The Flagler County Commission is ready to play hardball to protect a treasure older than the county: no at-grade crossovers on historic Old Brick Road unless Palm Coast and the developer of thousands of acres of the future “western expansion” of Palm Coast ensure wide buffers along the road.
In the meantime, the county is pulling back from a proposed joint agreement with Palm Coast and the developer until those conditions are met. (See the proposal here.)
It was a stunning, unexpected development for a commission generally friendlier to developers, if with conditions. This was more like a decree as the commission took an unequivocal stand for preservation and the county’s future vision of the red-brick road as a linear park free of motorized vehicles and a centerpiece of the county’s nature-tourism destinations.
Built during World War I, Old Brick Road is the historic remnant of what used to be the Dixie Highway that went from Detroit to Miami. It is now barely a two-lane road whose 8-mile portions in Flagler County are paved with vintage bricks. According to Flagler County Historical Society President Ed Siarkowicz, Flagler County has the road’s longest uninterrupted surviving section. It’s on the National Register of Historic Places and it’s part of the Heritage Crossroads.
Old Brick Road is also threatened.
It is mostly used by logging trucks. They are damaging it. The enormous Old Brick Township development by Raydient–the Rayonier subsidiary and landowner–is set to bring 22,000 homes to the area in a cluster of “villages.” The southern portion of the road will be surrounded by the new development. The Raydient plan is getting significant pushback from the Palm Coast City Council, but for different reasons. (See: “Calling Plan ‘Garbage,’ Theresa Pontieri Vows to Block Westward Development Unless Rayonier Pays More for Infrastructure.”)
The future State Road 2209 connecting to I-4 will be contiguous to Old Brick Road, crossing it at one point, and at-grade (meaning without a bridge or a tunnel). Another road is to cross Old Brick Road elsewhere, also at grade. There are also 21 current access points for logging roads.
“When we started this, what, almost four years ago,” Commission Chair Leann Pennington said, referring to the county’s management plan for Old Brick Road, “the intention was to preserve this road. Now we’re talking about boring under it, cutting pieces of it out, all to entertain development. So it wasn’t the intention four years ago. I don’t know how we got here. Now, I’ve got a major highway running side by side it,” though she noted there’s nothing official about that beyond “rumors and renderings.”
“We own this road. We could preserve this road,” Pennington said. If it costs the future developer more money to build bridges over it, then so be it, she said.
There was no disagreement among her colleagues. “They have been slowly but surely reducing our history, over and over and over again throughout our country,” Commissioner Pam Richardson said. “This is a great opportunity for us to show the wherewithal that Flagler has, as a small county, to be willing to stand up for what’s right for our country. And I really have a problem with letting anybody destroy any more of what is part of history.” She and her colleagues see the road as integral to the county’s tourism future.
To prevent Old Brick Road’s damage or destruction, Flagler County government, Palm Coast and the future developer of the acreage surrounding it are crafting a joint agreement that would protect the road. County commissioners had their first look at that proposed agreement on Monday as it moves toward formal approvals by the two government bodies in May.
The agreement, formally called an “inter-local agreement,” or ILA, frames the road as a cultural resource that should be preserved, and as an amenity for local residents, and as a tourist destination. The developer agrees with that framing. “Everyone’s in agreement, generally speaking, as to that long term goal,” Deputy County Attorney Sean Moylan said.
The ILA calls for no more than four at-grade crossings, each at least a mile distant from the other, unless the County Commission approves additional ones or narrower spans. The choice of four crossings was an arbitrary suggestion rather than based on any scientific studies. Four county commissioners prefer limiting the crossings to two.
“It’s a public road. It’s in our jurisdiction. It’s our road,” Commissioner Leann Pennington said. “Why do we have to give them any crossings?”
“We don’t have to. You are in control of that 50-foot-wide right-of-way,” Moylan said. “Nothing beyond it. So it’s a matter of trying to balance the interests of the private owner of the land along with the interests of preserving the road. We’re doing a balancing act here and making policy. If your view is to limit it to two or two zero, whatever it is, we’ll take your direction and go.”
There would be no limits to bridges above the road, or “fly-overs.” At-grade crossings could lead to the removal of bricks in that area so the bricks may be used to repair other portions of the road. No part of the road would be used as an access point to new development. The ILA could be amended in the future, since the development will take a generation: buildout is not expected until 2056. If history is a guide, that date is a decade or two too soon.
The county wants buffers. Raydient has not committed to buffering the road, only to consider a buffer.
“As we’ve been moving forward, there’s been progress on preserving and prioritizing the preservation of Old Brick Road,” County Commissioner Andy Dance said. But there’s been no progress on getting the trucks off the road, and he has “heartburn” over lacking buffers, which he insists on. His proposal: “No crossings with no buffers.” He sees the road in the future as providing not just an expanse of bricks to look at, but as “an experience” for cyclists, pedestrians and others.
In 2004 the County Commission adopted a management plan for Old Brick Road. The idea was to protect the road in a setting similar to Palm Coast’s Linear Park, the lush path that forms the dorsal fin of Palm Coast Parkway’s median.
“The number one recommendation of that management plan was to get the logging trucks off the road,” Moylan said. “We have not so far been able to do that, because there are no alternative routes to access this large part of the county. . So what we’ve been doing is we’ve been burying the bricks in sand and topsoil to help protect them as sort of a placeholder. And that’s been going on for several decades now.”
There have been thefts of bricks from the road. Now development pressures are ramping up, with the Old Brick Township Development of Regional Impact and its thousands of homes poised to be part of the so-called westward expansion of Palm Coast. Those development pressures “make the management plan now more imperative, and hopefully it presents an opportunity here to work together with Raydient and the city of Palm Coast,” Moylan said.
Land for the future State Road 2209 (it is currently called County Road 2209 and starts in St. Johns County) has not yet been deeded to the state, Moylan said, giving a letter from the County Commission to Palm Coast, urging buffers, more effective than staff-to-staff discussions. “It would really lose the feel if you’re standing on the Old Brick Road, looking at a busy four-lane highway going by,” he said. “They have so many acres, there’s got to be a way to have a buffer there.”
“I just don’t want to be making premature decisions about something that’s a generation away,” Commissioner Kim Carney said. “We’ve got to protect this to the highest level that we possibly can.”
“I encourage each of you to continue on this direction and this path that you’re taking,” Siarkowicz, the Historical Society president, told the commission, “to preserve the entirety either by circumnavigating our stretch of Dixie Highway with flyovers, so that people can continue to see this, this national treasure, national treasure that we actually have here.” The seven other people who addressed the commission, several of them from the society, spoke likewise, one of them citing a four-day-old petition that drew 1,307 signatures to protect the road.
Dance stressed the importance of presenting the county’s position “as one voice.”
Koyote says
Betcha a pre-Trump nickel that Raydient / Rayonier will go crying to Uncle Ronnie.
And a Dime says that he will give them what they want for a $$$ price , “We got an upcoming election to fix … err … finance.”
TR says
Oh for crying out loud. What the heck does this story in our local county have to do with Trump? It’s sickening that there is always someone from the left who can not comment without bringing Trump’s name up. Trump will not be involved with anything this county decides in this matter. Give it a rest already.
T says
STOP DESTROYING PALM COAST A HOLES
Roy Longo says
Why am I getting the sense that Flagler County is closing barn door after every animal on the farm has run through that door. They didn’t say a word when Palm Coast talked about western expansion. They didn’t say a word when Rainier talked about developing. Now that all these developments have been thoroughly vetted, Flagler County commissioners finally stand up to tell them no. It’s a little too late commissioners.