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SEP 2 5 1990 ROOK F';qE 459 Commercial Land Use Needs In analyzing the request for the land use change and rezoning, staff has focused on several key issues. One issue is regional mall land availability. The Urban Land Institute estimates that shopping centers require about 10 acres of site for each 100,000 square feet of building area. Since regional malls are usually 750,000 s -quare feet or larger, a regional mall would therefore require a site of at least 75 acres. Site requirements, of course, are also influenced by local land development.and site plan regulations. that determine the required parking, loading, circulation, open space and drainage areas needed to support this size shopping facility. Using this standard, the subject parcel would be adequate for a regional.shopping facility. According to the Future. Land Use - Element of the Comprehensive Plan, there are 679 acres designated as commercial in 12 existing commercial nodes. Of this total, 4.4% (305 acres) is presently vacant. This does not include commercially designated land in the. U.S. # 1 Commercial/Industrial Corridor or commercial/ Industrial nodes. Overall, approximately 50% of the 5363 acres in all commercial and industrial nodes is presently zoned commercial. It must be pointed out that this supply is designated for a 20 year period. General commercial land is also available in the SR 60/Kings Highway node. The subject node contains 160 acres and is zoned CL and CG. Land uses within the node are as follows: Vacant land - 58 acres; Agriculture - 40 acres; Residential - 37 acres; and Commercial - 25 acres. The 40 acres devoted to citrus are unlikely to be developed commercially in the near future, since much of it has been recent- ly planted. In addition, the residential areas are largely grouped and buffered from existing commercial uses, raising questions concerning the likelihood of their conversion to commer- cial uses in the near future. Furthermore, while no formal proposal has been submitted, staff has been approached concerning the option for residential development on the south side of S.R. 60, between 58th and 43rd Avenues. Thus, while this node has a relatively large amount of land capable of development, all of the land in the node is not likely to be developed commercially. Further review of commercially designated lands reveals that, other than the large commercial/industrial nodes located along the interstate, only one node contains an adequate supply of vacant land (over 75 acres) which is also in a configuration suitable for a regional mall facility. Therefore, accommodating a mall in the urbanized area of the- county would require redesignating property to a commercial classification. Policy 1.20 of the Future Land Use Element of the County's comprehensive plan requires that nodes be designated at a size determined by their use, service area population, existing land use pattern, availability of infrastructure, and other demand characteristics. Based upon the land use pattern of the area, the node's centralized location, and its close proximity to the population center, expanding this node boundary would provide for an efficient land use pattern and for the maximum use of transportation and public facilities, while at the same time decreasing sprawl or strip development, which would occur in other nodes if their areas were increased to accommodate the acreage necessary for the subject request. These character- istics show that expansion of the node would be consistent with Policy 1.21 of the Future Land Use Element of the Comprehensive Plan. Two other future land use element policies must be considered in this analysis. These are policies 1.22 and 1.23. While the first prohibits node expansion closer than 1 1/2 miles to an existing 20 ® M