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14P R 11 1989 BOO 76 PAGE 535 Of the total 430 acres in the 3 nodes and the MXD area in Winter Beach, vacant land and agricultural uses occupy nearly 350 acres or more than 80%. Commercial and Industrial uses, on the other hand, occupy 17 and 13 acres, respectively. Together, commercial and industrial uses total 7% of the 430 acres. Within the MXD, residential uses total 37 acres, while commercial and industrial uses total 10 acres and 6 acres, respectively. A review by zoning districts reveals that industrial and commercial categories dominate with 50% (217 acres) and 30% (128 acres)) respectively. Multi -family zoning, however, occupies nearly 25% (70 acres) of the MXD area. While the MXD land use designation permits a broad mixture of land uses, MXD areas were not intended to be strictly commercial; instead, they were intended to provide redevelopment in accordance with the dominant land uses in the area. The Comprehensive Plan set nodes and the commercial corridor as the principal locations for commercial and industrial uses. Such non-residential uses should therefore be limited to nodes or the commercial corridor, except for those portions of MXD areas where commercial or industrial uses predominate. If MXD areas had been intended to function primarily as commercial areas, they would have been designated as commercial and not MXD. Since the comprehensive plan has policies to discourage strip commercial development and much of the land abutting US #1 is designated as MXD and not commercial, this indicates that the plan rejects the argument that all areas adjacent to US #1 which are not within nodes should be commercial. Instead, the plan indicates that those areas along US #1 which are not within nodes should be residential, but because of a mixed development pattern including some existing commercial uses; an MXD designation would be appropriate to permit land use flexibility in dealing with unique areas. A detailed plan for the MXD area in the vicinity of the subject rezoning request was provided in the Winter Beach Small Area Plan. This Small Area Plan was developed to act as a supplement to the Comprehensive Plan and serve as a guide for future rezoning and development review within the Winter Beach area generally and the MXD part of that area particularly. The primary focus of this plan was to assess the Winter Beach MXD area to determine dominate uses in various parts of the MXD and to then develop a detailed land use plan for the Winter Beach MXD area. That small area plan designated the subject property as residential. The Winter Beach Small Area Plan designated the subject parcel as residential for several reasons. First, by designating vacant land as residential, existing residential areas would be protected from further encroachment by commercial and industrial uses. Second, future commercial and industrial uses would be directed into the 3 Winter Beach area nodes. As per prior direction by the Board of County Commissioners, the staff is revisiting the Winter Beach Small Area Plan's land use designations. The staff is doing that in conjunction with development of the. new Comprehensive Land Use Plan. This review will examine the status of existing land uses, future land use needs, and the appropriateness of existing regulations. For now, however, the existing Comprehensive Plan, the plan's policies, and the existing development in the area support retention of the existing zoning. 19