Cascades: It’s Back and It’s Very Different
Tuesday, the same 331 acres come back before Palm Coast City Council.
Third round.
This time, the fight isn’t really about how many homes get built.
It’s about what kind — and who might end up owning them.
The 416 cap goes back to 2005, when Flagler County set it before this land was even part of the city.
Since 2023, there have been three rezoning attempts to raise it.
Round one: developer asked for 958, then 875, then 850 units; Council held the line at 416.
Round two: a rehearing over a separate parcel dispute; the 416 cap held.
Round three, now: 743 units.
The important change is the zoning itself.
In 2023, this land got Single Family Residential-1. SFR-1.
Detached houses only.
This time, the application asks to rezone the land entirely, from SFR-1 to MPD.
Staff didn’t like this.
In their denial, they wrote:
"The difference between the current zoning districts (SFR-1 and PRS) and the proposed Master Planned Development (MPD) is the introduction of attached single-family units — townhomes — as a permitted housing type."
Attached means units sharing walls, built in a row, on tight lots: 18-foot lot widths, minimal separation between driveways.
These are apartments.
The code doesn’t distinguish a townhome from an apartment by how it’s built.
It distinguishes them by ownership: an apartment is one owner, units leased out.
Nothing in the application requires these units to be owner-occupied.
Nothing prevents the entire community from being platted this way and then sold, in bulk, to a single investment entity that rents the units out one by one — same landlord, same leasing office, same tenant turnover as any apartment complex, without the classification ever changing.
That model has a name in the housing industry: build-to-rent.
The landowners’ intent is unknown, but this zoning would allow it.
Staff’s numbers describe exactly the kind of dense, tightly-packed product this model runs on: open space cut from the required 40 percent down to 20. Minimum townhome lot width down to 18 feet.
Setbacks tight enough that staff flagged, in writing, minimal separation between townhome driveways.
Staff’s conclusion: the departures from standard code don’t earn the public benefit an MPD is supposed to require in exchange.
Recommendation: deny.
The Planning and Land Development Regulation Board heard both applications on August 19.
Neither survived.
On the rezoning to MPD, the board didn’t just decline to endorse it — they voted 4-0 to recommend Council deny it outright, matching staff’s findings exactly.
Tuesday, Council decides whether to follow its board’s recommendation, or override it.