On June 30, Governor DeSantis signed into law HB 487, which increased the size of development projects that may be the subject of “small scale” land use amendments from 10 acres to 50 acres. The new acreage threshold provides for a more efficient use of local and state government resources, while shortening the timeline within which new development can be reviewed. The former acreage threshold required development projects of more than 10 acres in size (slightly larger than 2 baseball fields) to utilize a lengthy, two-round process of substantially identical local government staff review and public hearings, with a 30 day comment period for state agencies in between the two rounds. The new acreage threshold of 50 acres (approximately the size of a senior high school campus) streamlines the local government review and hearings into one round. There are no changes to the local government review process, nor to any opportunity for public input. After an amendment is adopted, it is still required to be sent to the State of Florida Department of Economic Opportunity, which retains a right of appeal. The law took effect July 1. Rogers Towers Shareholder Wyman Duggan, who represents a portion of Duval County in the Florida House of Representatives and practices in the Firm’s Regulatory and Governmental Law Department, was the prime sponsor of the legislation.
Rogers Towers Government & Regulatory Team