The Bunnell City Commission on Monday approved the final plat for the final phase of Grand Reserve, the 847-home golf community subdivision that will have increased the city’s population by more than half by the time it is built out and is already changing the city’s politics. The sixth phase of Grand Reserve consists of 141 houses on 100 acres.
Grand Reserve, at the northeast of the city, abutting Palm Coast’s E Section (notably without any points of entry into Palm Coast) is one of Flagler County’s largest ongoing developments and the largest in Bunnell’s history.
The Bunnell commission embraced the development on assumptions that it would help the city bulk up its tax base and finance needed infrastructure improvements in the city. But revenue has not met expectations, not least because a large proportion of the new houses have partial or full exemptions from the property tax, beyond the homestead exemption that applies universally. That disproportion affects the entire city. Based on the 2024 tax roll, only 51 percent of Bunnell properties pay taxes, according to Property Appraiser Jay Gardner.
Final plat approval is the step at which a local government ratifies the mapping and addressing of individual lots as they will be recorded at the clerk’s office.
Commissioner Pete Young alone raised concerns about the latest platting, addressing Grand Reserve as a whole: for all its size and mass of houses, it still has only two entry and exit points, one on U.S. 1, one on State Road 100. “This seems like a lot of houses for just having two ways in and two ways in, two ways out,” Young said.
“I worked a lot of accidents, fatalities, in neighborhoods and in Palm Coast,” Young, a retired traffic homicide investigator with the Florida Highway Patrol, said. “When we closed down the road, we closed it down for hours and hours. But most of those roads there in Palm Coast, there’s another way out of the neighborhood. In this case, there wouldn’t be another way out of the neighborhood for the residents, and the road would be closed for hours. That’s my that was my concern.”
In essence, when the Bunnell city administrations and commission approved the development order of the Planned Unit Development years ago, they did so carelessly and with short-sighted horizons.
Joe Parsons, Bunnell’s community development director, explained it in diplomatic terms: “Although it would possibly make sense to have an additional access, unfortunately it wasn’t approved that way,” Parsons said of the Grand Reserve PUD.
Parsons then took advantage of the case to press the point with a remarkable caution to a generally hands-off, if not irresponsibly uninvolved, commission when it comes to planning concerns: “I think it’s important to note, that is why it’s incredibly important that we make sure we look at everything with future PUDs that may be under review currently, or that come up in the future,” Parsons said. “That way we can hopefully have the foresight to figure out, hey, this is important now, that we look at it and that it will impact the future as badly. But at this point our hands are somewhat tied on that, so there’s nothing we can do to have another access.”
Everyone in the room knew what Parsons was referring to: the Bunnell commission is currently reviewing the planned unit development agreement for a mammoth development called the Reserve at Haw Creek, a proposed 8,000-house development that would dwarf Grand Reserve and would be the largest single development since Palm Coast began construction in the late 1960s. The Reserve would sprawl west and south of the city. The city’s planning board has analyzed the planning document rigorously. The City Commission, with occasional exceptions, has not. The state raised objections in the planning document, which is moving toward regulatory approval, though with further work by the administration.
Bunnell originally approved Grand Reserve in 2000 when it was called Oak Branch. Back then it was a planned unit development of 157 houses. It never got past a few houses. The housing crash stopped construction. Jacksonville-based D.R. Horton, the home builder, bought the subdivision in 2017, turned it into a master planned development, and won approval for 686 houses in six phases, increasing the total to 847 since through subsequent amendments, on nearly 700 acres.
Bunnell’s population before Grand Reserve began in 2010 had a population of 2,676, according to the Census. Today, the city’s population is at 3,500, a 31 percent increase almost entirely attributable to Grand Reserve. The subdivision has been changing the city’s politics, too.
The City Commission, previously stocked with residents of Saw Mill Estates, is now seeing an increasing number of representatives elected from Grand Reserve. Both new members of the commission elected in the March election, David Atkinson and Dean Sechrist, were elected from Grand Reserve. They are neighbors on Birdie Way.
The subdivision has shifted the political center of gravity to such an extent as to all but negate the power of South Bunnell, the predominantly Black section of town, to win representation on the commission. Before Grand Reserve, a South Bunnell representatives was almost always on the commission.
The development agreement called for houses of 1,200 square feet at a minimum, on 4,000 square foot lots, or 40 feet wide and 115 feet deep. All road construction, including striping, stop bars (or speed bumps) were built by the developer, along with conservation easements, retention ponds, subdivision entry walls, and passive and active recreational areas. The subdivision is administered by a homeowner association responsible for operation, maintenance, and control of all common areas and common facilities, including signage, landscaping, stormwater management and private roads, with association levies. All homeowners are required to be members of the association. In 2018, the plan called for substantial completion of the subdivision within 15 years, or by 2033.
