With Eye on West Expansion, Palm Coast Council Advances Preservation Ordinance To Protect Historic Sites

Following through on a May pledge to state-certify Palm Coast as a city that catalogues and preserves its historical and cultural resources, the City Council today signaled approval of a newly drafted historic preservation ordinance. 

The ordinance was drafted and presented to the council by City Attorney Marcus Duffy, who based it on similar ordinances across the state: some 89 local governments are part of the state’s Certified Local Government Program. The ordinance will be reviewed by the city’s planning board and approved through two future reads by the council. The council will then appoint a five-member board that will review historical and cultural discoveries, recommend preservation approaches, propose new inclusions in the National Register of Historic Places and seek related state and federal grants. 

The proposed ordinance was at least in part inspired by the council’s interest–and Mayor Mike Norris’s interest in particular–in preserving cultural and historical resources west of U.S. 1, in the more than 20,000 acres slated for the so-called westward expansion by Raydient, the development arm of the Rayonier Corporation. 

The acreage is a treasure trove of historical sites, according to Preston Zepp, the city historian. But Raydient, while pledging cooperation with the city, has limited access and been hard to pin down on what it would and would not allow by way of historic preservation. Today’s discussion of the proposed ordinance leaves unclear the extent to which the ordinance would–or would not–apply to Raydient’s Master Planned Development, itself a proposal pending before the council. 

“This really postures us in a better position to really take care of our historic sites,” City Council member Charles Gambaro said. 

As Duffy described the intent and reach of the ordinance, any land annexed into the city must go through a review process by an archeologist to “make sure that there is no environmental or historical value that needs to be preserved or reviewed.” The review must be approved by a Florida Division of Historical Resources historic preservation officer. That would presumably include the hundreds of Raydient acres about to be annexed. 

A cultural resource investigation is required before a development order is issued for any land that has not been previously investigated, or any parcel included as “significant” in the state’s Florida Master Site File (that’s the state’s official inventory of historical or cultural resources). 

City Council member Theresa Pontieri was concerned about keeping a provision that removes all review requirements if a parcel has had one such review in the past, no matter how long ago. Technology, Pontieri said, is making the detection of cultural resources easier. 

“What I don’t want is 30 years from now or even 10 years from now, land that we may have done a survey 10 years prior is now exempt from this, even though there could be incredible technology improvements,” Pontieri said, “because I know we have lands already that have undergone surveys and Preston’s come to me and said, ‘Hey, you know, now we know X, Y, Z about this land.’” Pontieri is requesting a time limit: five or 10 years. 

The city has a historical preservation ordinance now, but it stops short of meeting the state requirements that would designate Palm Coast as “certified.” The existing ordinance is being incorporated into the new ordinance along with its outlines of survey requirements and who may conduct them. The surveyor must have certain professional qualifications. 

If a parcel is found to have significant cultural or historical resources, the city must require the property owner to preserve the resources either in an open space on the parcel or redesign the project to accommodate “all or a portion of the site containing the cultural resources.” In case a discovery is made in the process of developing a parcel, the developer is responsible for hiring an archeologist and notify the state. 

The heart of the new ordinance is new wording in line with state requirements. 

The first requirement is for the city manager to appoint a historical preservation officer who’d oversee the process, and be the liaison to the historic preservation board. That requirement is at odds with the City Council’s current directive to shrink rather than expand employee ranks. 

The officer would be assigned to the Community Development Department (the department that saw seven people lose their jobs less than two weeks ago), schedule meetings of the board, draft its agendas, prepare local historic designation reports, make recommendations to the board about National Register or Historic Places nominations, advise developers who encounter cultural or historical resources on their property, and so on. It’s a long list. (See the list here.)

The five-member board, with two alternates, would be focused on historical preservation. Some members would begin with a three-year term, some with a two-year term, so that the staggering allows for subsequent members to all have three-year terms. Members should be architects, planners, archeologists, landscape architects, building contractors and some lay members. They would be required by state law to have at least four meetings a year. 

The board will usually make non-binding recommendations to be ratified by the City Council. It will have the authority to make decisions on a developer’s plans to make changes to a parcel with historical significance. Those decisions may be appealed to the City Council. 

For example, it might consider designating the city’s old Fire Station 22 as a historic site. Zepp would call it a lost cause. “Fire Station 22 will not be able to be on the National Register,” Zepp told the council today. “It’s going to be changed way too much. You’ve got to have 80 percent of the structure’s original, and it’s been changed a couple of times. But the new design just totally wipes that out.” 

Zepp has been hunting down a 1820s plantation west of U.S. 1, north of the Sawmill area, south of Pellicer Creek. But as far as the 22,000 Raydient acres west of U.S. 1, no work may be carried out there for now. “Unless Radiance says yes, you can, then we can’t. We can’t do the paperwork on it,” Zepp said.

“3 Casper Drive is eligible for National Register because it was the very first house built here, and it’s still standing,” he said, and that may many come before the board. “And Palm Harbor could be a historic district under the National Register, just because it’s got 30 houses that are 50 or older.” But half the property owners in the zone would have to consent to the district designation, Duffy said. 

Council members had no objections to the proposed ordinance at this stage. It will go through its procedural steps over the next few months and is expected to be in place by fall.