Boca Raton Council’s Rare Tie Vote Squashes Plan for BRIC Property Redesignation

BRIC / Boca Raton Innovation Campus. (Photo: Boca Daily News)

One of the first tie votes in years on the part of the Boca Raton city council this week has left the city’s legal counsel as well as the owners of the Boca Raton Innovation Center campus with something of a conundrum to deal with.

The governing body was tasked with determining whether the majority of the acreage in BRIC, the former IBM development campus off Yamato Road, should be removed from the list of properties contained within a “DRI,” an acronym enshrined into Florida law in the 1970s that stands for “Development of Regional Impact.” The DRI designation was originally intended to give additional stakeholders a say in developments that would inherently affect a region as a whole, versus an individual city. The DRI designation gave counties, state agencies and other regional bodies oversight into major projects. While the DRI law is still on the books in Florida, legal counsel for the city as well as BRIC said it is a largely moot point in Boca Raton, which has since been exempted from DRI regulations since it was designated a “Dense Urban Land Area” by the legislature.

BRIC’s owners sought to remove the DRI designation from a large swath of its property, reducing the DRI coverage from 217.5 acres to 87.89 acres. The DRI would have been removed from the BRIC portion of the property as well as a generator site that was originally installed by IBM and continues to be used. Previously, the area of the original property where the Tri-Rail station was built was also removed. The request did not explicitly include any new development on the site, though if passed, the action would “enable the applicant to pursue development under the current city and county traffic concurrency rules,” a memorandum from city staff said.

The area shaded in purple reflects the property that would have its ‘DRI’ designation removed had a request from BRIC’s owners passed the city council. (Planning Document)

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Had the measure passed, it would have been contingent on BRIC submitted a transportation demand master plan to the city. Ultimately, it would have had the effect of formally removing the now-exempt layer of state oversight to development plans.

“Right now, your staff is required to do the same exercise twice, just to say they did it,” said Bonnie Miskel, an attorney representing BRIC. “The good news about getting rid of the DRI is that no outside agency can interfere with the wishes of what our council may have.”

The request was met with skepticism by two members of the city council, Jon Pearlman and Michelle Grau. Grau expressed a desire for BRIC to come forward with its future plans for development before the DRI designation was removed. Pearlman cast a ‘no’ vote but did not comment further.

“We have not been presented with a clear vision or even potential scenarios as to what comes next,” said Grau.

Mayor Andy Thomson and Councilwoman Stacey Sipple voted in favor of removing the designation. The tie-breaking vote would have been cast by Councilwoman Yvette Drucker, however she departed the meeting early, leaving an even number of members at the dais. A tie is exceedingly rare in Boca Raton governmental meetings, said City Attorney Joshua Koehler, who added that the city generally prohibits the same application from coming before the council again for one year after a denial. Tie votes do not carry, however there is a question as to whether a motion that does not carry is actually denied for the purposes of legality.

“There is a rule that the council has adopted that a motion to reconsider has to be made, technically, by a party on the prevailing side,” said Koehler, however in this case, there was no prevailing side.

Koehler said if BRIC’s representatives were to formulate a new proposal that was, for example, inclusive of the accompanying transportation study or plans for future development, the request to remove the DRI designation could conceivably be part of that.

“It would seem to me that if this council wanted to defer and consider that future application, when it would have more of an idea of what the applicant was proposing to do with the land, it could delay or postpone this matter until it could hear the complete proposal,” said Koehler. “I think that, inherently, seems correct.”

Miskel did not publicly specify her future plans for the request, but appeared satisfied with Koehler’s explanation. The tie vote was the first of Koehler’s tenure with the city, he said.