In Rare Vote Against Business, Bunnell Sides with Residents and Rejects Rezoning That’d Have Allowed Concrete Plant

In a rare rejection of a land-use change that would have opened the way for a new company and new jobs in the city, the Bunnell City Commission voted 3-2 to turn down the rezoning of 1.4 acres at the end of Hibiscus Avenue from residential to light industrial.

The vote closed the way for Hard Rock Materials Inc., a concrete manufacturing company, to build a batch plant there and on a much larger parcel attached to it. A batch plant mixes cement to produce concrete for delivery. It can be noisy, affect air quality and significantly increase traffic on Hibiscus Avenue with concrete trucks.




Bunnell Mayor Catherine Robinson and Commissioners John Rogers and Pete Young voted against the rezoning, with Commissioners Tonya Gordon and Tina-Marie Schultz, both of whom are stepping down in March, voting in favor. The vote followed a series of testimonies by residents neighboring the acreage, and a vote by the city’s Planning Board earlier this month recommending against the rezoning.

“The proposed rezoning poses several threats to the already functioning algorithm of the community,” Candice Turk, co-owner of Pine View Apartments, had told the Planning Board. “The rezoning will will be cause of an increased traffic, high levels of industrial noise and a scale of destruction that our community simply cannot afford.” Pine View Apartments is a small complex where 16 families live–young children, elderly people, some disabled. (Young lived and managed the apartment complex in the 1970s before he worked for the Florida Highway Patrol.)

The Planning Board, whose vote was unanimous, cited the incompatibility of the future land use with the neighborhood. It was also put off by the absence of the land owner. The land owner, Louis Patane, told the City Commission at Monday’s meeting that he thought it would just be a formality that would not require his presence.

Patane said the plant would have started with eight to 10 jobs and a payroll of $700,000. The company’s Jacksonville plant generated $38.8 million in sales last year.




Hard Rock Materials Inc., a Greene Cove Springs company founded 20 years ago, operates four plants in the state. Bunnell would be its fifth. “They are not just fly by night. They’re not just an organization that’s going to come in and make a mess and ruin their neighborhood,” Patane, who had owned the parcels for the last 20 years, told the city commission. He sold the land, along with an adjoining 8.5-acre parcels immediately to the south, to Hard Rock Materials on Jan. 10, for $394,000.

Patane argued that the rezoning was not incompatible with neighboring land because the 1.4 acres is “surrounded” by light industrial properties. “It is the only access to the L1 [light industrial] piece that is behind it at 8.6 acres that has been conditionally approved already as an L1 industrial site.” Patane was overstating the case: the city’s zoning map shows the entire western flank of his two properties zoned for business, and one property, misidentified in the city’s map used in the administration’s background material, is multifamily residential.

The city requires a 35-foot setback for any light industrial development. “This proposal that was agreed upon gives the apartments a 100-foot buffer zone without moving or destroying any of the existing foliage,” Patane said. “So the 100-foot buffer will be in place between the apartments and the complex. There isn’t going to be any permanent huge buildings built. There isn’t going to be a major construction project there. It’s a portable batch plant that is low profile, which would be less height wise than and a standard one, like you see on U.S. 1 when you go by with all the mess out in front.”

He said a 30-foot high cylindrical structure would be built on the site, but that it would be “the only construction that’s going to be on the site.” As for noise, he said the $250,000 concrete trucks are “very modern” that don’t make the sort of noises their predecessors made. But he could not answer the mayor’s question when she asked how many trucks would travel Hibiscus Avenue every day. Hard Rock operations at other plants start at 5:30 a.m. and wrap up around 3:30 p.m. to 4 p.m., six days a week (Saturday being a half day), a Hard Rock representative told the commission. “You only hear the trucks,” Jonathan Thomas said.

Bunnell code requires commercial operations to abide by the city’s noise ordinance, which would allow the plant to run until 10 p.m. “We need to look at that,” a displeased mayor said. “Don’t take that to heart,” she told the plant operators, when Robinson wasn’t sure which way the vote would go. Until then, it appeared the company had the vote for the rezoning.

Neighboring residents didn’t buy any of it. They cited the number of children who live in the apartment complex, the traffic on the street, which would not be buffered, one resident said: “We eat, we sleep, we go home to get away from that noise, and now it’s going to be in our front,” one resident said, playing the sound of a truck for commissioners to hear. “Five o’clock in the morning, we’re still sleeping,” she said. “I need to go home and rest. I need the peace and quiet. I don’t want the traffic, the kids, you know, we worry about our kids, the elders, the veterans. We just really want you to consider: how does this buffer for us? I mean, the facility might sit back away from the property, but the street doesn’t. It goes right through our bedrooms.”




Robinson wondered if there could be access to the property from nearby Commerce Parkway, which opens later this year. City officials said there was not. After other residents spoke of their concerns, the commission voted to turn down the rezoning application.

“I love the project. I think the project is a great project,” Robinson said. “I wish it was somewhere else. I wouldn’t be able to sleep at night worrying about children running up and down the street, because children are not responsible, and I have been down that road. I did drive down there to see what it looked like and the traffic that goes in and out of there. So it’s disappointing.”

The matter may not be over. The company just bought the properties in question. It may challenge the decision in court.

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