On its third try since November, the Bunnell Planning and Zoning Board recommended approval of the rezoning and development agreement controlling the Reserve at Haw Creek–the largest single development proposal in Flagler County since Palm Coast was conceived in the 1960s–but not before issuing nearly a dozen proposed conditions to the Bunnell City Commission, which takes on the proposal next.
Among those conditions: Lower the planned 8,000 home total to 5,500.
Chad Grimm, representing Haw Creek Reserve’s Northeast Florida Developers, says the 8,000-home total is non-negotiable. But the document the city’s planning board was recommending, and that the Bunnell City Commission is set to ratify, is a Planned Unit Development, which by definition is a negotiated agreement between the developer and the local government, as the word planned implies. The developer may not want to negotiate the point. But the city holds the approving vote may extract conditions–as Flagler Beach has done regarding Veranda Bay, a PUD that cut its total of homes nearly 20 percent (to 2,200 homes) in negotiations.
The Reserve at Haw Creek is planned over 2,800 acres over a mostly rectangular sprawl extending from Bunnell proper westward, and to some extent southward along State Road 100. The development, planned for the next two decades, would combine single family homes, town homes, apartment complexes and condos, with 10 percent of the housing stock comprising of affordable housing–what the developer prefers to describe as “mortgage assistance.” (It’s the same thing: dwellers’ housing costs are partly subsidized.)
The proposal has drawn sharp opposition in Bunnell and concern among county officials, who worry about the Bunnell administration’s capability to handle the regulatory rigors required by an enormous development. State agencies’ responses to the city’s comprehensive plan amendment required by the proposal also reflected concerns and questioned a lack of analytical data. But the proposal has continued to wend its way through the local regulatory steps.
On Monday, the rezoning and PUD approval cleared the city’s planning board, but with nearly a dozen recommended conditions to the City Commission. Aside from the recommended reduction of total swellings, the board is asking the City Commission to hold at least one more public workshop to allow for residents to fully participate in the process and explain the conditions they hope to see added to the PUD. It has been notable that so far, members of the public above all, and members of the planning board to some extent, have more rigorously vetted the Reserve proposal than has the City Commission, whenever the commission has discussed it.
Still, Planning Board member Lyn Lafferty’s remarkably candid concerns voiced at the meeting Monday reflected a degree of anxiety about the City Commission, whose handling of the proposal so far has–with one exception–looked more like a hexagon of rubber stamps than a commission willing to delve into the development documents, publicly deconstruct it, ask critical questions and project commanding oversight. (The exception was last month when the commission stood firm and refused to go along with the developer’s request to lower the proportion of open space in the development from the city-required 60 percent to 50 percent. See: “Bunnell Says No to Developer Seeking To Reduce Open Space By 10% at 8,000-Home ‘Haw Creek Reserve’.”)
“I think it’s important that the commission–I’ll say this over and over–reads the document thoroughly,” Lafferty said, openly indicating some concern that commissioners are not reading the documents. By approving what the commissioners will set in stone, she said, they have to show “that they’ve actually read through it and understand it, that they understand that it’s something that has to be stuck to once it’s approved.”
With that in mind, the Planning Board recommended approval of the Reserve at Haw Creek PUD and rezoning with the following recommended conditions:
- Reduce total dwelling count to 5,500, because of the larger development’s “overall impact on the infrastructure, impact on the roads, and impact on Bunnell as a community.” (That item carried 3-2.)
- The PUD must comply with the state’s new stormwater standards. (That recommendation is superfluous, however: state law mandates the standards.)
- The PUD should require water storage on a one-to-one ratio for every amount of water displaced in the flood plain.
- Historic trees, as defined by the city’s land development code, should be protected in compliance with that code.
- Provide a 35-foot natural or 50-foot planted buffer between the development’s boundaries and existing homes outside of it.
- A prohibition on shallow wells or septic systems on residential properties (the developer may drill wells).
- The most current traffic impact study must be included in the information provided to the City Commission.
- The commission should consider reducing the maximum sign height and the maximum square footage of the signs delineating the development.
- The commission should consider reducing the light pollution caused by the signs.
- The commission should review routing into and out of the development in relation to State Road 11.
- The commission should hold at least one additional workshop or meeting with the public before it holds the business meeting where it is to reach a final decision. It’s the commission’s option as to whether or not to include the planning board.
The proposed conditions are mostly the result of public suggestions, voiced at length at the board meeting. Planning Board Chair Carl Lilavois had decided not to impose a clock on speakers so as to allow for more complete public contributions–as the City Commission had not allowed last week, when it held a joint workshop with the planning board on the same subject: speakers were not only limited to two minutes. They were restricted to asking questions. Mere comments or suggestions were disallowed.
“Nothing of this magnitude has occurred in Flagler County, other than perhaps the original Palm Coast development,” Barbara Maloney told the board. “There isn’t any previous experience to guide any of us. However, the overwhelming outreach and involvement of the community to be a part of that future is very obvious. We are all concerned this project is simply too large to impose all at once on a small town’s city governance.” Maloney urged city officials to change the PUD in such a way as to preserve some leverage for th city–and to lower the total number of allowable homes to 5,500.
Larry Rogers, a resident of County Road 65, bordering the development, spoke of the responsibility to ensure that the development “is done in a manner that can be successfully completed and done in a manner that our community would be proud of. We can all look a little bit to the north. People talk about Palm Coast. It was a great idea. It was around the same size originally. We see what it turned into.” He like others stressed that the PUD is the governing document for the development “long after everyone in this room is not here. So if we don’t get this right now, we are missing the opportunity to influence every generation that is ever going to deal anything with that piece of land out there.”
Rogers did not propose lowering the total number of units, but others spoke in opposition to the size of the proposal, citing traffic, the density of construction, drainage and buffer issues.
One resident described the process as “a little backwards” as it forecloses city authority to affect the PUD once it’s signed. But “Once a PUD has been approved,” City Attorney Paul Waters said, “only minor changes can be modified. Major changes have to go through the process anew, as if it were starting over again.” The document is final once approved.
Lafferty had issues with the large size of the development’s signs, along with issues about traffic, environmental protection, water use and density.
“I don’t want my comments to make it sound like I’m against the development, because I think it’s important we grow in a smart way,” Lafferty said. “I think that we should look at the details. And I think I’ve asked this before, and the answer was yes: this is the only time that this PUD agreement is going to be reviewed and signed off on.”
Grimm cautioned that some items on the list of recommended conditions can’t be written into the PUD because they will get trumped by state law or state regulations. He addressed the opposition to the size of the development. “8,000 units doesn’t happen overnight. This is a 15 year project, and you throw in economic downturn or two in that 15 years. This is a 20-year project. This is a slow-moving machine,” he said. “That’s why we have amendments and allow amendments in the PUD because, as you learn along the way, us as a developer, you as a city, we’re going to be working closely together for a long time. We want to make sure, hey, we didn’t think of this, or this isn’t working the way we wanted to. Let’s make these adjustments. Or there’s bigger adjustments, and then the bigger adjustments we have to come back through. We don’t just scrap the PUD, but we address what the challenge is, and we come back through the same process, back in front of you, back in front of the commission.”
