More delays for Rehoboth comprehensive development plan

For the second time since beginning work in late 2018, the Rehoboth Beach Planning Commission is asking the state for an extension on the city’s 2020 Comprehensive Development Plan.

The state-mandated plan was originally due July 2020. Around this time last year, the city asked for, and received, a six-month extension on the plan to Jan. 31, 2021. The reason for that extension was a major overhaul of the planning commission members.

During a special meeting in late August, Debbie Pfeil, a planning manager for KCI, said she expected to have a rough draft of the document ready for the planning commission’s Sept. 11 meeting.

At the Sept. 11 meeting, Pfeil said they were still working on updating mapping information for the plan with the most up-to-date data possible. She said she was still waiting for responses from the state and Sussex County.

Pfeil said this comprehensive development plan will have 13 maps, an increase from nine in the 2010 plan. She said the idea is to create maps that businesses and visitors can print, put in their pockets and use, which she said currently isn’t the case. New maps will include sea level rise, zoning, coastal inundation, and pedestrian and bicycle.

One of the maps not included in the 2020 plan, which is in the 2010 plan, is a map of potential redevelopment areas – such as Baltimore and Wilmington avenues. Pfeil said much of that information will be in the document’s narrative text, including specific suggestions, but going through the process of creating redevelopment areas would require public hearings. This is a process that needs to be done at the planning commission level, but the information will provide future planning commissioners a way forward, she said.

“It’s in the report, just not part of the maps,” said Pfeil.

In an email Sept. 13, Planning Commission Chair Rick Perry said he did not know how long an extension the board would seek.

During the meeting, Pfeil said she wasn’t sure when the draft would be done, but she thought the mapping would be done by the next planning commission meeting Friday, Oct. 9. At the request of planning commission members, she and Perry agreed to show a draft of a couple chapters during the next meeting.