ALERT - Important City Council Meeting

Thank you to everyone who attended our Special Call NHPA meeting on Monday evening to discuss the State of Florida's plans to open a Probation and Parole Center in the Historic Coca-Cola Building on Palafox Street. It was a packed house and I'm glad that Councilmen Charles Bare and Brian Spencer had the opportunity to hear from the citizens.

As of a result of that meeting, City Councilman Charles Bare has added the discussion of sending the issue of the proposed Florida Department of Corrections, Community Corrections Parole and Probation Center in the Historic Coca-Cola building at 1625 North Palafox Street to the Agenda for City Council's Meeting which will be held on Thursday, March 13th at 5:30 p.m. 

The Coca-Cola Building is NOT zoned for such a use.  It is zoned C-3 and R-1AAA (front is commercial/back portion of the property is single-family residential) The zoning districts of our City's Municipal Code restrict these facilities to the M-1 and/or M-2 Industrial Districts.  The CURRENT  Probation and Parole office is located at 3101 North Davis Highway and it is IN the correct zoning district.  The State intends to combine and co-locate ALL of the county's Parole offices into our neighborhood, with estimates of  8,000 or more offenders coming to this office according to their website's statistics for last years' numbers.

If City Codes were followed, this project would REMAIN in the correct zoning district of M-1, Light Industrial and would not be adjacent to any residential neighborhood.

The City's Inspections Department has issued the owner of the property the required permits for the renovations and the State expects to begin their 7-year lease as of April 1st (you can't make this stuff up). No Public Hearing for this use was conducted as required by State Statute.  The Planning Department's stance is that it is just another office, which the zoning allows.  We strongly disagree and point to the section of the code that expressly states where these facilities are allowed, which is the M-1 Industrial Zone.  We are urging the City and State to READ their codes and follow the law.

We must convince the City Council to look into this further and correct the errors that have been made.  The back portion of this property is zoned single-family residential and this building backs up to the neighborhood of single-family residential homes, an established and registered neighborhood of over 100 years.  The proposed project has parking on-site that will provide for the employees of the Parole Center, but not enough for the parolees, probationers, or other persons under criminal process supervision which could push their parking use into the residential neighborhood. The facility will also have a drug lab where tests will be conducted and whereby parolees could be arrested on the spot if they failed their tests.  This would further negatively impact the neighborhood by creating an abundance of arrest reports for this address in the neighborhood, which could put our district's crime statistics off the charts and further negatively impact property values.


If this concerns you.....you should attend the City Council meeting on Thursday, March 13th, 5:30 p.m. at City Hall next week with your neighbors.