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• In contrast, unclustered residential development in agricultural areas involves large tracts of land being divided into many individually owned parcels, each as small as five acres. With the exception of some specialty farms, such individual parcels are generally too small to be farmed profitably and cannot be assembled in whole or in part into significantly large agricultural tracts. The resulting five acre parcels generally are useful only for residences and accessory uses. In Indian River County, clustering has been broadly interpreted and applied. For that reason, Agricultural PDs have been designed in a manner that results in "unclustered" five acre lots with homesites "clustered" near a road. The large open space area owned by a single entity is not present. Because the open space areas are divided into relatively small individually owned lots, the agricultural use of those open space areas is not viable. As a result, bona fide agricultural uses do not exist within any Agricultural PDs. Because the county has broadly interpreted clustering, thus allowing Agricultural PD designs that do not provide large open spaces owned by a single entity and tightly cluster homesites, Agricultural PDs have not been a successful agricultural preservation tool. As presently applied, clustering does not and will not work to preserve agriculture. Therefore, if clustering is not defined less broadly, the clustering requirement serves no agricultural preservation purpose and should be eliminated. The county's existing adopted comprehensive plan is not a build -out plan. It has a time horizon of 2020. While the plan does not address post 2020 growth and development issues, there will be growth after that time. Currently, growth projections indicate that the urban service area will be built -out sometime after the twenty year time horizon of the existing comprehensive plan. For that reason, the county needs to determine how it will develop when that build -out occurs. Essentially, the following three development options exist: • No expansion of the urban service area; • "Leap frog" expansion of the urban service area; and • Incremental expansion of the urban service area. Option 1: no expansion of the urban service area One development option is not to expand the urban service area beyond its current boundaries, even when the urban service area is built -out. Map 1 depicts this option. This will likely result in the creation of five acre lots filling the entire area between the current urban service area and I-95. Option 2: "leap frog" expansion of the urban service area Another option is to continue to allow five acre lots in the agricultural areas, but expand the urban service area when it reaches build -out. Map 2 depicts this option. This will likely result in many five acre lot subdivisions being created at the outside edge of the urban service area over the next 20 to 40 years. Then as the urban service area approaches build -out and growth continues, its boundaries would be expanded to "leap frog" over the five acre lot subdivisions to include further out agricultural lands. Leap frogging the urban service area would be necessary because adequately sized tracts near the existing boundary would likely have been developed with five acre lots and because residents of those lots would likely oppose any increase in density in that area As a result, a ribbon of five acre lot subdivisions would separate two areas of more intense urban type uses. OCTOBER 14, 1999 -19- BOOK i1i PAGE •