Hold back sprawl wave

Under the guise of preserving rural character, Palm Beach County commissioners will vote Monday on a plan that does just the opposite.

If the plan passes, critics no longer will be able to blame the transformation to suburbia of The Acreage and Loxahatchee solely on the county's pursuit of The Scripps Research Institute. They would have to add the commission's inability to reject demands from a single developer, GL Homes. The Broward County builder persuaded commissioners to chip away at rules proposed to govern development of 53,000 acres west of Royal Palm Beach. Last April, on first reading, commissioners approved a plan that would give large landowners nearly 10 times their current density, raising doubt that the already traffic-jammed area ever can widen enough roads to emerge from the mess.

Planners initially believed commissioners' declared desire to retain the area's rural character. In a $600,000 study, they proposed that owners of big sites -- GL owns a 4,930-acre citrus grove -- set aside 70 percent of their land as open space. Even at 50 percent, as suggested last year by commission Chairman Tony Masilotti, the preserves would have helped contain urban sprawl. The area's rural lifestyle, which is important to many residents, would have been retained. For GL, the trade-off would have been ample: Right now, it has almost no development rights.

Acting through Commissioner Masilotti, GL pushed for and received, in an April commission vote, the right to count buffers and landscaping as open space. The decision lets GL surround its huge property and main roads with landscape berms, as developers often do, and count it toward the 50 percent set-aside, which developers in rural areas should not be able to do. The result is a ridiculous map showing open space as chickenpox-like dots.

As a trade-off for reducing the open space from 70 percent to 50 percent, Commissioner Masilotti promised, developers would donate thousands of acres to the public. In a letter Tuesday, GL offered 300 acres for a flowway and 200 acres for a park. To meet a requirement that half the open space must be public, GL counts "landscape buffers" and "water views along open spaces with pedestrian trails."

A provision to be considered for the first time Monday would allow GL to build its most conventional and least rural product -- zero-lot line homes -- on land next to the sugar fields of the vast Everglades Agricultural Area. For 10 years, nearby residents have struggled to have the county's plan reflect their desires. That plan now offers only hollow promises to "protect the rural character" and "retain and enhance important rural values." On Monday, the commission will reveal whose desires matter more: those of most residents or GL Homes.