by Michele Newbern Gillis
Staff Writer
The ability to buy a brand new house on the east side of 3rd Street at the beach is almost unheard of unless you buy an existing house, tear it down and build new.
But, Richard Toomey and Joseph Cronk have found a way.
Toomey, president of Residential/Commercial Jacksonville and co-owner of South Beach Village Inc., and Cronk, president of Cronk Duch Partners and co-owner of South Beach Village, are working on a joint venture to develop a piece of land at the gateway to Jacksonville Beach into a new housing community.
Beachside Village will have 15 homes.
“The value of this community is that you get a new home between new homes,” said Toomey.
South Beach Village, Inc. is made up of Cronk Duch Partners, which is designing, developing and building the community, and Residential Jacksonville, which is marketing the community.
“There will be a consistent character to the homes, but there will also be individuality between each house,” said Cronk. “We have a few floor plans that we use as sort of a starting model and we are developing from there.”
Toomey and Cronk are working together on every aspect of bringing this development to fruition.
Beachside Village will be bordered by St. Augustine Boulevard, 3rd Street and 30th Avenue South in Jacksonville Beach. Toomey owned part of the land for the past eight years. He went through a process with the City of Jacksonville Beach to rezone the land to commercial, but it didn’t come to pass.
So, Toomey ended up buying the remainder of the land and Beachside Village was born.
Homes in the community will be available in two sizes. The West Indies/Key West style development will have homes that are 2,100 square feet size that will start in the low $500,000’s and 2,750 square feet that will start in the high $500,000’s.
“The houses will have standing seam metal roofs, front porches, white picket fences, stone flooring, granite countertops, lush landscaping and brick pavers,” said Toomey. “There will be a park setting built inside the community. It will be a walled community, not gated.”
Though the community cannot be accessed from 3rd Street by car, the homeowners will have access to 3rd Street by private gates to the sidewalk and street parking.
Construction will start on the houses in April and Toomey feels that the first residents should be able to move in January 2005.
So far, seven lots have been reserved.