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In a stunning setback for Sandra Shank, developer of a planned 28-unit affordable housing apartment complex in Bunnell the city conceptually approved in 2020, Bunnell’s planning board rejected the project last week, citing flooding concerns by neighbors–among them a member of the planning board.
The 3-2 vote rejecting the site plan for Phoenix Crossings, the name of the development, may be appealed to the Bunnell City Commission, where Shank will make her case again. She will likely face as many or more opponents, many of them from the Pine Forest mobile home community that would be adjacent to the development on its south flank.
The property is at the end of West Howe Street and North 10th Street, which curves into Elins Street, just east of the city’s sewer plant and opposite of Pearson Plumbing.
Flooding may have been the main concern for residents objecting to the project and the three planning board members voting against it. But residents also spoke of concerns for their safety, as is often the case when affordable housing projects are in the works.
Most of the time the objection is the result of unjustified fears, misinformation or outright prejudice. In this case, residents fear living near a 28-unit apartment complex that would have from 70 to 100 residents, most of them young people who have aged out of group homes for foster children and have nowhere else to go. Group home residents in the foster care system tend to be those who could not be placed in families. They are not without issues.
Shank runs one such group home in Palm Coast. She conceived of Phoenix Crossings, the proposed development in Bunnell, as a bridge out of the group homes for people who have run out of housing options. Most of the group home residents in Palm Coast are filled with children from around the state rather than local children. That would also be the case at Phoenix Crossings, which could not fill its 28 apartments with young adults from the community, though it will also be open to other groups.
“I can tell you, the vast majority of these kids are good kids,” Shank told the audience at the planning board meeting. “These are kids that things happened to them that most of us as adults could not bear. And so they have trauma there, and we mitigate that trauma.” But once they turn 18, they can no longer be in those group homes. “That kid is then forced to either go to the street or go back to the abusive environment in which they came from. So now with Phoenix Crossings, they remain connected.”
Shank runs one such group home in Palm Coast. “You have not heard about us in 22 years. We have not been in news in 22 years,” she said. That was accurate about her group home. It’s not accurate about all local group homes, if making the news is the standard. One of the incidents that drew national and international attention was the result then-17-year-old Brendan Depa’s assault of a teacher’s aide at Matanzas High School in February 2023. He was in a group home at the time, and is now in state prison.
Public perception of his case was rarely free of prejudice–racial prejudice especially. Nevertheless it underscores the fact that residents’ fears about living next to young people who by definition have difficulties adjusting to society are not entirely irrational.
“I mean, we’re seniors. You want us all to get guns and take care of ourselves?” one resident of Pine Forest said. Ironically, the same community is within walking distance of the county jail on one side (and a sewer plant on the other). A fellow-resident spoke of individuals just released from the jail walking through their community, asking to use the phone, which makes residents anxious.
Shank introduced herself at the planning board as a local developer and a local resident. (Her homesteaded property is on Woodborn Lane in Palm Coast.) Curiously, she never mentioned that she chairs the Palm Coast Planning board and remains a member of the county’s Affordable Housing Committee, which she has also chaired.
“Just know that we are not going to be a nuisance to you. I am local. I’m not a developer that does not live in the community. I’m a developer that’s committed to my community,” Shank said. “My office is on site, case manager on site, my assistant on site.” (The complex would not cater only to young people.)
That’s all fine and good, opponents replied, but the concerns about flooding remain, as do concerns that she may sell the development to an organization that may not be local–like most of the organizations that, in fact, run group homes in the county.
Jimmy Townsend donated the 8 acres to Shank’s Abundant Life Ministries for the project. The Florida Housing Finance Corporation awarded Phoenix Crossings $6.25 million for construction. Shank secured another $750,000 through a bank in Atlanta. But the $6.25 million was contingent on her securing a so-called “firm loan commitment,” which she has not yet done. The finance corporation gave her one extension. She is seeking another, until late May, which suggests that the project has had its difficulties.
It is also unclear how, aside from the one case manager she mentioned, the residents at the complex will get the intense level of management they require, and with what resources Shank would pay for those services. The planning board did not ask those questions, which go to the management of the facility–and ultimately the safety of neighboring residents.
Susan and Jonathan Pearson, are Ormond Beach residents who own Pearson Plumbing, across the road from the site of Phoenix Crossings. “I have a very strong concern about this,” Jonathan said, “what’s going to come here, what is–the crime, or whatever is going to be involved with this. I mean, we’re back there, and then we’re going to be surrounded by–you know, it’s, a big issue.”
He seemed uncomfortable making the connection between the future potential residents and crime. He was more convincing when he addressed flooding issues. “I’ve been there for a long time, and I’m telling you right now, the property that is across from my shop that I bought from Habitat for Humanity, where all that storm drain runs to is where they’re talking about developing is full water all the time,” Pearson said. “That house that I have down there on the end almost flooded this year. The water was all the way up to the door of my shop, and they’re talking about building this right there. It’ll flood that whole area, it’ll definitely flood that trailer park, the retirement center, for sure. No doubt. That water has nowhere to go.”
It was that sort of concern the planning board seized on to oppose the site plan approval moments after it approved a modification to the site plan on a 3-2 vote.
Shank’s petition to the Florida Housing Finance Corporation for yet another extension on her requirement to secure financing for the project or lose the $6 million loan was more detailed about what had changed in the site plan, and what would be worrisome to neighbors, though they were never told about it at the meeting: “environmental reviews and soil borings identified unanticipated conditions at the subject property, including wetlands requiring public agency delineation and unstable soils inadequate to support the Development,” the petition stated (emphasis added).
The developer, the petition continued, “has undertaken additional environmental and engineering studies, and, as a result, has resolved to expand the retainage pond on the property in order to address these concerns. The concerned parties have preliminarily agreed to this solution, and [the developer] has revised construction drawings and resubmitted [it] for permitting.”
That permit is not forthcoming for now. Its fate is in the hands of the City Commission.
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