MARK SCHUMANN

Residents of Vero Beach’s historic Original Town neighborhood, along with business and property owners, turned out Thursday evening for a Planning & Zoning Board workshop held to consider a proposed amendment to the Comprehensive Land Use Plan.

Intended to stabilize a neighborhood that has lost some 70 single-family residences to commercial and public and institutional uses, the proposed amendment to the Comprehensive Plan would offer incentives for residential development and redevelopment. 

The plan would also prohibit approval of further conditional uses between 22^nd and 25^th Streets, and would commit the City to no further abandonment of existing streets and alleys, as was done when 19^th Avenue was abandoned between 22^nd and 23^rd Streets to allow for the expansion of the campus of the Community Church.

Additionally, the plan would establish a policy that the City would, with limited exceptions, not approve requests for zoning re-designations from residential to nonresidential uses for properties north of 22^nd Street.

These proposed zoning changes, according to City staff, are intended to protect the integrity and character of the remaining residential areas within the Original Town neighborhood.

Vero Beach’s oldest residential neighborhood, established in 1913, now has a population just under 380, according to the 2010 Census.  There are 221 housing units within Original Town, of which only 26 percent are owner occupied, compared to a city-wide average of 74 percent.  Though the majority of the neighborhood is zone residential, through the approval of conditional uses, nearly 62 percent of the land area within Original Town is now occupied by commercial, office, public and institutional uses.