PINELLAS COUNTY – The question facing the Pinellas County Commission last week was whether to rezone 19.3 acres of scarce industrial land to commercial so the Sembler Company of shopping center developers could build retail stores on it, or leave it zoned industrial in the hope that it would be bought by a company that would create high-paying factory jobs on it.
The Pinellas Planning Council and the city of Seminole favored the rezoning, but the county staff opposed it.
The commission voted 4-3, with Commissioners John Morroni, Bob Stewart and Ken Welch dissenting, to allow the rezoning. Current plans call for the Sembler Company of shopping center developers to buy and redevelop the property.
“In order to secure the future of our people, we need that industrial property,” said Mike Meidel, the county’s director of economic development. “We can’t let it go.”
To keep Pinellas a self-sustaining county, instead of becoming a bedroom community for the wealthy, Meidel said, will require between 2,200 and 5,800 acres of industrial land, which traditionally generates more jobs per acre than commercial land, to attract new industries and let the industries already here expand locally instead of moving elsewhere.
Brian Smith, the county’s planning director, added that Pinellas by Design, Planning to Stay, the Comprehensive Plan and other long-range county plans discourage the rezoning of industrial land for other uses.
“We’re pricing out industry,” Meidel said. “We’re pricing out workers’ housing.”
He added that the county is trying to attract “clean” industries such as electronic or medical device companies, instead of such “smokestack” industries as steel mills and cement plants.
The property in question, on the west side of Park Street, south of Sheen Drive, housed the Essilor optical plant until its 1,200 jobs were moved to Mexico and Massachusetts. The factory was then torn down because running the air conditioning to prevent mold would have been prohibitively expensive.
Essilor executive Mike de LaVega told the commissioners that he has tried unsuccessfully to find an industrial buyer for the parcel.
“A large company with a savvy real estate director would never select that site,” he said, adding that it is in a flood zone. “It is not a good site.”
But Meidel worried about the precedent the rezoning might create.
“Anybody who has a piece of industrial property on an arterial roadway would love to have it rezoned commercial,” Meidel said. “You could double the value with a single vote.”
“It will be retail commercial, but I haven’t seen a site plan yet,” Mark Ely, Seminole’s senior planner, said in a telephone interview after the meeting. “We hope to see something that will make good use of an abandoned piece of property.”
At Ely’s request, the 10.3 acre parcel adjacent to the Essilor site, where Sears has maintained an outlet and repair facility for decades, was also rezoned from industrial to commercial to prevent “spot zoning” in which it would be the only site zoned industrial in a commercial area.
“All we did with the Sears property was to make it a conforming use,” Ely said. “It has been commercial since the ’60s.”
