Commercial & Business

Industrial

Suburban

Rural

Agricultural

Conservation

Overview

Best Planning Practices

Commercial & Business Places

In addition to the healthy commercial sectors long established within Brevard's many cities, the County's Comprehensive Plan shows that many unincorporated communities also enjoy thriving commercial and business places. At the same time, the County's Comprehensive Plan and zoning code possess strategies to control the scale and potential impacts of these commercial corridors on adjacent neighborhoods.

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Industrial Places

Industrial land uses are supported in five primary areas on the County's Future Land Use Map (FLUM) within the Comprehensive Plan.

• The Florida East Coast (FEC) railroad corridor boasts numerous shipping operations along its length with most activity concentrated between the cities of Melbourne and Titusville.
• The TICO Airport area south of the City of Titusville also enjoys ample lands dedicated to industrial uses on the FLUM.
• The CIDCO Park industrial area at the northern edge of the City of Cocoa houses industrial and shipping operations for many firms.
• The FLUM dedicates another sizable area to industrial development north of the intersection of I-95 and SR 520, where electrical power generating and substation facilities have already located.
• Lastly, the Melbourne airport borders the east and south edges of a well-established industrial park near the Ellis and Sarno Roads area.

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Suburban Places

Brevard County offers a variety of suburban living places throughout its nearly 72-mile length. To preserve the suburban character of its neighborhoods, the County has reduced the Comprehensive Plan's mapped residential densities to better match the existing suburban character. These efforts to ensure neighborhood compatibility coincide with zoning code and Comprehensive Plan provisions designed to promote suburban infill development and more compact and pedestrian-friendly neighborhoods. The County has also authored new planned suburban development options which encourage neighborhood designs with a mixture of uses and lot sizes along with high-quality, connected openspaces.

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Rural Places

Brevard County also offers a variety of rural settings. In fact, the County's Comprehensive Plan provides for rural residential lifestyle choices ranging from 1/2 to 5-acre minimum lot sizes. The Plan calls for the new town of Viera to be framed by neighborhoods requiring a minimum of 1/2 acre on Viera's south and west edges. Minimum 1-acre lots are required in areas like Scottsmoor. The Plan also provides Brevard's citizens with a choice of rural neighborhoods like those west of Fox Lake where a minimum of 2.5 acres is required to develop a residential lot. Finally, the Comprehensive Plan calls for the areas immediately east of the St. John's River to develop at a density of no greater than one residential unit per 5 acres.

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Agricultural Places

Agricultural places flourish along nearly all of Brevard County's western boundary. Farm uses extend eastward along both shores of the St. John's River Basin with the County's Comprehensive Plan depicting over 166,000 acres of lands dedicated to agricultural uses. Over 30,000 acres of these are improved pasture lands, much of which serve the dual functions of livestock grazing and sod production. These agricultural places are preserved from residential conversion pressures by various strategies. Ecotourism has become an additional source of income for some agricultural land owners. Other farming professionals are beginning to explore grazing leases on adjacent but idle conservation lands.

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Conservation Places

The County's Comprehensive Plan and a number of special programs have set aside a great deal of land for conservation purposes in Brevard County. The County's highly successful Environmentally Endangered Lands (EEL) program, working closely with the St. John's River Water Management District, has already preserved well over 23 square miles of environmentally sensitive and flood-prone lands.

The County's own Parks and Recreation department boasts over 170 acres of preservation lands through the Save Our Coasts acquisition program. The Florida Department of Environmental Protection's CARL program is credited with establishing the nearly 22,000-acre St. Sebastian Buffer Preserve. The Merritt Island National Wildlife Preserve and the Archie Carr conservation areas function as wildlife corridors, critical drainage systems and recreation lands. Numerous Comprehensive Plan policies are designed to protect these conservation and recreation resources from the effects of channelization, dredging or adjacent development.

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