The Flagler Beach planning board on Wednesday unanimously recommended approval of a 22-building apartment complex called Legacy Pointe Cottages on just over 3 acres north of Leslie Street, west of John Anderson Highway.
The project is the latest version of an apartment-project proposal first submitted to the city three years ago, and approved by the City Commission last year as a 39-unit complex with two, two-story buildings. Since no work had begun on the property dating back to the initial submission of the site plan, that application had expired and had to be resubmitted.
The site plan was resubmitted to the planning board in May. Based on the board’s reaction (and recalling critical comments by the City Commission in 2023, when commissioners were especially dubious about the plan’s definition of recreational amenities), the developer had opted to reconfigure the project and resubmit a site plan that “better aligns with needs, established goals, and design standards for the City of Flagler Beach,” according to a memo from Lupita McClenning, the city’s planner.
The conceptual plan by Alt Homes now consists of 22, one-level buildings clustered together in three rows, each building being its own stand-alone apartment, each with two bedrooms and one bathroom, each about 784 square feet. The developer describes the complex as “coastal cottages” that will all be long-term rental units. The project will be built all at once rather than in phases, adding up to a complex of 17,248 square feet. There will be 44 angled parking spaces. The complex is expected to generate some 146 additional daily vehicular trips on John Anderson highway. Access will be one way in through Leslie Street and one-way out through Joy Street.
Currently vacant, the acreage is zoned for general commercial on a future land-use map designation of medium-density residential. There are 83 trees on the site. Sixty will be removed, 23 will be saved.
The configuration of the buildings as multi-family units, even though the buildings stand alone, puzzled Planning Board member Marshall Shupe: “Why do these not fall into the same situation as a single family [houses] requiring 900 square feet?”
McClenning said the properties are not “fee simple. So it’s one development.” The developers must also pay school-concurrency fees (the impact fees to cover the cost of additional students’ “impact” on local schools) according to the multi-family designation, not the single-family home designation.
There are conditions: Joy Street, a city street and a dirt road, is not in compliance with city standards. The developer will have to widened it to 50 feet (from 40) to accommodate utilities in the right of way. Two additional fire hydrants will be built on the property.
Brenda Wotherspoon, a planning board member, also recommended adding a stop sign near complex on Leslie Street–not just because of the 146 additional daily trips, but because the complex will be part of a larger group of busy clusters: “You have the retirement community, the grouping of the the villas,” Wotherspoon said. “When you come to that intersection, you go right into Legacy. When you go left, you go into a retirement village. And there’s not just vehicle traffic coming out of there, and pedestrian traffic. There’s the people on the carts, and there have been in the past, without Legacy there, police reports of hit and run on those little carts.”
The recommendation now goes to the City Commission, which hears the site-plan proposal on Jan. 9.
