Rezoning and Land Use Planning in City of Cape Coral

Cape Coral splits its recommending function between two bodies. The Hearing Examiner is the recommending body for zoning amendments, vacations of plat, and certain planned development projects. The Planning and Zoning Commission, sitting as the Local Planning Agency, is the recommending body for Future Land Use Map amendments, comprehensive plan text amendments, land development regulation changes, and annexations. City Council makes the final decision in each case and in most cases requiring two hearings. A project needing both a land use amendment and a rezoning therefore travels two tracks toward one Council which can be run parallel. 

 

Cape Coral is the largest platted-lot city in the region, one of the fastest growing cities in Florida and the US, and its defining entitlement problem follows from that. The city was subdivided at enormous scale into single-family lots with miles of canals long before demand arrived, so nearly every commercial, multifamily, or mixed-use project begins with lot assembly and often a plat vacation. Utility availability is the second half of the same problem: the city's utility extension program has been rolling north and west for years, and whether a parcel is inside a completed or funded extension area materially changes what it can support and when.

 

The Burnt Store corridor in the northwest is the city's most active large-scale growth front and the location of its most significant mixed-use entitlements. Projects of that scale draw attention from City staff and leadership well beyond routine review, and they require coordination with Lee County DOT on the road network — which is a months-long conversation, not a submittal item.