Buildable lands inventory shows about 118 acres for housing and only 3.4 acres for employment inside Jacksonvilles UGB

Consultants from MIG presented maps and calculations showing the composition of land inside Jacksonville's urban growth boundary and which parcels the team considered constrained by floodplain, wetlands, steep slopes, landslide hazard and riparian corridors.

"The map on this slide visualizes those land classifications with the employment land shown in blue, which is concentrated in the historic downtown area, which totals approximately 56 acres," Jessa Miller said. She said about 222 acres are in special protection designations and that when environmental constraints are removed, roughly 210 acres of residential land and 9 acres of employment land are constrained. The team identified 128 residential sites totaling about 118 acres of developable residential land, which the consultants used to estimate capacity for approximately 130 housing units.

On employment land, Miller said there are 17 vacant/partially vacant/potentially redevelopable employment sites that together account for about 3.4 developable acres, and most of those sites have less than 1 acre of usable employment land. Committee members pressed the team about one 2-acre site off Highway 238 that the city had rezoned to special protection/park and confirmed the site was treated as constrained in the inventory.

The consultants said the BLI data will feed the next step: an economic opportunities analysis to evaluate what types and amounts of employment land the city should plan to support over 20 years.