At least every seven years, Florida Statutes require local governments to look into amending their comprehensive plans. The last comprehensive plan update was completed in 2010 and planned for improvements needed to 2025. The city determined in 2017 that an update was not needed.

Motes said that the city is seeking feedback on what matters most to residents. The comprehensive plan is best described as the city's roadmap for the future, she said.

"What do you see as opportunities for growth?" Motes said. "Where do you see improvements, changes?"

For example, do residents want to see more multimodal options — bike paths and sidewalks — in terms of transportation? What are their thoughts on the city's utilities and annual Capital Improvement Plan process?

The city has also opted to include a cultural and historic resources element in its 2045 update, which is aimed at preserving historic, archeological and cultural resources.

The community engagement meeting is exactly that — it serves as an engagement opportunity for citizens to come out, to voice their opinions in a survey that we have, digitally or handwritten." — SARAH MOTES, city senior planner

Residents who attended the community engagement meeting got a chance to speak with Motes and other city employees about the different elements to be included in the report. Neighborhood Scoop was also present and provided free ice cream to attendees.

Among those who attended were community members part of Ormond MainStreet, the Ormond Beach Chamber of Commerce and the Ormond Beach Historical Society. Immediate OBHS past president Dr. Philip Shapiro stressed the value of citizen involvement in the comprehensive plan update.

"I believe this is very important — that the city do this periodically, so that the citizens can see firsthand what is evolving in our community and their input as to what our direction should be," Shapiro said.

Ormond Beach Mayor Bill Partington said he expects that the residents who attended the meeting — about 75 — want to make sure that the city continues to protect its quality of life. This includes slow growth, native plants and getting ahead of issues such as transportation and coastal management.

When the city last updated its comprehensive plan, Partington said, one of the goals was to create concurrency where possible — trying to ensure necessary infrastructure was in place before, or at the same time, growth was occurring.

"That's part of why we've always encouraged a slow growth rate, something that's not out of control, per se, and then allow the roads and the schools and the water and all those kinds of things to catch up to it," Partington said.

The city doesn't have a lot of land for new growth, save for the land slated for Ormond Crossings and Plantation Oaks' buildout. He's hopeful that the I-95 and U.S. 1 interchange project (which is part of the governor's $4 billion Moving Florida Forward infrastructure initiative, aimed at advancing construction on transportation projects) will be completed before either of those developments are completed.

The comprehensive plan update will help to take the city's transportation to the next level, Assistant City Manager Shawn Finley said. When the city completed its last update in 2010, the mindset was focused on moving cars from point A to point B. That's changed, Finley said, as the focus is now to ensure roads are safer, and effective, for all users: pedestrians, bicyclists and motorists.

"Those are some of the big things that we're looking at doing with this update — is realizing that, like everything else, it's always changing and the way that we have to look at it changes," Finley said. "And so that means the direction that we take it adapts to what people are doing these days, and people want to be able to walk. They want to be able to ride bikes."

In 2010, according to the U.S. census, Ormond Beach's population count was 38,137. By the 2020 census, the population grew to 43,080 people.

The city also didn't have the amount of traffic generated from companies such as UPS, Amazon and even Margaritaville, which shuttles residents from Latitude Margaritaville in Daytona Beach to its beach club in Ormond-by-the-Sea multiple times a day, Finley said. The city is aiming to "keep up with the times" and ensure projects — both internal and developer-generated — meet the needs of the community.

"As we see more people, are they going to continue to go onto Granada [Boulevard] or are they going to start looking for different roads to go?" Finley said. "Is there going to be more traffic that's going to go on U.S. 1?"

U.S. 1 is "almost like a teenager of a road," Finley said. It doesn't have the volume that Granada does today, mainly because of the development along the U.S. 1 corridor. As that changes, Finley said the city wants to make sure the road is developed correctly.

By 2045, some of the city's western roads — Tymber Creek Road, Airport Road and Pineland Trail — are likely to see more traffic as growth happens in the area.

Finley said meeting participants were inquisitive of transportation needs and what the city plans to do to address them.

"We all know that transportation is one of those things that people take very personally," Finley said. "They all experience it. Everybody has an experience with transportation because uses transportation, use our roadways at least two times a day: Once to get here, and once to leave."

Transportation is a critical element of the comprehensive plan, Partington said. So is coastal management.

"Particularly with storms seemingly being more and somewhat stronger, making sure we have a resilient coastline where we can endure storms better and recover from them more quickly, and then just protecting our property along the coastline and protecting A1A, I think is vital in the future," Partington said.