Lee County is reviewing the rules behind what gives Pine Island its character such as stretches of mangroves, low buildings and controlled development. It’s happening in the wake of several lawsuits, one of which the county lost last summer.
One landowner, whose presence has been eyed suspiciously by some Pine Island residents, has floated its ideas to county officials as to how the rules should be changed. That landowner is the large agricultural producer King Ranch.
King Ranch’s Vice President of Real Estate Mitch Hutchcraft is driving past a line of palm trees on one of its farms on Pine Island.
The trees are unkempt, dead branches and foliage are scattered in between the trunks.
The plot of land is part of 18 parcels the company began picking up around 2012, according to the Lee County Property Appraiser’s website.
Hutchcraft said they’re still combing through parts of the land and looking at the condition of trees leftover from the previous owners.
“We're identifying material that we still think is still marketable. There's the white 'X's on the one's that aren't," he said. "When they're not maintained there’s a tendency for molds and inflictions to get up in the bud.”
Hutchcraft said King Ranch is an agricultural operation and not a developer. There are signs to back that up. Just across the street, young palm trees grow in tidy rows.
But, this also has not stopped the company from pitching ideas to county officials that would alter a controversial set of decade-old rules restricting development on the island.
In 2013, county officials reviewed an informal submission that would allow King Ranch – and technically other landowners – to conceivably develop more than what is presently allowed on about half of its land.
That allowance would have been the incentive for committing to keep other parts of its land in agriculture for five, ten or more years at a time.
They could also build more if they did things like permanently preserve or restore certain natural habitats on its land.
Hutchcraft said aspects of the submission line up with some community members’ vision for the island.
“Well we’re saying well maybe we agree with you, maybe we want to protect agriculture, we want to make sure that that always stays agriculture," he said. "Why wouldn’t you allow us to generate some density here and move it here?”
Hutchcraft said he believes the development rules changed the land’s underlying value.
But, retired attorney and Pine Island advocate Phil Buchanan, who helped craft the language that became the development rules, disagrees with the submission. He said there’s no such thing as temporary preservation in nature.
“But, how in the world do you do that in five year increments? You have to do it in perpetuity or nothing. You can’t come back five years later and just undo it,” he said.
The county is reviewing the Pine Island plan as several lawsuits over the rules limiting development work their way through the courts.
Buchanan said the island needs to be protected by restricting development.
“We can’t handle any more traffic and we can’t handle anymore destruction in the way of life of our island coastal rural areas,” he said.
At a March meeting where county commissioners voted to review the rules, Mitch Hutchcraft stated King Ranch is ready to work with the county to reevaluate the rules.
Read King Ranch's submission below:
