As yet more development reaches the home-construction stage, look for significantly more construction at or near the periphery of Palm Coast in coming months–the kind of development that has at least one City Council member concerned over a potential “nightmare” for existing residents contending with the activity.
The Palm Coast City Council and its planning board between them approved different steps for a trio of developments in north and south Palm Coast that will add a combined 689 single-family homes to the city’s inventory.
The approvals were for the final plat of Phase 2B of Sawmill Branch off U.S. 1, the final plat of Seminole Palms Phase 1 on the west side of Seminole Woods Boulevard, north of Grand Landings Parkway, and for the subdivision master plan of Sawmill Branch Phase 3.
Platting is the mapping and subdividing of a property that provides a scaled blueprint for infrastructure construction, including roads and utilities and where homes will be situated, before homes are built. A preliminary plat can be approximate. A final plat more precisely delineates property lines after development plans have been approved by the local government. Those are the final survey-based drawings recorded with local authorities.
The Sawmill Branch at Palm Coast Phase 2B final plat will add 252 single family homes on a development spreading west of U.S. 1., totaling almost 500 homes when the first phase is included. The new phase spreads on 125-acre west of the roundabout at Matanzas Woods Parkway and north of the Phase 2A subdivision. Infrastructure construction there began in 2021.
The development is part of the Palm Coast Park Development of Regional Impact, or DRI (a DRI is a large scale development planned at a general level, within which different developers may develop different subdivisions.) In its origins Sawmill Creek was originally designed as a 1,000-acre master-planned community ultimately to have 1,300 homes, within the 4,700-acre Palm Coast Park DRI, which runs west of U.S. 1 from Palm Coast Parkway to Matanzas Woods Parkway. The planned development was approved in 2011, and will have a total of five phases. Saw Mill Branch will add two more phases.
The city’s planning board on Wednesday recommended approval of Phase 3’s subdivision master plan. That phase will add 278 single-family homes on 143 acres on lots with minimum sizes of 6,000 square feet. (The subdivision master plan covers 488 acres.) As in other phases, internal sidewalks will serve pedestrians and bicyclists, connecting through the neighboring subdivisions (or phases) to the 10–foot wide pedestrian trail along the west side of U.S. 1.
“The entitlements have been in place for many, many years in the subdivision,” Estelle Lens, the senior planner, said. “The different developments are being built out now.” City Council member Theresa Pontieri wanted to ensure that acceleration and deceleration lanes out of the subdivision would be in place. It wasn’t clear whether they would be, but a site development manager said such lanes “would have to be approved by DOT,” the state Department of Transportation, which would decide whether the lanes are required.
Future phases will include a “spine” road that will tie the different phases of the development, the site development manager said, connecting to Old Kings Road, thus diminishing adjacent traffic flow onto U.S. 1. That spine road was part of the plans submitted to the planning board.
The subdivision master plan of Phase 3 will not go before the City Council. “With that phase, they have to show us the layout and the plans for the spine road that’s going to connect over to U.S. 1 further north,” Lens said. There will be added traffic signals funded by the transportation department when phases 4 and 5 are developed.
Seminole Palms Phase 1 will plat and subdivide 68 acres for 159 single-family homes about 1,650 feet north of Grand Landings Parkway. 9The entire project, all phases included, will consist of 451 single family homes.) It is bordered on the south by the future Citation Boulevard Extension. It is part of a master-planned development th City Council approved in 2021. Infrastructure construction started a year ago.
The item drew no questions from the council and no public comment, at least not immediately. At the end of the meeting, Pontieri raised a concern.
“I would like consensus from my colleagues to maybe get a presentation from staff as to what we’re looking at construction-wise for road improvements as well as developments over the next 12 months,” Pontieri said. She spoke of her recurring experience of driving through St. Johns County for work, where road and development constructions intersect often. “I see the amount of construction that’s taking place even on that area which used to be very quiet side of St. Johns County,” she said, “and it is a nightmare. If anybody’s going through St. Johns County–and there’s no disrespect to our neighboring county, but it’s a nightmare. So I want to make sure that we’re not setting ourselves up for that.”
Mayor David Alfin turned to Lauren Johnston, who had moments earlier been appointed acting city manager, to judge the feasibility of such a presentation. Johnston, with the council’s consensus, said it would be prepared for a meeting soon.
No sooner had Pontieri spoken about the potential “nightmare”–well, a few days later–than the county issued an alert about the closing of Old Kings Road at U.S. 1, to accommodate the construction of a roundabout by the developers of Sawmill Creek.
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