It’s a nondescript piece of land, flat with small pines and scrubby weeds. Maybe it was once cleared farm land, but now it’s planted for pine timber. It has homely neighbors – a Flying J truck stop on one corner and a automotive repair shop on the other.
Traffic from Interstate 95 screams day and night up and down the east side of the property. The southern side is bordered by Highway 206, a quiet, two-lane road that cuts through farm land from one side of the county to the other .
It’s here, literally on the corner of progress and tradition, that a developer has a grand vision for the 774-acre parcel. KG Development wants to build almost 1,000 homes, a medical campus, commercial space, a hotel and some parks. It will be called King’s Grant.
That’s a pretty lofty moniker for an area with place names like Cracker Swamp Road, Old Dixie Highway and Moccasin Branch creek. A nearby intersection is called “Spuds,” a reference to the crop that once made this area the potato capital of Florida.
Half an hour to the northeast is the glittering lights of St. Augustine, a refined version of New Orleans; smaller, quieter, but still with the cobblestone streets, the walk-able historic district, the strong sense of place.
So why build a big subdivision in the middle of nowhere? For one thing, St. Johns County is the fastest growing county in the state of Florida, itself now the third largest state in the country. For another, says the developer, that’s where the county’s own plan points to new growth.
Not so fast, say residents, many of whom have roots in the area that go back generations. They’re concerned about the speed and type of growth they’re seeing. Public opposition to King’s Grant has been loud and constant.
The county itself has had concerns over infrastructure demands, the environmental impact and sprawl.
They shot down the development in 2015 and the developer immediately filed suit, claiming the county wasn’t following its own growth plan.
Three years later, King’s Grant is back again, bearing gifts. It’s offering to drop the lawsuit in exchange for the zoning change needed to build.
In a land battle that encompasses all the pros and cons of development in Florida, will this time be the charm?
Round One
Everyone seemed surprised back in 2015 when the St. Johns County Board of County Commissioners voted “no” to KG Development’s zoning request in order to build a mixed use subdivision.
The commission is a five-member elected board that has the final say in development plans. But the first stop for a developer is the Planning and Zoning Board (PZB), professional staffers who make recommendations to the commission. And the PZB had twice voted “no” on King’s Grant.
Staffers disputed the developer’s financial projections, questioned the density of the project and balked at the infrastructure demands of such a large development.
The developer made changes based on PZB feedback and took its case to the commission.
At the meeting on September 15, 2015, the public weighed in with its objections. Environmentalists questioned whether runoff from the property would degrade water quality for Pellicer Creek and harm the last few oyster leases left in north Florida. Citizens yelled “sprawl,” while experts – one for the county and one for the developer – disputed whether King’s Grant met the definition. The meeting ran into hours.
“Do these developments really ever pay for themselves?” asked one commissioner. He said it felt like the county was always playing catch-up, a point reiterated by urban planner Sarah Owen Gledhill with the Florida Wildlife Federation, who said the county needed to catch up on its $280 million in backlogged infrastructure before adding new growth.
But rural counties around St. Johns would love to have the county’s growth, said then-commission chair Rachael Bennett, a real estate consultant.
“How else do we make money?” she asked.
One resident showed photos during public comment of her family gathering oysters in the 1970’s for a community oyster roast, held each year on Palm Sunday. Most of the oyster beds have since been closed due to pollution caused by septic tank leakage and runoff from development.
“People [new to Florida] have no idea what’s been lost,” she said.
Commissioner Bennett pushed back on the idea that change is a recent thing. “All of us … have changed someone else’s world,” she said.
History shows she has a point.
Florida – is it Heaven or Hell?
It’s a storied land, St. Augustine is, both bloody and beautiful. French, Spanish and British explorers came in alternating waves in the 1500s finding balmy weather, abundant food, flowering trees and peaceful natives. In turn, they slaughtered whatever Europeans where already there, enslaved the natives and built churches.
The Spanish had the most lasting influence on the city. They established the first settlement in the United States here in 1565, 55 years before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock. Explorer Pedro Menendez carved out a path between St. Augustine and Jacksonville in what became the first road in the country, now known as U.S. 1. They named the inlet “Matanzas,” which means “massacre,” after their method of disposing of French missionaries.
Standard Oil magnate Henry Flagler became smitten with the city while on vacation in the 1800’s and began developing luxury resorts there for wealthy northerners to escape the winter. He invested his oil fortune building churches, hotels and museums that would last. They have, lending a beauty and sense of history in a state more known for recent development.
Despite St. Augustine’s early founding, it was south Florida that grew first, in a series of booms and busts. The Everglades originally encompassed the entire southern portion of the state from Orlando on down. And it was hell there, said most every explorer or military man sent to wade through its hot, marshy, buggy, snake-and-gator-ridden miles. U.S. troops spent seven years chasing the last 100 Seminole Indians around in the Everglades in the mid-1800’s, finally giving up. But some explorers came away with the idea that if the glades could be drained, it would create thousands of acres of new farm land.
It took nearly 70 years and millions of dollars, but squishy, wet land from Orlando south was diked and drained to each coast, creating solid land where there had been swamp. Farms and ranches were built in the center of the state and Florida’s winter vegetable production was the talk of the nation. On each coast, cities sprang up on drained Everglades land: Miami Lakes, Weston, Wellington, Coral Gables.
By 1900, the economic stage was set for the state’s drivers of growth that lasted until the present day: agriculture, tourism and real estate development.
Just this past July, Florida’s economy passed the $1 trillion mark, making it larger than some countries. Its population surpassed New York, becoming the third largest in the country. And tourism topped 100 million people.
Some citizens have started to question how much growth is enough. One St. Johns County resident said they don’t want to be south Florida, which is to say they don’t want wall-to-wall people and snarled traffic.
But who gets to decide?
Florida Growth Management – Progressive and Revolutionary?
Development in Florida is approved at the local level by county commissions or city councils. Decisions are governed by the state’s growth management laws, the bulk of which were written in the 1980’s during then-Gov. Bob Graham’s administration. For decades, Florida and Oregon were considered “progressive” in the growth management field, said Thomas Hawkins, an attorney who is the policy and planning director for 1000 Friends of Florida, a sustainable-growth advocacy organization.
Hawkins said the 1985 Growth Management Act was the first effective attempt at regulating the state’s growth. The “twin hallmarks” of the act were compliance and consistency. Each local government was required to pass a Comprehensive Plan that governed growth for the next decade. The plan had to be in compliance with state laws, and was reviewed and enforced by the state. Local government could only approve development that was consistent with its plan.
Florida’s laws also did something that was unique in growth management at the time: it allowed citizens a voice in the process. They were given the right to challenge permits they didn’t feel fell within the Comprehensive Plan.
“That was revolutionary,” said Hawkins.
Then came 2011. Retired businessman and Florida newcomer Rick Scott rode a tea party wave into the governor’s mansion. Despite a decade of conservative control under previous governors Jeb Bush and Charlie Crist, sweeping changes were made. The legislature immediately passed “[t]he biggest change to the Florida Growth Management Act” since its passage, according to a white paper by law firm Weiss Serota.
Business interests called the changes “long overdue.” The new laws “streamlined” the process, said a Gunster Law Firm report, and changed it from “controlling” growth to “managing” it.
And who wrote the new laws? “Development and business interests were instrumental in developing the proposed changes … ” said the Weiss Serota paper.
The Department of Community Affairs, which oversaw and enforced local compliance with state law, was disbanded and responsibility for compliance was given to another department, who Hawkins describes as “much more relaxed.”
“We’re no longer effectively requiring compliance,” he said. “It’s still on the books as a requirement but it’s not practically enforced.”
Citizen input, though made more difficult, is now the only check on the state’s growth, he said.
But with local government decisions often flying under the radar, many citizens aren’t aware of development plans as the decisions are being made.
“If you’re showing up at the ground breaking to protest a development, you’re years too late,” said Adam Hoyles, a wetlands scientist with Onsite Environmental Engineering, LLC. “The time to do that is at the permit stage.”
That’s exactly what one community group has done with King’s Grant. The South Anastasia Community Association (SACA) hired an attorney and has come out in force to public meetings to make their objections known.
After three years of working with the county, KG Development is back, offering to build a fire station, to build a park that will be open to the community and a new wastewater treatment plant. It wants another shot at the zoning change.
SACA and its attorney say the changes aren’t significant.
“It’s still 1,000 homes in the middle of nowhere,” said one resident.
But one thing has changed, and it may mean everything.
Elections Have Consequences
What’s changed in the three years since St. Johns County first said “no” to King’s Grant is the makeup of the commission itself.
Three commissioners are still there; Jimmy Johns, Jeb Smith and Jay Morris. Johns voted “yes” on the development, while Smith and Morris voted “no.”
But two new commissioners have been elected, Henry Dean and Paul Waldron. Waldron now represents the district where the property lies. The previous commissioner had voted against the development because he felt it didn’t fit with the rural surroundings and he was concerned runoff from it would harm the oyster beds.
But Waldron is a residential real estate agent and part owner of Harry’s Curb Mart. In his biography on the county website, Waldron states, “I have always enjoyed helping people find their dream home.” With his professional interests aligned with new home growth, will Mr. Waldron be the vote the developer needs?
Years of input from engineers, urban planners, financial analysts, biologists, attorneys, environmentalists and neighbors are on the line at the County Commission this Tuesday.
The fate of a big chunk of land may be forever altered by one vote in a system that has leaned decidedly pro-development in recent years, and historically.
Private property rights versus community interest. Growth versus sprawl. Environmental protection versus regulatory burden.
Will KG Development bring a proposal that is profitable to them and yet satisfies both county staffers and residents? Will St. Johns County residents show other Floridians the importance of engagement in local politics? Will there be a meeting of the minds in this long battle?
Tradition and progress meet in the battle over King’s Grant, not for the first time in Florida’s history, and likely not for the last.
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