Though it typically expresses sharp antipathy toward single-family home development, the Palm Coast City Council on Tuesday approved converting the next phase of the Sawmill development cluster along U.S. 1 from townhomes to single-family houses. The 4-1 vote was a first-reading approval, with the second and final reading next month.
The dissenting vote was over the damage to the historic site that gives the clusters their name–the unique, Revolutionary Era Hewitt Sawmill site that the development appears to have severely altered beyond recognition, corrupting the site’s authenticity. That damage, not previously disclosed to the extent that it was on Tuesday, dominated the discussion on the development proposal.
The project is part of the Palm Coast Park “development of regional impact,” or DRI, approved in 2004, where the Sawmill Branch, Sawmill Creek and Freedom at Sawmill subdivisions have been (and continue to be) developed.
The tract subject to the development amendment is on the west side of U.S. 1, just under a mile from Old Kings Road. It had been approved for 320 townhouses on 18-foot-wide lots. The council approved a conversion to 244 single-family houses on 30-foot-wide lots that would at minimum be 2,550 square feet. The townhomes were to have a minimum living area of 650 square feet. The houses will have a minimum of 1,000 square feet.
“It is a distance away from ITT-platted lots,” Palm Coast Planning Manager Phong Nguyen said, describing the proposal as “providing diversification of housing type.” The typical ITT lot is just under 11,000 square feet. The houses in the new subdivision are to be built by DR Horton. The developer, Robert Porter, described the future houses as “detached” apartments or townhomes, with the same floor plans as apartments, with two to three bedrooms.
“This is just a stab at a new type of housing product to Palm Coast,” Michael Chiumento, the land use attorney representing the developer, said. “That does not mean it’s not new to DR Horton or their other communities around the country.” DR Horton is the builder of Bunnell’s Grand Reserve, the subdivision of nearly 900 houses.
“The goal is to allow a variety of lot sizes and housing types to meet the needs of the citizenry. Citizenry through all stages of life,” City Planner Estelle Lens said. “The city has an overabundance of quarter-acre platted single-family lots, and there is a need for different size lots and different types of housing that’s in the comp plan.” The ITT-era lots are also responsible for the sprawling suburbs James Howard Kunstler called “the geography of nowhere.”
As she was presenting the proposal to the council, Lens provided a brief history of the development, noting along the way that the developer had met the “public benefit requirements,” among them preserving over 1,800 acres of wetland and nearly 116 acres of gopher tortoise habitat, the donation of a 30-acre tract to the school district, a 74-acre site for a linear park along U.S. 1 and 30 acres for the city’s sewer plant in that area. She also mentioned the donation of the Revolutionary-era Hewitt Sawmill historic site to the Florida Agricultural Museum. She did not mention the damage to the site.
According to Bill Ryan, the local historian, “John Hewitt was an expert builder and contractor who arrived in St. Augustine before the American Revolution in 1768. He obtained a 1,000-acre property near Pellicer Creek in what is now Flagler County and shortly thereafter built a sophisticated water-powered sawmill. Many homes in old St. Augustine may have been constructed with his lumber. He did much construction during the British period including the steeple for St. Peter’s Church and the State House. The mill was a hydraulic type, highly advanced for the period.” (Ryan’s history of Hewitt Sawmill was reproduced by the Flagler County Historical Society.)
Hewitt Sawmill is often referred to–as it was by Palm Coast officials–as Hewlett’s Mill. Lens’s reference to the mill–which lent its name to the various subdivisions–prompted Council member Dave Sullivan to explain in sharp terms why he would vote against the proposal.
“Essentially what the developer has done, if you’ve been out to where Hewlett’s Mill is,” Sullivan said, “which I have done since they clear-cut the area right up to the edge of Hewlett’s Mill. They put in a retention pond there with a sluice. The sluice dumps water directly on top of Hewlett’s Mill. It’s been ruined. There’s no way to save it now. So I’m kind of anti this whole everything going on here, just because of that.”
He said the site had been preserved and worked on by a lot of volunteer organizations over time. “It’s gone. That’s the only revolutionary site we have in the county,” Sullivan said. The sawmill ceased operations in 1813.
“Mr. Sullivan,” Chiumento, the developer’s attorney, said, “your comment surprised me. I’ve worked for the initial developer, which was Allete or one of their subsidiaries, since 2006 and then been very integrated with the present developer since 2017, and your issue is the first that I’ve heard of that. So I don’t have any response.”
“Maybe you should have been aware of it,” Sullivan said. “It was brought to the lawyers who were involved.”
Pontieri referred to a January 2023 email she wrote then-City Manager Denise Bevan relaying the Florida Agricultural Museum’s concerns about the site. (The Ag Museum is in charge of the historic site.) Pontieri read the detailed damage described in the email.
“I don’t know if the communication never made it to your folks,” Pontieri told Chiumento. “That’s tragic if it didn’t, because this has been an issue for over three years now. So I don’t know if there’s anything that can be done now, but this is certainly not a novel issue.” Pontieri asked the developer to incorporate potentially repairing the damage into the future public benefit of the development’s regulatory commitments.
Porter, the developer, said he had not been personally aware of the issue. He and Chiumento said they would look into it before the second reading of the ordinance.
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