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ST. CLOUD, Fla. — Growth throughout the city of St. Cloud has far surpassed what city officials predicted it would look like decades ago, with tens of thousands of people who’ve either moved to the city or whose property where they live was annexed.
This growth isn’t expected to slow down, and city officials are now working to adopt new future land-use maps for the first time in 20 years.
“In our 2002 comprehensive plan, the city projected that we would be around 38,000 (people) by year 2020, and it turns out by year 2020, we were actually at over 59,000,” Community Development Director Melissa Dunklin said.
St. Cloud’s population is expected to hit 108,000 people by 2050, considering current city limits, Dunklin said.
New future land-use maps should help the city better target housing needs and employment needs, she said.
“What the No. 1 goal of this update is to balance our jobs-to-housing ratio,” Dunklin said. “Right now, we have approximately half a job per household, which causes people to have to leave to go to work — leave city limits to go to work.
“So what we’re trying to accomplish through this future land-use map update is designating and reserving enough land so that we have enough land set aside for employment and commercial uses so that we can have a 1:1 at a minimum; a 1:1 jobs-to-housing ratio.”
St. Cloud community development officials said that they will present their future land-use and transportation development plans to the city council for final adoption on Oct. 9.
The annexation of more land into city limits is a major reason old land-use maps and population projections from 2002 are now far outdated.
“That’s why it did not appear to be accurately estimated,” Dunklin said. “There were annexations that happened that by what I think it was 2025, our city limits, the land area itself had tripled since 2000.
“We are actively and strategically annexing land as land develops. We annex it so that we can provide their services to those areas. The city also works with the county and the school district to jointly plan the whole area.”
The new land-use maps, if approved and adopted, should accommodate 18,000 new homes to be built by 2050.
Dunklin also said the new land-use map would allow for more land to be set aside for commercial use.
“Regarding the exact square footage for retail and commercial space, I don’t have that number in front of me, but we do expect that by preserving land and setting land aside, what we’re doing is where we’re preserving land so that those parcels will not be built out by homes,” Dunklin said. “So, if we can set that land aside and preserve it for jobs, and rather than homes, then when the market is ripe for development for that nonresidential commercial space, we have it set aside.”
Dunklin said certain areas of land connecting Lakeshore Boulevard to downtown are being proposed to have neighborhood commercial land-use designations where homes can be transitioned into other businesses, such as an office or a café, for example.
Mobility fees were just adjusted this year and should not be affected by the proposals of the new land-use maps, Dunklin said.
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Jordan Mead
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