- May 2, 2024
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The County Commission has — at least, for now — eliminated a proposed land development code amendment that would have allowed marinas in the county's commercial-2 zoning district. The decision is a victory for Hammock residents who've called the amendment a smokescreen designed to clear the way for a proposed 240-boat dry rack storage facility called Hammock Harbour on State Road A1A.
The amendment wasn't supposed to be about the dry boat storage facility, a project proposed years ago by developer Bob Million, who refers to it as a marina.
"I don’t think we should end this at this point, I just think that what we have before us probably isn’t going to do the job."
— DAVID SULLIVAN, Flagler County commissioner
But the county's staff had worked to amend the code to add marinas as a result of Million's proposed project, the amendment is written to define marinas as including dry rack storage facilities, and locals who spoke at the commission meeting to oppose the amendment intermingled their criticism of the amendment's language with criticism of Million's proposal.
"This is an industrial operation being shoehorned into a so-called marina definition so that one builder can construct and operate a monstrosity in Flagler County's most unique, beautiful Hammock," Hammock Community Association member Dennis Clark said at the meeting.
Just last year, it had looked like facility's opponents had defeated it: The County Commission had approved the facility, but when the Hammock Community Association appealed, a circuit judge overturned the commission's decision, finding that that the commission hadn't properly followed rules of procedure when making its decision.
At the time, Million wasn't calling the dry rack storage facility a marina.
The county's land development code doesn't say anything about dry boat storage. But it explicitly bars warehouses in the A1A Scenic Overlay district that includes the property Million wants to use for Hammock Harbour, and Hammock community members argued that the dry boat storage facility is, in essence, a warehouse, and therefore shouldn't be allowed there.
They made the same argument after the county's planning staff drafted the marina amendment and presented it to the county's planning board for consideration.
The planning board voted in favor of the proposed amendment, but added a requirement that any proposed marina undergo a special exception process that would involve review by the planning board and let the board impose requirements designed to limit the marina's impact on neighboring properties.
But at the Oct. 4 County Commission meeting, commissioners promptly decided to dispense with that advice.
"My problem that I’m seeing when we put special exceptions and stuff is we’re putting confusion ands chaos to developers, we're putting it to the public, we're putting it to future commissioners, and we're kind of punting the problem down the road," Commissioner Joe Mullins said. "... This stuff needs to be cleaned up … I think the clearer we get, the better it is."
Commissioner Greg Hansen agreed.
"If we set the rules in writing, then everybody understands the rules," he said. "The builder understands, the community understands."
But when the commission asked for comments from members of the public, almost no one was happy with the amendment — including Million, who called it poorly written and said the issue should have been workshopped —and locals were even less happy with the idea of allowing marinas without the special exception process.
"There are 12 special exceptions in C-2," resident Jody Bollinger said, referring to the county's general commercial zoning district. "It’s not like it’s a new thing. ... I don’t know how you can possibly think that a commercial warehouse structure, along with a forklift, along with a five-to-ten-thousand-gallon gasoline tank, should not be listed — at least, at the minimum — as a special exception."
"Any person with common else knows that a building used to store hundreds of boats on racks, which are moved around with a forklift, is a warehouse. Just because it sits along the water does not change that fact."
— JODY BOLLINGER, Hammock resident
Bollinger thought dry boat storage should be barred in the Scenic Corridor overlay district because warehouses are a prohibited use there.
"Any person with common else knows that a building used to store hundreds of boats on racks, which are moved around with a forklift, is a warehouse," she said. "Just because it sits along the water does not change that fact."
Several residents said that the stretch of the Intracoastal where Million wants to place his facility is too narrow for a true marina, as it lacks a protective cove.
John Russell, whose Hammock Hardware store is next to the property Million wants to use for the boat storage facility, presents the commission with a petition against the boat storage facility, saying it had been signed by 1,200 people who'd included their addresses and their email addresses along with their signatures.
"These people are concerned. Are we really doing the right thing when we look at this many people that took the time to say, 'No, this is not what we need,'' Russell said. "... I would suggest ... that you take the time to call some of these people and find out why they think this is wrong in our situation."
Russell's wife, Margaret Russell, said that she and her husband had lived in the Hammock for 44 years and owned Hammock Hardware for 41.
"I don't really think that at my age of 79 and John's of 82, that we should have to listen to a reverse forklift lift boats day after day after day," she said.
She said commissioners should've come out to her property and taken a look at the busy boat traffic on the weekends.
"They couldn't put a boat in that river if they had to without damaging it," she said. "... Don’t let one person, or two or three, influence you into doing something bad for the community, that doesn’t want it.”
Only one person — Greg Blosé, president and CEO of the Palm Coast-Flagler Regional Chamber of Commerce — spoke favorably of the proposed marina amendment. Blosé preferred the version that wouldn't require a special exception.
"We need the marine industry to continue to grow in Flagler County," Blosé said. He added, "Special exceptions, as far as I can see, create uncertainty, lawsuits and costly delays, which are generally unfriendly to businesses."
Dennis Bayer, an attorney representing the Hammock Community Association, said that the county's codes require special exceptions for plenty of uses — dog kennels are one — and that the planning board had twice, after lengthy meetings, decided that marinas should require special exceptions.
"They asked for it after they'd heard all the information, on five or six different occasions, concerning this project," he said.
Bayer added that the HCA had proposed some regulations — for instance, vegetative screening, square-footage limitations, and time-of-day limits on forklift operations — that the county's staff hadn't added to the proposed amendment.
By the time everyone who'd wanted to address the commission had done so, commissioners weren't ready to approve the amendment.
"I think that the ordinance is not good — it’s not well written," Commissioner Greg Hansen said. The Hammock Community Association, he said "had some really good ideas, and it appears none of them were considered."
Commissioner David Sullivan agreed.
"I don’t think we should end this at this point, I just think that what we have before us probably isn’t going to do the job," he said.
Commission Chairman Donald O'Brien also was interested in a proposal that would include regulations on setbacks and hours of operation.
Commissioner Andy Dance — who abstained for voting on the proposal because of a prior business relationship with Hammock Harbour — asked Sean Moylan, an attorney with the county's legal department, what would happen if the commission denied the proposed amendment. Moylan replied that doing so would reset the process, requiring county staff to start over.
Hansen's motion to reject the ordinance amendment passed 3-1, with Mullins dissenting and Dance abstaining.
