INDIAN RIVER COUNTY — The Board of County Commissioners voted unanimously Tuesday to move forward with a plan for a mixed-use development of 159 apartment homes and retail-restaurant outparcels along State Road 60 adjacent Indian River State College’s Mueller Campus.
The new apartment community, set to be called The Reserve at Vero Beach will be within walking distance to the college and to the Indian River Charter High School and will be just west of the Century Town Center shopping area where TJMaxx and Fujiyama Japanese restaurant are anchors.
The outparcels, which are expected to attract one fast-food restaurant, one sit-down restaurant and 7,200 square feet of retail merchants, will be located just west of The Olive Garden.
The owner of the property is listed on the application as Steven Cohen of Boynton Beach. The company developing the parcel is SR 60 Vero LLC and Kimley-Horn is acting as project managers and engineers on The Reserve at Vero Beach.
The address listed on the application for SR 60 Vero LLC corresponds to the Louis Capano & Associates company on Congress Avenue in Boynton Beach. State corporation records list Capano as a principal of Lc Homes of South Florida LLC and of Seminole Polo LLC in Wilmington, Del. Apparently, Capano and his family have been in the real estate development industry since 1947 in Deleware, according to a company website.
The Lc Homes of South Florida website lists eight communities from Coral Springs to Palm City and cites more than 3,000 luxury townhome and garden-style apartments in those communities, plus more than 3 million square feet of commercial space under management.
The 20 acres is now an open field with a conservation easement and ditch on the west side. Should the development not go forward as proposed within seven years, the zoning change would be revoked and the property would revert to the residential, multi-family zoning, up to eight units per acre.
One of the conditions the County put on the development was that it have a transit stop with shelter on State Road 60 near the outparcel businesses, and that the developer make improvements to the network of sidewalks in front of the community on College Lane, making it easier for pedestrians to navigate this busy road.
The 159 apartments will be built around a central man-made lake and the community will have 1.73 acres of recreation, including a clubhouse, play area and walking paths. It will be built in two phases.
Attorney Bruce Barkett, who appeared for the developers, said the project was 15 years in the making.The apartment complex had been platted prior to the real estate market downturn of 2008 and then abandoned due to the economy. Incorporating the three commercial buildings will now make it more financially feasible for the project to be a success.
The plan required the re-zoning of the 20-acre parcel from residential multi-family up to eight units per acre to a multi-use designation to provide for the three commercial buildings along the highway.
The western of the three commercial buildings was prohibited from having drive-through service, due to the fact that it abuts the Sixty Oaks duplex community to the west. Other buffers, including landscaping, the preservation of an existing conservation area and a six-foot opaque buffer will help minimize the impact to Sixty Oaks as well.
Though the zoning change has been approved, the developer will need to come back to county staff for final site plan approval, and all the conditions agreed to regarding setbacks, buffers and public enhancements will need to be adhered to before The Reserve at Vero Beach can get a certificate of occupancy for the first residential units.
