TARPON SPRINGS — The Pinellas County Commission narrowly approved a land-use change that will let a Keystone Road mosque rebuild and expand, but not before Commissioner Vince Nowicki asked why county planners never called it a mosque.
The 4-3 vote changes the Countywide Plan Map designation on the 2.69-acre site of Masjid Al-Rahman, 2577 Keystone Road in unincorporated Pinellas County near Tarpon Springs, from Residential Rural to Public/Semi-Public. The change clears the way for a building about 1,000 square feet larger than the current one, along with new parking and stormwater improvements.
The staff report and presentation described the mosque only as a “community assembly” use. Nowicki pressed the point during the hearing.
“If I may, this is a mosque. I don’t know if we know that or not. It’s a mosque, right?” he asked Scott Swearengen, county long range planning manager.
“I believe so,” Swearengen said.
“That really wasn’t in any of the documents you provided, that it was a mosque,” Nowicki said. “You’re using community activity facility, but it’s a mosque.”
Swearengen said staff follows the terminology in the county’s zoning ordinance, which was updated around 2019 to bring its definitions more in line with state definitions and general practice.
“We don’t define church, we don’t define mosque, we don’t define a number of other things. They are more collectively defined,” he said. “In this case, it’s a community assembly facility.”
Nowicki wasn’t satisfied. In a follow-up email to County Administrator Barry Burton, he cited six countywide planning cases from 2021 to 2025 involving churches in St. Petersburg, Clearwater and Pasadena in which supporting documents explicitly identified the religious use.
“Residents read these materials to understand what is being proposed near them, and they should get the same plain description in every case, no matter the applicant,” Nowicki wrote.
He made the same case on his Facebook page, noting the paperwork described the project as a “community assembly facility.”
“Residents deserve to know exactly what’s being built in their neighborhoods, and every project should follow the same rules,” he wrote. “When a change could bring more activity and traffic to a neighborhood, people deserve plain, clear information about what’s being proposed.”
Masjid Al-Rahman, whose name translates from Arabic as “Mosque of the Most Merciful,” describes itself on its website as a center for worship, spiritual growth, Islamic education, community welfare and interfaith dialogue. The site is about 1.8 miles from U.S. 19.
Commission Chairman Dave Eggers asked staff to walk through the request publicly.
“It’s a scenic corridor. It’s an area that continues to have activity, and I would like to make sure that residents who may be watching know what’s going on in their community,” Eggers said.
Swearengen said the property now holds an older community assembly building and an accessory storage building, with older parking and inadequate stormwater management. The owner plans to replace the building, add parking and install stormwater improvements, and the use would remain limited to community assembly, he said.
Asked by Nowicki what the county gains, Swearengen said the driveway onto Keystone Road would be removed, with access shifted to another adjacent road. The project would also require site plan approval, bringing an older site into compliance with current zoning rules.
The landowner, he said, gets the ability to rebuild “a new building 1,000 square feet larger in size” and make the site improvements.
Swearengen said the Residential Rural category would not allow the existing use to be significantly changed or expanded, which is why the owner sought an institutional designation. Institutional land already sits directly next to the property, he said.
“Based on their plans, it would be a slight increase in the size, so in truth it would be a little bit more activity, we would assume,” he said.
The staff report called the Public/Semi-Public category appropriate for the existing use, noting that the Keystone Road corridor already includes residential, institutional and other nonresidential uses. The site keeps its Scenic/Noncommercial Corridor overlay, though the subclassification shifts from Rural/Open Space to Mixed Use.
A companion local zoning amendment and conditional overlay would restrict the property to community assembly with accessory storage and impose additional setback, landscaping, height and access requirements. Forward Pinellas and the Planners Advisory Committee both unanimously recommended approval.
Nowicki said he opposed the change partly because the county has resisted added activity in north Pinellas, noting that a request on a parcel a short distance down the road had been denied. He said he did not believe uniform standards were being applied to nearby properties.
“I don’t necessarily see the value of increasing more activity in north county,” he said. “A lot of our residents think the county is overdeveloped and don’t want to see an increased footprint of traffic and activity.”
The project now moves to site plan review.