Westward Expansion: The Deal Changes

In 2008, Rayonier was already talking to the city about this land — described in the news at the time as “contiguous to a westward extension of Palm Coast Parkway.” The loop road. The company had teamed up with Cousins Properties to build it out. Back then, it went by a different name: Flagler Three Lakes.

On July 15, the plan went before the Planning Board. Unanimous rejection. Then it was pulled from the City Council agenda, and a revised plan goes before Council Tuesday.

It’s not a normal plan. At this stage in the process, you’d normally see drawings of streets, houses, and elevations — a visual representation of a community taking shape. Here, there are descriptions of intent, and a table showing how the land-use numbers shifted, in percentages, from the June 30 draft to this one. So what changed after the Planning Board said no?

A massive jump in industrial. A real drop in single-family homes. But the Planning Board’s actual objection was simpler than either number: not enough land set aside for jobs and businesses, compared to how much is going to rooftops. Here’s what these new numbers actually do about that.

None of it is a promise to build. The document says so itself: the mix of uses in Table 8 is “not intended to operate as minimum levels of development or commitments to develop.” Set the land aside, and if the jobs never come — if the industrial and commercial never gets built — nothing here stops the landowner from doing what’s always been the easiest option: building more houses.

Phase 1 calls for 1.5 million square feet of industrial, and that phase runs out to 2036.

For scale: the BJ’s shopping center — the whole plat, parking lot included — is 1,382,015 square feet of land.

Then, in Phase 2 (2036–2046), 2.75 million square feet of industrial gets set aside.

Pine Lakes Industrial Park, out at US-1 and Palm Coast Parkway, sits on 2,827,253 square feet of land.

Here’s what didn’t make the trip from the old DRIs into the new MPD.

We’ve covered this ground before — the two 2010 DRIs bound the developer to real money and real deadlines: north of $98 million in combined transportation payments to the state and county, tens of millions more for schools, dozens of acres of parkland and open space deeded straight to the city, a workforce housing requirement, and a hard promise that water and sewer would be in place before anyone moved in. Dollar figures, deadlines, deeds. None of it made it into the MPD headed to Council Tuesday.

The Flagler County School Board’s own attorney put a number on what that transition costs. At the July 15 Planning Board hearing, she laid it out plainly: a projected $188 million impact from the development, against roughly $111 million recoverable through standard impact fees — leaving a $77 million deficit. She tied that shortfall directly to what’s being lost in the move away from the DRIs.

That’s what got taken off the table. Here’s what’s going on it instead.

Nothing. Not yet, anyway. The revised MPD defers six separate pieces of this deal to agreements that don’t exist.

A utility agreement for water, sewer, and reuse — still to be negotiated, still needing its own Council vote. The document’s own recitals admit the original 2010 utility agreements for both DRIs have already been terminated. What’s on file now is intent, not a contract.

A new water agreement, because — in the document’s own words — there’s currently no public capacity to serve this land.

A new sewer agreement. Same finding, filed separately.

A development agreement for the roads themselves — the loop road, the connectors out to CR2209, CR205, and CR13. The roads at the center of this whole fight aren’t locked into what goes to Council Tuesday. They’re a future negotiation.

One or more development agreements to handle level-of-service and concurrency generally — each one its own vote, down the road.

A sign-off from the Flagler County School District, separate from the city’s, on however the schools piece gets resolved.

Six deferrals. Zero signatures. The 2010 DRIs put $98 million in transportation money into a document with the ink already dry. What goes to Council Tuesday puts a promise to talk about it later.

You wanted certainty. What you’re getting is an IOU with six blank lines where the numbers go.