City of Sarasota Planning and Zoning

The City of Sarasota Comprehensive Plan recognizes that the fragile nature of coastal islands and their evacuation needs create the need for new land development regulations that address the density, intensity, and scale of development consistent with recommendations in the Environmental Protection and Coastal Islands Chapter.  The City additionally addresses the need to protect the environmentally sensitive and fragile nature of the coastal islands and their evacuation needs by establishing the Coastal Islands Overlay (CIO) zoning district.  Within this they specifically established:

• An Impervious Surface Overlay District (ISOD) intended to limit increases in impervious surface for new construction,
• The Height Overlay District (HOD) intended to limit increases in the height for new construction,
• The Density Overlay District (DOD) is intended to limit increases in residential density for new construction, and
• The Conservation Overlay District (COD) is intended to protect these generally undeveloped coastal, environmentally sensitive areas, which include beaches, dunes, coastal hammocks, mangrove swamps, tidal islands, tidal marshes and other marine and estuarine habitats.