The Palm Coast City Council on Tuesday approved the site plan for a nine-building, 300-unit apartment project to be built off the northwest side of Pine Lakes Parkway, on 35 acres just south of the Indian Trails Sports Complex.
The buildings will rise 43 feet. The two-bedroom apartments will consist of around 1,100 square feet. The project will have only two-bedroom apartments, intended to be affordable. Rent will be set between $1,100 and $1,300 a month.
The 3-2 vote approving what will be called Pointe Grande Apartments reflected opposition from some council members who raised concerns about density and traffic issues the development would entail, though the land has long been zoned for apartments and a traffic study showed the project would not alter the level of service on Pine Lakes Parkway despite adding upwards of 1,600 vehicle trips a day–what would increase traffic on Pine Lakes by 40 percent.
The council first considered the application two weeks ago. A motion to approve the application died, putting the project at risk. Council members agreed instead to call for details on a traffic analysis. That was approved. The application was presented on Tuesday with the analysis, though it again teetered on the verge of being rejected.
“We are not here today to debate the merits of whether or not apartment should be on this property. That ship has sailed,” City Attorney Bill Reischmann said, cautioning the council against turning down the project at this stage, as it could invite litigation.
Council member Nick Klufas’s motion to approve the application had trouble getting a second until Reischmann elaborated on his caution and Mayor Milissa Holland spoke of the fact that “this property has been zoned since before the city was incorporated in 1999 for multifamily housing.” She added: “What I heard last meeting were concerns about traffic. It went back and addressed the traffic study to look at additional capacity on the roadway, if it would cause an increase of cars in a way that we would have to recognize adding additional lanes to this roadway. The study does not deem it necessary at this time.”
The zoning history swayed Council member Ed Danko, who offered a second, and the motion passed, with Council members Eddie Branquinho and Victor Barbosa opposed.
The project is the work of San Diego-based Miral Corporation, to be developed by the Matthews Design Group of St. Augustine. The apartment acreage is part of a 158-acre parcel Miral owns, parts of which are to be developed in the future, and much of which is wetlands that will not be touched. It is zoned for mixed commercial and residential use, and for conservation. Much of the conservation land will be used to buffer the development from its surroundings, limiting its visual impact from without. The developers had vested rights of up to 385 residential units.
The complex’s parking amenities will have 100 garage spaces and 500 regular parking spaces, plus 20 spaces for the clubhouse and 12 spaces for people with disabilities. The main access to the complex will be off Brushwood Lane, while the apartment complex itself will be set back 400 feet from Pine Lakes.
When the developer held a required neighborhood meeting for residents surrounding the property–on March 9, at the Days Inn–no one showed up, signaling that opposition, potentially intense when apartments are planned, would be muted. No members of the public attended the city’s planning board hearing on the matter, when it recommended approval of the project by a 7-0 vote on March 17. The board found the project in compliance with the city’s comprehensive plan. The city has yet to review the project’s technical site plan and building permits, steps that could not be accomplished before council approval of the project.
The developer will pay $542,700 in transportation impact fees that will feed the city’s capital improvement coffers, paying for projects that will address alleviation of traffic growth or safety improvements on the road. (The city has no impact-fee zones, meaning that the fees generated from a project in one particular geographic area doesn’t have to be spent in that area.)
Holly Walker of Jacksonville-based Chindalur Traffic Solutions outlined the project’s expected traffic impact. (Currently, Palm Coast Parkway sees an average of 12,900 westbound vehicles and 19,400 eastbound vehicles per day. Belle Terre is between 14,800 and 15,800 vehicles per day. Pine Lakes Parkway, a two-lane highway, sees about 4,100 vehicles per day. The project is expected to add 1,632 daily trips, which would not degrade Pine Lakes Parkway’s traffic level as calculated by transportation officials: Pine Lakes is at Level C–stable but busy traffic flow. Turn lanes and crosswalks would be added to facilitate traffic at Brushwood Lane and another entry point at the north end of the project.
Two weeks ago Barbosa had spoken of concerns that the 300 apartments would add 600 people. “What are we going to do about the safety,” he said. “We keep on building all these apartments, and we’re not giving more deputies. Are we going to have a problem one day with the security, with the safety?” He added: ” I don’t want to turn this into like Newark, New Jersey.” Barbosa was not accurate on several counts: there is no evidence in Palm Coast showing that apartments are more prone to crime than residential neighborhoods; just since his election in November, the city has issued 865 single-family and duplex residential home building permits; and the city added five deputies in 2017 and three more this year, for a total of 31. (Aside from its racial undertone, the quip about Newark may not have been inadvertent: Branquinho, with whom Barbosa would lock horn at that same meeting, was a cop in Newark.)
“Apartment complexes that have been approved do not increase crime,” Holland told Barbosa. “We want to be very clear and correct and our responses are very accurate so to stay that is not an accurate assumption, sir.”
“Crime has gone down 49 percent,” City Manager Matt Morton told Barbosa, citing Sheriff Rick Staly’s figure, since Staly took over as sheriff. “As a point of fact, our average age is over 50 which is the metric that doesn’t commit crime so we’re trying to come up with a long term strategy that’s fair to everybody, our fantastic law enforcement, our community ratepayers, to figure out what additional staffing could look like in the future. So, again with a 49 percent decrease in crime and a 65 percent increase in the budget of the Sheriff Department since I think 2014 We’re trying to find where that ground is of how we staff moving forward.”
When local governments consider approving apartment complexes at various stages of their application process, they frequently draw public opposition–the more so if the complexes are to be located within existing residential clusters. The Pointe Grande Apartments project drew comparatively few responses, however: half a dozen people addressed the council two weeks ago, and just one did so last Tuesday. Two weeks ago, the concern focused on traffic and safety for children at crossing points.
“We need affordable housing for all residents,” Denise Calderwood, a former candidate for local office, told the council. “$1,100 to $1,300 is not affordable for the average resident in Flagler County. And I want to restate, the jobs are not here, the workforce is relying on the City of Palm Coast the sheriff’s department in the schools and our public government, but until the fruition of the vision of the mayor, and what you would like to accomplish for the city happens actually, those apartments are going to be vacant.” Both the county’s low unemployment figures (now hovering around 5 percent) and the very low vacancy rate of existing apartments in the city suggest otherwise.
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What a joke says
Like we need anymore freaking people in this City! Let’s over crowd it more than it already is, you can’t even drive on Belle Terre let’s make Pine Lakes Pkwy a nightmare too. Someone vote ALL of these people out before they ruin our City even more. How about Holland’s brilliant idea to build the complex over by the movie theater, which has now become the new slum with drug overdoses and frequent calls to police. Not adding crime, BS! Wake up!!!!
Bob Gore says
Just keep building and building. Our little town is going down hill quick…
Eileen says
This is NOT affordable housing! Just another way for builders to make money on the working class…and our city approves it!
Maria Davis says
Very sad!
S. Peters says
God help us. PC isn’t crowded enough?
B says
How about jobs?
Lucious Cocchiola says
300 unit-“PROJECT” being the key word. Thank your city council members B sectioners……so glad I just sold my house over there.
Monte Cristo says
At this point this Council will have the dubious distinction of being know as the ghetto Council.
Crime, and rental housing will be what Palm Coast will be known for.
Did they forget when the last market crash happened we had a huge rental market. It didn’t take long for us to have run down houses and crime. Drug houses, shootings, empty houses. If we build more rental units the home owner will suffer not the land developers.
Wake up Palm Coast City Council. Put a moratorium in place for 9 months to assess the situation. Just like the Mayor did for the Dollar Stores.
Or maybe you all can’t because you too much developer campaign monies.
Yeah, just saying!
Dennis says
Welcome to Orlando. 😖
Agkistrodon says
If you build it, they will come. Careful what you wish for. This is what many clamored for, now I see many of the same usual suspects crying fowl as it is by their home. Ha ha suckered. Keeping nursing from the same teet, you’ll get the same result.
Steve says
My Family moved to FPC 25 years ago. 30000 people. All are gone but one Sibling. Its never going to stop so get used to it or move. I dont care much for Flagler County with unharnessed growth and the lack of qualified Leadership.. good luck.
D. Barcell says
I see absolutely nothing wrong with this. As the mayor and seemingly only adult in the room stated, there is zero evidence of an apartment complex raising crime rates and bringing down surrounding home values. Get your faces out of Fox News!
Personally, we moved to Palm Coast intensionally seeking an apartment for a myriad of reasons for which rent price was of low priority. Pine Lakes Apartments was perfect for us. 3br, 2ba, garage, $1300/mo. And our household income is 3X the median in Flagler.
We were able to live comfortably in the county, contributing heavily to the tax base so that you can continue to have pretty sidewalks, and have since moved on to purchase a house and another property.
Get over yourselves! Welcome your new neighbors as THEY DID YOU when you moved here.
TR says
I read that by 2025 PC will have 250k residents and by full capacity it will have 500K.
I’ve been here since 1989 and I think it’s time to move.
FlaglerLive says
The commenter is wildly inaccurate. While ITT did project, back in 1969, that Palm Coast would have a population of 600,000 by the turn of the millennium, that projection, like almost every projection since, has not panned out, though exaggerated projections keep finding their way into the stream, usually because pre-crash projections are cited, rather than the more updated projections conducted yearly by the University of Florida’s Bureau of Economic and Business Research. The latest such projections, released this week in fact, estimate Flagler County’s 2020 population at 114,173–an interesting number and a smaller one than the Census Bureau’s estimate for 2019, when BEBR usually estimates on the higher side–and they project a 2025 population ranging from a low estimate of 115,800 to a high estimate of 140,100, with the midrange at 128,000. Generally, Palm Coast represents 85 percent of those figures, so you can do the math and be left with the somewhat smaller number. BEBR’s projections extend in five-year increments to 2045, and like weather predictions, become less accurate with distance. But this latest report shows nowhere near a projection of 250,000 inhabitants even for Flagler County as far out as 2045, when the low-high range is set at 132,400 inhabitants to 212,000.
Kelley says
This is excellent news, Palm Coast needs affordable housing. One of my best friends with two little children can’t find affordable housing. She was born and raised here and works full time in Palm Coast but may have to move to Port Orange to find housing she can afford. Bless the council members that have the courage to address this issue impacting the ENTIRE world in our community.
Sigmund Kirk, Esq. says
Just a quick question but, I think I know the answer. Do the wizards of Palm Coast City Council comprehend the word managed growth? A few years ago we were concerned that in order at attract economic growth, we needed to have affordable housing. Makes sense. However, both the county and city pretty well shut down 6the offices whose mission was to push economic growth. So now, we will have housing units available but no job market. And if you think that the Mednex program is going to be the panacea for jobs you might just as well smoke crack with the Mayor. Mednex is not going to bring a significant amount of employees needing homes. Speaking of affordable housing, it won’t be long before those apartment units built by the movie theater will turn in to crap housing. It is already starting to turn that way. Check police reports. Both the county and city need to get their collective heads out of their ass and start pushing economic development the right way with a professional staff of commercial realtors as recruiters.
In the end, the developers will rule, and affordable housing will over populate our city. If there are not enough jobs, these housing units will be empty. That is why you need managed growth. Your mayor is not a trained leader nor is she college educated with years of leadership experience. From what I have observed she frequently shoots from the hip.
Stan says
I think a financial audit of the approving council members may shed light on this build. I was a Financial audit specialist for a private firm for 17 years. You would be amazed at what you find when the books open up on high value people.