The Flagler County Commission is moving toward adopting a long-required ordinance regulating the county airport’s flight-zones approaches. The ordinance applies to land use around the airport, restricting or prohibiting certain structures or vegetation, to minimize risks to and enhance the safe operation of planes. A 2016 sate law requires all local governments with airports in their midst to adopt such an ordinance. Flagler County is late, but finally doing so.
Some residents surrounding the airport who have been objecting to the seemingly perpetual touch-and-go flights of a flight school at the airport, and complaining about the noise, will be disappointed. The ordinance does nothing to address flights or airport use, which is not in the county’s jurisdiction anyway, and nominally addresses noise. In the main, the ordinance ratifies practices already in place.
“This is a a requirement through DOT to preserve the airspace,” Flagler County Growth Management Director Adam Mengel told the County Commission in a workshop Monday. “And so we really shouldn’t be thinking in any other terms other than that. This is something to protect your public investment in your airport itself.”
The ordinance regulates the permissible height of vegetation or structures, the use of land within the noise-regulated zone, the use of land subject to overflights, and other uses that could result in impeding in-flight visual or electronic interference or even aircraft bird strike hazards.
Airport protection overlay zoning primarily concerns obstruction hazards which may impact the vertical and horizontal airspace surrounding the airport. The zoning identifies incompatible uses that should be discouraged or prohibited near the airport-including house construction.
Obstruction hazards “endanger the lives and property of users of an airport and of the occupants of land in its vicinity by reducing the size of the area available for aircraft taking off, maneuvering, or landing, thus tending to destroy or impair the utility of the Airport and the public investment” in it, the ordinance states.
The ordinance establishes two zones: the airport height notification zone, and the airport overflight zone. The two together form the overflight zone. Residential construction is prohibited within a certain length of the runways (half the longest runway’s length, from each runway’s end points). Those distances do extend slightly past Belle Terre Boulevard and a little east of Seminole Woods Boulevard, encompassing some existing residential houses. Mengel calculated that there are existing, vacant lots that could be built on. The ordinance would prohibit construction there.
One of the airport’s runways could be extended from 5,500 to 6,500 feet if there was a need for it, Airport Director Roy Sieger said. The other runway “will never be extended.”
In May 2023 the County Commission, against its own Planning Board’s recommendation, cleared the way for a 240-unit apartment complex beyond the northwest end of two of the county airport’s runways, and east of Aldi, the grocery store. The Planning Board had recommended keeping the general commercial and industrial zoning rather than converting it to high-density residential. The complex would have been in the zone where no residential construction would be allowed.
“Luckily,” Mengel said, “it sounds like we’re out of that business. So it’s going to end up being another big box, the way it sounds.”
“It would be a taking if this was adopted,” Mengel said, meaning that the government would have to compensate the land owners for preventing them from profiting from the land, “because what would happen is new residential construction occurring on those residential lots would be prohibited. Those that exist now would be treated as non conformities.” Residents and homeowners could continue living there. But if a catastrophic event were to destroy a house, that house could not be rebuilt there.
That’s not new. Years ago, Mengel said, the county bought land that had been plated for houses east of the airport, on the west side of Seminole Woods Boulevard. Yet a church and a new Palm Coast fire station are approved or under construction in some of the overlays. Those may be approved through special permissions, as was the case with a cell monopole at Flagler Palm Coast High School and even a temporary construction crane at AdventHealth Palm Coast. “We try to catch them as we can, city and us both working together,” Mengel said. “For the most part, we’ve done a pretty good job, thankfully, and that’s been reflected in the safety of our airspace.”
So how will people know whether their land is under one airport overlay or another? The county would have to develop a database enabling property owners or residents or businesses to plug in an address and know precisely whether they are under any of the restrictions or prohibitions, and what those would be. At least that’s the approach Mengel is recommending.
Local governments may implement the ordinance two ways. One is through a joint agreement (an “interlocal agreement”) between the affected local governments. That would include Flagler County, Palm Coast and Bunnell. If Flagler Beach annexes the western portion of John Anderson Highway that will include the Veranda Bay development, the agreement would include Flagler Beach as well. The second avenue is to create an airport joint planning board. When the administration discussed the approach in 2018, the joint agreement was the preferred route.
Public hearings are expected on March 3 and March 17. Commissioners have no objection to the ordinance, which has been discussed previously–and requested by the commission for two years, according to Commissioner Leann Pennington. It’s not clear why it’s taken this long for it to be drafted.
“I do feel that this zoning ordinance is very important to our airport,” Commissioner Kim Carney said in January. “If we grow as we grow, whatever the situation is the state is requiring it.”
