Mainland Melbourne residents Tony Andrade and Nestle “Lian” Larracas say they just want to move beachside, build a two-story home and add a small bakery to the first floor to provide retirement income.
But some of their prospective Melbourne Beach neighbors, who ordinarily might welcome the new home, say the bakery is way too commercial for their quiet, single-family section of State Road A1A – and could open it up to increased densities like condominiums.
“It’s been 30 years since (Brevard County officials) approved zoning for a Residential 6 (land-use designation), so this means that they are setting up a precedent and opening up the south beaches to the development of multifamily developments – condos, townhouses, etc.” resident Brian Hennessey wrote in a Jan. 8 email sent to the Melbourne Beachsider.
Hennessey lives north of the 0.18-acre vacant lot, on the west side of A1A, between Flamingo and Cardinal drives, where Andrade and Larracas hope to build.
He and other prospective neighbors objected the day before his email, when the county Planning and Zoning Board considered the matter. The board:
• Increased the lot’s land-use designation from the neighborhood’s one home per acre to six homes per acre. This would allow the one home on less than an acre.
• Rezoned the lot from Rural Residential to Restricted Neighborhood Retail Commercial to allow for the bakery on a mixed-use lot.
The planning panel’s action was advisory only. The County Commission is scheduled to take the final vote in a meeting starting at 5 p.m. on Feb. 7 in Building C of the County Government Complex in Viera.
“This is the place where we’re going to live,” Andrade told the Planning and Zoning Board. “But we also want to put a bakery inside of it because my wife has a dream to retire in a place where we have a bakery on the bottom. The only commercial part will be the first floor.”
Hennessy’s wife, Theresa, told the board of the website the couple already have, as Liansss Bakery, even before getting the approval. It’s not just a small bakery, she said.
“It’s an online wholesale catering bakery that’s already got an established website,” she said. “It’s not just a small bakery where we could meet for coffee. They are shipping in the morning. There’s trucks, there’s pollution, there’s traffic.”
The Hennesseys also planned to retire in the neighborhood when they bought in 2015, she said. But even if Andrade and Larracas don’t build the bakery, and rather get the zoning to sell at a higher price, she said, that zoning would allow for “a used car lot … a motorcycle club, a laundromat” or other uses that would bring down property values.
“I’m concerned that this is going to become a commercial hub of the South Beaches area,” Cardinal Drive resident James Tuohig told the board.
Larracas and Andrade told the board their plan wouldn’t be for wholesale customers with trucks – or even patrons coming in on foot to sit and eat pastries. The walk-up bakery would simply have a display case where customers could look over the items, buy what they wanted and move on.
But they made clear to the planning advisers they didn’t want the home or the bakery alone without the other component.