Some property owners in Seaside Gardens soon might be able to rebuild their nonconforming homes — storm damage or not.
During a Feb. 24 Holmes Beach City Commission work session, director of development services Chad Minor presented a draft ordinance that would permit voluntary reconstruction of nonconforming Seaside Gardens properties.
The Seaside Gardens community was established in the 1960s by John E. Holmes Sr., the namesake of Holmes Beach, and developed into a neighborhood of 110 individually owned ground-level duplexes.
The neighborhood is located within the city’s R-4 zoning district, a medium-density residential zone that includes a mix of single-family, two-family and multifamily residential dwellings.
Many of the neighborhood’s properties are legally nonconforming since they were built and permitted under previous zoning regulations but do not comply with current regulations.
There are restrictions on repairs and reconstruction of nonconforming properties, but the city adopted an ordinance in October 2023 that allows such properties in the R-4 zoning district to be rebuilt if they were involuntarily damaged by 50% or more of the property’s assessed value.
Multiple units have since been rebuilt and elevated despite sharing common walls with other homes.
Minor said that, in 2023, Seaside Gardens residents only wanted to allow involuntarily damaged nonconforming properties to be rebuilt.
However, he attended the community’s Feb. 9 annual civic association/homeowner meeting, where a majority of attendees expressed support for allowing the voluntary demolition and reconstruction of nonconforming units.
“We’ve had two very destructive storms and I believe the neighborhood has seen what that damage can cause,” Minor said. “And they’ve also seen some of the units’ ability to go up.”
The proposed ordinance was drafted to provide such an allowance.
“This gives the ability for folks to rebuild and not have to wait for a catastrophe to do it,” Minor said. “Our goal is to get more flood-compliant buildings, and this definitely does that.”
Commissioners reached consensus to move the proposed ordinance forward.
The ordinance will now go back before the city commission for a first reading and public hearing, then to the planning commission for review, then back to city commissioners for a second hearing and potentially final reading.
The city commission will meet next at 2 p.m. Tuesday, March 10, at city hall, 5801 Marina Drive.