The Bunnell planning board on Tuesday approved the comprehensive plan change and rezoning of nearly 1,900 acres from agriculture to industrial, on land stretching from U.S. 1 to County Road 304. It is the single-largest rezoning of the kind in the city’s or county’s history and would reshape the character of both as surely as would the massive 8,000-home residential development proposed for west of the city.
Yet the planning board recommended approval on a pair of 3-1 votes without a single question, inquiry or comment.
The changes, which must be ratified by the city commission, are raising fears among neighboring residents that heavy industrial uses–like the fuel farm Palm Coast and Ormond Beach rejected–will be built there. The sudden proposal also has residents perplexed, and at times furious, over the breadth of the request and the speed of the process, with little vetting, no workshop, and limited public notice.
Planning Board member Lynn Lafferty is one of the owners of the land. She recused herself from Tuesday’s votes but not the meeting, though her silence merely echoed that of her colleagues on the board. It was an inexplicable display of collective muteness, if not irresponsibility, raising questions about what board members know and are not saying.
A routine question this and other planning boards typically ask of land owners or developers seeking rezonings was never asked Tuesday evening: What do you plan on developing there?
The attorney representing the landowner said nothing is planned for now. The board did not question her. Residents who addressed the board did not believe her.
“Nobody rezones their property to industrial without an end goal in mind,” Blake Neal, a third-generation Floridian and 25-year county resident who plans to raise a family in the local house his mother left him, told the board. “By saying otherwise, you are lying to our faces, some of which are your friends. The people who will benefit from this rezoning potential development are certainly not the citizens of this county.”
He added: “We must assume the worst, because you guys are not being transparent. And how can we trust you? How would you like a landfill or a chemical plant in your backyard? And why is it okay to put it in ours? What gives the city and the landowner the right to ruin everyone else’s properties? … You were all hoping we would be caught sleeping on this, forcing this through quietly, and you were wrong. We will not let you destroy our quality of life.”
Chelsea Herbert of Old Haw Creek Road in Bunnell, a city business owner and a long-time, vocal advocate for economic development, including industrial and commercial development, said for all that, “the size and intensity of this rezoning scares me to death. The potential of 1,842 acres of heavy industrial feet from our residents, feet from our drinking wells, scares me to death.” The rezoning, she said, would enable landfills, flammable storage facilities and chemical plants, among others.
Herbert, who is familiar with local land use laws, noted: “Rezoning a piece of property is not a property right, especially when the future land use map does not call for that designation.” But once the rezoning goes through, residents and the city would have no ability to stop any permissible development under the new zoning. It would then be a violation of property rights. She enumerated the reasons why what would become the third-largest industrial park in Florida is incompatible with its surroundings.
“We all know that in government, there’s always plans behind the scenes. And all of you in this room aren’t stupid,” Vicky Haley told the board, before referring to the previously proposed Belvedere Terminals fuel farm, whose representatives she claimed have continued to meet with local officials. (County government said there was no plan for such a fuel farm in unincorporated Flagler County. Bunnell has not issued a similar statement.)
Public opposition was not unanimous, but close. A business owner said the rezoning was very much needed because there’s a dearth of industrial land in Palm Coast and Bunnell, though he was exaggerating when he claimed that “Palm Coast does not allow anything, not a single thing.” He said the Bunnell proposal will allow for manufacturing “which we all rely on.” He ridiculed the not-in-my-back-yard reactions. “We all have great businesses here, and we could really thrive if we were able to have some leeway on these,” he said. “This is what we need here, period. This is what we need.”
The acreage starts just south of Bunnell along U.S. 1 and covers a V-shaped area west of U.S. 1 and north of County Road 303.
\The proposal is for the majority of the acreage–1,383 acres–to be heavy industrial, and 459 acres to be “agricultural community industrial,” or ACI zoning, though the distinction between the two will be lost on most people. ACI zoning, according to city code, “is to permit industrial uses that are compatible with and serve the agricultural and rural communities.” But those uses can be anything from Iron, sheet metal, millwork, culvert and concrete manufacturing would all be permitted, along with a slew of other uses most people would associate with industry, warehousing and manufacturing.
Tara Tedrow, the attorney representing the landowners, said the location fits in with key transportation corridors–U.S. 1, I-95, State Roads 11 and 100 and of course the Florida East Coast Railway.
“This is an incredible opportunity,” the attorney said, as “being able to take advantage of existing railway allows us to reduce vehicle miles traveled by having the transportation of goods both in our state and out of our state using existing railway. It is an incredible asset for any type of industrial development, too, whether that ranges from light and heavy users to be able to again, take advantage of having a spur connection, to have interconnectivity using the Florida East Coast Railway.”
The fuel farm was to build just such a spur when it was proposed for an area west of U.S. 1 to the north, in Palm Coast.
“We would like to look at those rezoning opportunities for the future and see how that can align with the city,” Tedrow said, repeatedly qualifying the application as one step toward industrial development, but without a specific development in mind. “These are kind of a theoretical planning exercise that we’re doing at this stage.”
She anticipated the audience’s skepticism. “I know that there are going to be folks in the room who might be upset because they don’t know exactly what is going to happen on this property,” Tedrow said. “I can certainly appreciate the desire to have an understanding and a knowledge of exactly what might come. That’s not what happens at a zoning and a future land use entitlement stage.”
That’s not always true. Routinely, when land owners or developers have asked for a land use change in Palm Coast or Bunnell, they pair their request with an overview of the desired, specific uses down the line. (A landowner did so last January in Bunnell, looking to bring a concrete manufacturing plant. He was turned down.) The absence of so much as a glimmer of what might be developed there only intensified the public’s suspicion that something is in the works. The land owners and the city just don’t want to say what.
It’s the landowners’ right. It’s not the city’s, unless a specific project is being developed under a permissible and temporary state confidentiality cloak, though that ship has sailed for the fuel farm.
“This is a very long-term legacy project for a family that owns the land, will continue to own and be part owners of this land, and want to see something that the city has also said is an area that they want this type of growth,” Tedrow said.
The attorney did not speak only as the landowners’ representative, but in a remarkable shift of focus, spoke as if she were the city’s economic development director, telling the city what it “had” to be doing to diversify its tax base and economic opportunities. She cited city documents, city speakers (and the mayor) and staff reports, and also at times stretched the truth: “I was told that 50 to 60% of your property in the city of Bunnell does not pay ad valorem taxes. That is not a sustainable framework for local government.” In fact, 49 percent of properties didn’t pay taxes as of the 2024 tax rolls, according to Property Appraiser Jay Gardner.
She then repeated the disputed claim that “development is needed to maintain levels of service for residents,” implying that development not only pays for itself but helps defray other costs–a contention Bunnell’s development of Grand Reserve, which will have grown the city by a third by the time it is built out, has proven to be inaccurate.
The planning board’s vote was only a recommendation to the City Commission, which will have to ratify the vote before the comprehensive plan amendment is sent to the state. The state will review the proposal and issue recommendations to the city before the commission can again take up the request and approve it in a final reading of the ordinance.
The planning board had no questions for her. Nor did the staff. The audience had questions and concerns–including Sean Moylan, county government’s assistant county attorney. He told the board of the county’s ongoing effort to launch a joint planning committee enabling “more thoughtful coordination” in annexations and developments along boundaries between the county and cities. He also said that the county will be providing comments about the comprehensive plan, as local government entities are entitled to do on such plans.
“The things that we’ll be commenting on the most would be the impacts to county road 304, which is in horrible shape,” Moyland said, as well as on stormwater and on fire services. “A development of this magnitude would certainly have a need to increase the ability to provide services,” he said–again belying the claim that development pays for itself, or results in tax windfalls: it can be more costly for local government.
The first responder who questioned the claim that there are no development plans afoot said he was not opposed to growth, but was “deeply concerned about how we grow and at what cost.” He does not see rezoning 1,800 acres to industrial as “responsible growth,” especially as a matter of public safety. “We’re definitely not equipped to handle a major industrial incident,” he said, referring to local fire services. “We’re just not. I’ve been in the forefront. I commanded incident scenes. We don’t have the specialized hazmat teams. We have limited resources, stretched staffing, believe me, and aging equipment. We already doing more with less, and that’s just on a normal day. If this large-scale rezoning is approved, we’re talking about a whole new level of risk.” Ignoring that is “gambling with lives,” he said.
Some residents spoke of how the rezoning would impact their immediately adjacent property. “Was not aware that this was ever a possibility, nor would we have probably purchased our house,” one such resident said, showing the board where her property stands today, and how she’d lose any prospective buyer in the future. She linked the rezoning to the possibility of a fuel farm there, “which this is opening Pandora’s Box. Approving this is allowing this to happen,” she said. “ We don’t want to be the next Erin Brockovich story.”
Others called the rezoning “ridiculous,” “scary,” “drastic,” “a risk,” they questioned the lack of transparency, the lack of proper public notice, even to residents neighboring the property, the suddenness and speed of the proposal, without reflection. One asked why a decision of that magnitude was not placed on a referendum (though that would be very unusual) and several referred to the fuel farm and associated risks.
Remarkably, when it was time to vote, one of the planning board members told the crowd that even if the panel voted down the proposal, “that has no bearing on what the commission will do, absolutely none.” In other words, the city commission could vote it up or down. He was right about the commission’s ultimate controlling authority. But to suggest that a planning board has “absolutely” no bearing on its commission’s decisions was a gross misrepresentation of the planning board’s advisory role, the vetting process in general, and the board’s reflection of public sentiment and its own judgments. Otherwise, there would be no need for its existence.
The board then voted on the two items, passing them both, 3-1.
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