Palm Coast Council Rejects Rezoning For Concrete Plant on Hargrove Grade, Opposing Heavy Industry Precedent

For the second time in seven months, the Palm Coast City Council today rejected rezoning in the Hargrove Grade industrial park that would have cleared the way for a concrete batch plant. The rejection again highlighted the effectiveness of the Hargrove Grade business community’s mobilization against the measure. 

Last August, bowing to the same community, the council denied rezoning 37 acres on Hargrove Lane requested by SRM Concrete, a Murfreesboro, Tenn.-based company. Today, it rejected a rezoning request for 10 acres on Hargrove Grade, preventing Hard Rock Materials from opening a concrete mixing plant on land it paid $2.1 million to acquire less than a year ago. 

Hard Rock, a Green Cove Springs-based company, applied to change the zoning from light to heavy industrial. The company said it would bring 20 jobs. Neighboring business owners and workers clamored against it, saying heavy industrial uses don’t fit with the character of the light industry of Hargrove Grade and Hargrove Lane, and said concrete trucks would tear up the road and create hazards. 

Torn until the end, and with Council members like Charles Gambaro and Ty Miller teetering on the verge of approval, the council voted 4-1 to reject the rezoning. Only Dave Sullivan voted for it. 

There were key moments in the two-hour-and-30-minute hearing, especially at the end, when Council member Theresa Pontieri, for all the sympathy she had shown the company, said the decision was not about Hard Rock, but about rezoning. For much of the hearing, the discussion had personalized the company, its family-owned profile, its good intentions and its job profile. 

“What kind of standard and precedent are we setting if this isn’t an exception to Industrial-1,  which is what I think it should be couched as,” Pontieri said, referring to the light industrial designation. 

“That is a different discussion,” she continued. “I’ve tried to stay quiet about this, but I I’m hearing and looking at everything going on, and I’m thinking in my head, this is not right the way we’re considering this right now. And I feel bad for them, I do, but we have a duty to look at this the right way, using the right standard. It’s not about hard rock. It’s about Industrial-2, in a light Industrial-1 park.”

Both Gambaro and Miller paused in silent agony before they voted No. 

All is not lost for Hard Rock: the company won a rezoning in Bunnell last October, months after the same commission had rejected its application. 

The city’s planning board had recommended approval in a 5-2 vote last month, after Hard Rock had mobilized several of its employees to address the panel, speak their admiration for the company and say how much easier, as local residents, it would be for them to work closer to home while servicing local development. Michael Chiumento, the land-use attorney representing Hard Rock, had also played a company-made video narrated by one of its employees showing the mixing process and the plant’s context. 

Much the same approach was applied for today’s hearing, with Chiumento again and again returning to the economic development impact of the plant. He also underscored the fact that the city administration had itself recruited Hard Rock Materials (a fact FlaglerLive confirmed with both a Hard Rock and a city official). 

 “We talked about adding jobs, we talked about industrial growth, and we talked about easing the tax burden off the residents back and shifting it over to businesses,” he said. “This has been talked about by this board for years, and in particular, the last few years.” 

In absolute terms, the plant’s economic impact would be relatively minor: about 20 jobs. There are three concrete or concrete aggregate plants in Bunnell, all near U.S. 1. Cemex’s plant generated $27,000 in total property taxes last year, just $9,800 of it for Bunnell, whose tax rate is twice that of Palm Coast. The Titan concrete plant on U.S. 1 generated just $3,300, total. Vulcan Materials, which supplies the aggregates for concrete from its plant at 575 Sawgrass Road, generated $24,000 in total taxes last year. 

“We built mostly a lot of these houses here in Palm Coast,” one of Hard Rock’s employees said. “Looking at the video that was shown earlier, it kind of speaks for itself. If you look at it, you didn’t see the materials in the atmosphere, being forced upon other companies and around people that created problems.”

Existing company owners and workers in the Hargrove industrial park were more numerous and spoke just as fervently against the rezoning. “We’re not saying no to the concrete plant, but not there,” one said. 

“I hope the council sees the zoning change as detrimental to the surrounding properties and our businesses, which is part of the criteria on the critical list for not approving the zoning,” Steve Parish, a member of the board of directors of the Hargrove Grade Commercial and Industrial Center at 15 Hargrove Lane, said. 

“These are fears, not facts,” Austin Petty, a Hard Rock principal, said before summarizing the company’s navigation of city regulations, complying with suggestions and addressing concerns, from water use (maxed out at 25,000 gallons per day from an on-site wells) to traffic and pollution.  “We very well overpaid for the property because we were going through the guidance of the city council members that pushed us and said, ‘We are easy. This is a great community. We want you here,’” Petty said, likely referring to the administrative staff members he;’d referred to earlier, not council members. “So they pushed us to this direction and curved our opinion.”

Another key moment occurred during the public comment segment when  Joe Rossheim, a 20-year Palm Coast resident and business owner, spoke, framing the rezoning as a fundamental change in the character of the industrial park that would “have an impact on hundreds of surrounding businesses, as well as set a dangerous precedent for the entire city. The most important point to think about today is precedent. This council has already reviewed a similar request, and you said no approving this one would contradict that decision.”

He said his family is expanding, with a $1.5 million business expansion of 7,200 square feet. “But the plan is now in jeopardy. If this zoning is approved and the cement plan is built, we will take that investment elsewhere,” he said. “Palm Coast has spent decades building a reputation as a clean, forward thinking, family friendly city. Approving this zoning sends the opposite message that long term planning can be changed overnight, and the city’s vision is negotiable. Good planning requires consistency. Public trust is built on consistency.” He added, “The trucks will come, the dust will come, the precedent will be set. Instead, when the history of the city council is written, let it say, you stood up. You said no, and you protected the existing surrounding businesses, long term residents and taxpayers. You stood up for the future of Palm Coast and its valuable resources.”

Members of the audience applauded. Council members did not. But its 4-1 vote 20 minutes later amounted to the same thing.