Murdock Village Redevelopment Initiative

3. What is the historical backdrop for the excessive platting problem?

Charlotte County was chartered as a county in 1921, with its main population center being the coastal City of Punta Gorda located along the only north-south corridor between Tampa and Miami, U.S. 41 (also known as the Tamiami Trail). Completion of Interstate 75 through Charlotte County did not take place until the late 1970's. The City of Punta Gorda and Charlotte County generally were untouched by the land boom of the 1920s in Florida . However, after World War II Charlotte County began to experience significant population growth and attention due to the attractive Florida climate. This can be attributed in substantial part to the general national prosperity that followed the war and the dramatic impact of land development and speculation resulting from the creation of the "Port Charlotte Subdivisions" by Frank E. Mackle, Jr., E.J. Mackle and their development entity, General Development Corporation.

Beginning in the 1950s and continuing throughout the early 1980s, thousands of acres between the Peace River and Myakka River were subdivided and platted into relatively small urban lots. In all, General Development Corporation platted over seventy (70) subdivisions, often several square miles in size, creating roughly a quarter million lots with minimal infrastructure - block after block and subdivision after subdivision with no sewer or water, and, in retrospect, hundreds and hundreds of miles of what have turned out to be substandard roads with poor or minimal drainage.

Clearly, no demand existed within Charlotte County at that time for such subdivisions. As with prior land booms, the focus of sales was on out-of-state purchasers attracted by often unregulated marketing and real estate development efforts. Accordingly, hundreds of thousands of these vacant lots with minimal infrastructure were sold to absentee owners seeking speculative return or future hopes for retirement or vacation uses that never materialized. The situation was compounded in that the platting practices of the developers were geared toward maximizing the number of lots that could be sold for residential use. As was the practice at the time, predominately all of the platted lots within these subdivisions are subject to self renewing deed restrictions which limit them to single family residential use, thus limiting the land's ability to meet changing market demands. As a consequence of the short-term focus of marketing thousands of vacant lots, the long-term viability of the resultant "community" poses significant issues for local government and the private sector decades later: extraordinary maintenance costs; the huge costs to retrofit inadequate infrastructure; inefficient land use patterns subject to restrictive covenants that shackle any real ability to meet changing market demands; a diversity of ownership which severely impairs the private sector or local government from effectively addressing inadequate and outdated subdivision development. Additionally, as the decades have passed without significant development in many subdivisions, a substantial number of the structures which include, but are not limited to, site improvements, subdivision infrastructure, roadways, buildings and other improvements arranged, built or constructed within the Port Charlotte Subdivision have physically and functionally deteriorated faster than local government or landowners can address such economic, physical and social stress.

The future land use element of the 1997-2010 Charlotte County Comprehensive Plan concluded that if the current inventory of vacant lots (in excess of 225,000) were developed, the County would have a population of approximately one half million people. For instance, a population of 500,000 people would require:

•  50.98 million gallons of water per day (MGPD) would be needed to handle residential, commercial and industrial needs (current supply capacity is 12.75 MGPD);

•  capacity to treat approximately 37.8 MGPD of raw sewage (current treatment capacity is 7.325 MGPD);

•  39 elementary schools, 15 middle schools and 11 high schools (currently there are 11 elementary, 4 middle and 3 high schools); and

•  a Fire/EMS Department with a staff of 629 including 51 stations and 78 fire trucks/ambulances (currently there are 191 staff, 16 stations and 38 fire trucks/ambulances).

From the foregoing it is clear that there is a significant need between the current level of services and what would be required for future build out.

Although the Murdock Village redevelopment initiative will not cure the ills created thousands of vacant platted lots, it is a pro-active step toward breaking the shackles of aggressive and shortsighted development and land speculation activities occurring decades ago.

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Web Site of the Charlotte County Board of County Commissioners
Administrative Complex * 18500 Murdock Circle * Port Charlotte, Florida 33948 * 941.743.1200