- May 1, 2024
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A proposed development called The Gardens which has stirred local controversy ever since a contentious community hearing last July now has the county planning board’s initial approval and will be considered by the Flagler County Commission.
The proposed community would straddle John Anderson Highway south of State Road 100 with a golf course and 335 homes. It’s a dramatic reduction from an earlier proposal for 3,996 homes which had prompted the July 2019 outcry during a community meeting at the Hilton Garden Inn and spurred the creation of an opposition group called Preserve Flagler Beach and Bulow Creek.
Proposals for the land have been in play for more than a decade.
A version of the community was first proposed in a 2005 Planned Unit Development, or “PUD,” for 453 homes, but the recession foiled former developer Bobby Ginn’s plans for the land, which was sold and is now owned by developer Ken Belshe’s Palm Coast Intracoastal, LLC.
"This deal has already been done — it’s already been signed, sealed and delivered — so I don’t think we need to make a new one.”
— MARK LANGELLO, Planning and Land Development Board chairman
At an Aug. 11 meeting, the Flagler County Planning and Development Board faced two decisions concerning The Gardens: Determining whether the proposed development was similar enough to the 2005 planned unit development that it could proceed under an amendment to the earlier PUD, as opposed to requiring a whole new PUD application; and, second, approving or denying a preliminary plat for the development.
It approved both, voting 5-1 to approve the PUD amendment, with board member Mike Goodman dissenting; and 6-0 to approve the preliminary plat.
“I find that this application is considerably similar to the 2005 PUD,” board Chairman Mark Langello said. “This deal has already been done — it’s already been signed, sealed and delivered — so I don’t think we need to make a new one.”
The board’s decision followed comments by community members who opposed the project.
A number of residents said they were concerned about increased traffic and flooding: The area already has a drainage problem, they said, and the addition of so much concrete would worsen it.
Resident Barbara Revels, a former Flagler County commissioner, said she understood that the developer has engineers who will say that they’ve studied the drainage and that their project won’t flood other people’s homes.
"There will be nothing left — absolutely nothing left, and I defy you to say that that's good development."
— BARBARA REVELS, former Flagler County commissioner, on the land clearing and retention pond creation she believes the project will require in order to prevent flooding
But to do that, she said, they’ll have to convert wooded areas into fields and create lakes to store the water. That’s what happened with a nearby land development proposal the commission signed off on when she was on the commission, she said: Developers took “a gorgeous piece of property” in what became the Bulow Shores development and bulldozed it, then used fill to raise home sites.
“There will be nothing left — absolutely nothing left, and I defy you to say that that’s good development,” she said. “I’m ashamed to say, as chairman of the Flagler County Commission, my name is on that plat on John Anderson. ... You sit there and you think you’re relying on your staff, your engineers, your planning people, and then something gets put in place and it’s very poorly done. Don’t let that happen this time.”
Representatives of Preserve Flagler Beach and Bulow Creek told board members that the organization doesn’t dispute the developer’s right to build.
Instead, they said, it believes the current proposal is inconsistent with the 2005 PUD.
They pointed to four areas in which the new proposal, they said, differed substantially from the 2005 one: The earlier one required a golf course whereas the new proposal doesn’t include design for the golf course, leading the group to suspect it might not be built; the earlier proposal didn’t include direct access to John Anderson Highway, while the new one does; the earlier proposal spread 453 lots over 1,305 acres, while the new one clusters home sites together; and the earlier proposal spread homes across both sides of the road, while the new one groups 335 on the east.
Attorney Michael Chiumento, representing the developer, said those aspects of the 2005 plan weren’t binding. They came from a 2005 site plan, he said, while what the new proposal needs to be consistent with is not the 2005 PUD’s site plan, but its concept plan.
As to traffic and the golf course, he said, the developer has had transportation studies conducted showing that John Anderson can handle the increased traffic, and the developer is planning to build the golf course in stages. The course is intended to provide the city of Flagler Beach with a location to distribute the city's reuse water, rather than emptying it into the Intracoastal.
