by Fred Seely
Editorial Director
While the oft-criticized government regulations and attitudes are bogging down the building industry, the overall effect may be better in the long haul.
Maybe.
Four leading land developers agreed Friday that this area’s governmental regulations are harsh and are frequently made more difficult by bureaucratic decisions which often have no basis. They were on a panel at the monthly meeting of the Sales and Marketing Executives of Jacksonville at the Marriott Southpoint.
“There are three things which affect us,” said Kim Woodbury of SouthStar Development Partners, which is working on two developments in St. Johns County and one in Duval.
“The laws, and those are the simplest to deal with.
“Then there’s public policy, which is not written but it’s the stuff that the staffs and politicians want to bring in.
“Finally, there’s public opinion, and that can be the toughest.”
Laws, he said, can be dealt with “because everyone reads the same thing.”
Policy isn’t. “In one development, we put 50-foot buffers even though no buffers were required,” he said. “The government guy told us it wasn’t enough. Nothing was written anywhere about buffers, but it wasn’t enough!”
Public opinion? “I was part of the original Julington Creek development and who didn’t want it? The people who lived in that area. Now, 20 years later, I’m involved in a development [Durbin Crossings] right next to Julington Creek. Who doesn’t want it? The people of Julington Creek!”
He received general agreement from the other panelists: Ed Burr of the LandMar Group, Paul Fletcher of the Fletcher Land Corp. and Roger Arrowsmith of East-West Partners.
“Regulatory action is tough on all of us,” said Burr, who has projects from Palm Coast to Nassau County. “Way back when, there weren’t a lot of regulations and we may be paying for it. It may be a comparison that will get me in trouble, but I compare it to Affirmative Action. There were so many wrongs for so long that, when the pendulum swung back, it swung way back.
“Most developers get it, though. This is, by and large, a responsible industry. Our biggest asset [as developers] is selling quality of life. If we build poorly, no one will come.”
Fletcher, who started Marsh Landing and is now involved in the Palencia development, said St. Johns County can be oppressive in its zeal to regulate growth.
“Palencia was originally named Marshall Creek and we had to change the name because we got beat up so badly,” he said, recalling years of battles with regulatory agencies. “We had the best consultants and we did it right. [As it turned out,] we also had to have the best lawyers.”
Arrowsmith’s company developed Eagle Harbor in Clay County and said a major problem there was overcoming the government’s disdain for Jacksonville.
“We will succeed only if we do things together,” said Arrowsmith, who drew laughter when he said that Eagle Harbor’s location at the early 1990s start was so remote that “I’d have to tell people we were on the road to Whitey’s Fish Camp, and they all knew where that was.”
“There was a mindset against Jacksonville,” said Arrowsmith. “Clay was having growing pains and they seemed to feel Jacksonville was competition. We had to work hard to convince the politicians and bureaucrats that we needed a different attitude. If Jacksonville had a bad school system, it reflects poorly on Clay. A business thinking of moving looks at the bigger city. If Jacksonville has a problem, we suffer, too.”
All agreed that government is slow to react to changes.
“They need to pay more attention to trends,” said Woodbury. “For years, St. Johns has looked on itself as a sleepy bedroom community. Now, it’s booming, but they still go by the old rules.
“The latest quarterly statistics were very meaningful: they show increases in home sales in Duval and Clay, and a slight decrease in St. Johns. It’s not the demand, which is higher than ever, but the supply. It’s simply very difficult to develop there.
“We’ve been trying to get our two communities going for over three years and just now are we getting to hearings before the County Commission. It’s good to be careful, and that’s what good developers want.”
The insinuation was clear to the 225 in the room: this has been going on too long.
“The politicians,” added Fletcher, “need to understand that what sustains this economy is the homebuilding business.”