by Michele Newbern Gillis
Staff writer
Even though Nocatee was approved for development by the St. Johns County Commission in February 2002, it will still be another 2-3 years before construction begins, said Roger O’Steen, CEO of The Parc Group, Inc. to the 200 real estate agents attending the Ponte Vedra Council quarterly breakfast meeting held at the Marsh Landing Country Club last month.
“Since the approval of the development order, we have had two levels of litigation,” said O’Steen. “One is a citizen challenge by The Sierra Club and the other is a legal challenge. The Sierra Club opposes us because they think the planned growth that comes along with a new town land use category is a bad thing.”
They beat the citizen challenge, but still have to go to court on the legal challenge in November.
“We have absolutely no reason to believe that we will not be anything but successful and that the plan will be defended,” he said.
After the legal process is complete, they will proceed with permitting and start construction in 2-3 years.
He said that as real estate evolves, so does development and that people want planned communities with all the added bonuses.
“One of the things we have learned in recent years is that people want to live in planned areas,” said O’Steen. “They want to live in an area where they have green ways, bike paths, hiking trails, golf cart paths, golf courses and planned amenities. They want to live in an area where there is a potential of having a village and a sense of community.”
He said this sense of community comes from having a walkable community where the residents can walk to restaurants, coffee shops, bike paths, church and parks.
“Our industry has evolved where planned communities are by far favored over fragmented, typical subdivision type communities,” said O’Steen. “Nocatee is an example of a development pattern that continues to evolve and that is an example of how you plan growth for the future.”
The 15,000-acre mixed-use project that will overlap St. Johns and Duval counties received approval to create a new land-use designation called New Town in May 2002.
With that designation, should come the ability to create a walkable town where with houses, offices, schools, churches, restaurants stores and parks all within walking distance of each other, much like downtown St. Augustine or the Jacksonville suburbs of San Marco and Avondale.
But, they have run into another snag.
“Nocatee was approved as a development of regional impact,” said O’Steen. “That changed the comprehensive plan in St. Johns County, but what it did not change was the zoning. It changed the zoning in Duval County, but not St. Johns County.”
The reason for that was due to the legal challenges they were facing from the Sierra Club.
“As a result, we were not able to proceed forward with the actual zoning of the property,” he said.
They are now seeking changes to the St. Johns County land development regulations.
“Those changes are consistent with the development pattern associated with developing a new town within Nocatee,” said O’Steen. “Those exceptions include such things as changing the distance between restaurants that sell alcohol and churches or schools. Also, currently under St. Johns County land use laws we have a restriction that if a building is wider than 120 feet, you have to have so much distance between that building and another building. The difficulty with that is that that does not promote a walkable community. So we are seeking 23 different exceptions to the current St. Johns County land use regulations that will be consistent with the land development pattern necessary to develop a walkable community consistent with the new town pattern plan for Nocatee.”
They should be in front of the Planning and Zoning board soon to ask for the exceptions.
An exception would apply only to Nocatee, not to the rest of the county or future developments.