Last October Hard Rock Materials, the Green Cove Springs-based concrete batch plant company, appeared before the Palm Coast Planning Board, seeking the rezoning of 10.5 acres off Hargrove Grade from light to heavy industrial.
The board was hesitant. The City Council had just rejected another concrete company’s request to rezone acreage for a larger batch plant nearby. So it punted the decision to a future meeting. In the meantime, Hard Rock Materials won a rezoning in Bunnell, on Hibiscus Avenue, where it plans to build a batch plant.
Hard Rock is returning to the Planning Board next Wednesday to try again to get that rezoning at 56 Hargrove Grade, a parcel the company bought from Hargrove Mini Storage last April for $2.1 million. But questions remain, especially regarding inconsistent information about expected water usage and traffic impacts.
The size of the batch plant to be built has not been determined. It would be determined at the next step, assuming the rezoning is successful, when the company files a technical site plan application.
The proposal last fall did not get a more welcoming reception than had SRM Concrete, the company that wanted to build a batch plant on 37 acres off nearby Hargrove Lane. Numerous business owners and managers at the industrial park–Palm Coast’s only industrial park–objected, citing traffic and air particle pollution as their main concerns.
They also worry that rezoning the acreage to heavy industrial could set a precedent for other parts of the industrial park while opening the way for the 10.5 acres to be used by an industry other than concrete, should Hard Rock choose to sell the land–especially now that it has clearance to build a batch plant in Bunnell. When she objected to the rezoning for SRM, City Council member Theresa Pontieri said one of her reasons was to keep the land from turning into an asphalt plant or a fuel depot, which heavy industrial zoning would permit. There are no batch plants in Flagler County or any of its cities yet.
Palm Coast planners are recommending approval of the rezoning, saying it is in line with the comprehensive plan. It would not be the only heavy industrial zone at Hargrove Grade: Sunbelt Chemicals, on land almost cater-cornered from Hard Rock’s–200 feet to the southwest–is zoned heavy industrial. One of the rationales behind the city staff’s recommendations is that the heavy industrial use would provide jobs. Hard Rock said it would employ about 22 people full time.
There are inconsistencies on expected water usage. The city’s staff analysis states that Hard Rock is expected to use 8,000 gallons of water per day. The figure is based on answers provided by Caroline McNeil, paralegal for Michael Chiumento, the land use attorney representing Hard Rock. “During preapplication meeting back in March with [Ray] Tyner the client provided all of this water usage information,” McNeill wrote City Planner Michael Hanson last July, referring to Palm Coast’s former growth management director (now in Volusia County).
But in Hard Rock’s own presentation to the planning board last October, the company’s presentation stated it would use 25,000 gallons per day, “equivalent,” in its words, “to the amount of water used to fill a residential swimming pool.” A hydrology consultant alerted Hanson to the discrepancy in a Feb. 2 email.
The next day, Hard Rock’s Austin Petty conceded: “25,000 is a max GPD but on 7-day average [it’s] 14,000-16,000 GPD,” he wrote Hanson, using the acronym for gallons per day. He elaborated, if by further confusing the matter: “The 25,000 gallons would be a max, we gave ourselves a cushion as concrete quantity varies daily.”
In fact, even by Petty’s own calculations, the plant would “technically” use 19,000 gallons per day: The plant would run 10 hours a day Monday through Friday, and five hours on Saturday. Petty continued: “We typically run 5 sprinkler heads 7 days a week this ensures we keep our coarse aggregates hydrated (sprinklers average 8500 gallons a day). In theory we plan to schedule 30, 10-yard truckloads of concrete per day which averages 350 gallons per truck. (10,500 GPD Monday- Friday) (Saturday 5,250 GPD). Which technically only equates to 19,000 which keeps us well under the stated 25,000 max.”
Nevertheless, Hanson’s memo to the planning board still refers to the 8,000 gallons per day, which is clearly inaccurate.
The operation hours are also inconsistent. Petty said in his email that they would be 10 hours a day, five days a week, plus five on Saturday. Last March, in an answer to a question Tyner had asked, Jonathan Thomas of Hard Rock had written: “ Business hours for full operation is from 5:00am to 5:00 pm.”
There is a city well about 1,000 feet away, but it is 500 feet past the wellfield protection zone. The batch plant will have its own well. It will be required to be near the south portion of the property, as far away as possible from the city’s well.
Hard Rock has previously pledged that while a heavy industrial site would allow up to 862 vehicular trips per day, the company would limit its trips to 200 per day (its Jacksonville facility generates 700 trips per day). It would install a tire washing and cleaning system and use a grid system to prevent truck tires from tracking dirt beyond its property.
Last year the council requested a traffic and crash analysis for the intersection of Hargrove Grade with U.S. 1. The city found that an average of 18,780 vehicles travel U.S. 1 by the intersection every day. Hargrove Grade generates on average 3,300 vehicles per day. In a four-year stretch starting in August 2022, there were five crashes at the intersection–three left-turn crashes and two rear-end crashes, one of them causing incapacitating injuries, two others causing less severe injuries. (See a chart analysis of the crashes here.)
The planning board takes up the item at its Feb. 18 meeting at 5:30 p.m. at City Hall.
hjc says
At what point does water conservation start to become important. Flagler county depends on rainfall for its water supply. let’s keep building more houses and let companies that use 25000 gallons a day move in then raise the homeowners water bills again. GOOD PLANNING
Justbob says
Geez…wasn’t it loud and clear, we ain’t interested in oil tank farms and concrete plants. What about the public outcry doesn’t the city understand?
Skibum says
Just exactly what part of NO do they not understand???
celia says
They do not get it as they are still hunting for some buddy in the council to satisfy their greed.
Perfect Place says
If not in an industrial park by train track then where ???
Ray W says
There was once a time long ago when Consolidated Pre-Stress built a concrete plant in remote south Edgewater that made, among other things, concrete pilings for interstate highway overpasses. Huge complex by the Intracoastal with a dock from which to load barges with pilings.
The plant closed for a number of years; its owner operated a number of other such plants around the state sufficient to meet demand.
Years passed. Communities grew up around the then-quiet land.
When the economy began to boom during President Clinton’s first administration, the company reopened the plant. Hammering on the steel curing forms broke out seven days a week, because air bubbles that can weaken the concrete needed to be vibrated out of the concrete during curing. Concrete dust clouds spread out whichever way the wind blew, covering neighboring homes and yards with layers of concrete dust.
I was a senior prosecutor. Enraged homeowners sought assistance in gaining a temporary restraining order pending final hearing from both the county attorney and me.
We both filed motions seeking a TRO. The county attorney got hearing time from a judge a week before my hearing time; it won.
I called in the complainants and said I was cancelling my hearing. Hornets nest in my office. You haven’t truly lived until you have met with a group of angry retirees whose cars are coated with a new layer of acidic concrete dust every day, seven days a week, unless you have been elected an Exhausted Rooster.
I told them that an injunction was not a criminal issue. I had found TRO case law holding that even if I obtained a second TRO, the company’s attorney could ask for legal fees because the county’s win had mooted my issue. The many retirees instantly calmed down and thanked me for protecting the state’s purse strings.
As I recall, the county’s attorney later obtained a permanent injunction.
Then again, maybe I misremember. After all, I have a 69-year-old brain; it isn’t a 16-year-old brain. Words of wisdom from a neuropsychologist I consulted in the Anna Pehota case.