Ponte Vedra Beach residents express concerns over PGA Tour development plans
Posted: August 25, 2014 - 6:59pm
By STUART KORFHAGE
stuart.korfhage@staugustine.com
Representatives from the PGA Tour told Ponte Vedra Beach residents that they aren’t planning some sprawling development and they aren’t running roughshod over zoning rules.
Not everyone at Monday’s meeting of the Ponte Vedra Beaches Coalition meeting counted themselves believers of what they were told, but at least they were all in the same place talking about it.
The tour’s request to the St. Johns County Planning and Zoning Agency on Aug. 7 for various waivers to a Planned Unit Development raised the eyebrows — and maybe the hackles — of some Ponte Vedra residents.
A few of them expressed their displeasure with the tour’s vague plans for future development in asking for the waivers. No one was more direct in her criticism than Mary Kohnke, a former St. Johns County commissioner.
“They wanted to have the rules waived,” Kohnke said at the meeting. “How can you waive what you do not have? You don’t know what it is.”
The property at issue is five total parcels already owned by the tour, which wants to merge it into one large parcel. The land is about 185 acres between The Players Stadium Course and Palm Valley Road.
Putting all the parcels together would allow the tour to develop the entire area as it sees fit — within the development rules. Otherwise, it would be forced to apply different restrictions to each separate parcel.
But the tour doesn’t want to abide by all the rules, detractors argued.
Kohnke was most upset with the four waivers requested for the Palm Valley Overlay District. Five other waivers requested do not pertain to the overlay district rules and were mostly portrayed as “deferments” by tour representatives.
The overlay waivers include flat roof criteria, the 10-foot natural buffer to adjacent property, the maximum length of buildings facing any Palm Valley Overlay District delineated roadway and the height of ground signs.
As for the signs waiver, engineer Bill Schilling Jr. of Kimley-Horn and Associates, Inc., said the tour might want a tower similar to what is found at the World Golf Village or Palencia entrances.
The non-overlay waivers include wetlands mitigation and wildlife habitat regulation. The tour said the studies have not been done for those issues yet, and the application even states that “The Applicant intends to provide this information through Incremental Master Development Plans as development occurs in the future.”
However, one waiver requested was to avoid the 35-foot height limit of buildings in coastal areas. The tour asked that “height would be limited to 35 feet for structures located adjacent to single-family residential development on the western side of the property. Structure height would be limited to 45 feet along Palm Valley Road, and would increase to 55 feet, and then 100 feet as buildings are located further from Palm Valley Road.”
The waivers were all granted by the PZA at the Aug. 7 meeting. The issue will be settled at a future meeting of the County Commission, but it is not yet on an agenda.
Commissioner Jay Morris was at the meeting Monday and asked residents to be patient with the tour. He said the organization has been a good partner over the years and that a compromise could be in the works.
“We are working on this,” Morris said. “No one is better to work with than the tour.
“This is their home jewel. They’re not going to do anything to screw this up. Let us work with the tour and work this out.”
Still, there was a bit of a disconnect between what some residents were looking to find out and what the tour is hoping to gain.
The tour’s stance is that the organization’s main goal now is to get the parcels together and have the rules of use finalized before planning anything specific there.
But some members of the public wondered aloud why the tour should be granted waivers without telling them exactly what they need the waivers for.
“Why do you need the waivers today?” asked James Sabo, president of the Ponte Vedra Beaches Coalition. “What’s the benefit to us in this community?”
That question was probably never truly answered, but Vernon Kelly, a consultant for the tour, did finally provide some insight into the tour’s development objectives an hour into the meeting.
Kelly said the most likely developments would include a small, five-star hotel as well as upscale retail and office space.
The property already has the approval for allowable uses that include: commercial, office, patio homes, multi-family, single family and special use. Mostly, the tour wants the flexibility to have those uses wherever they fit on the entirety of the property and not in “bubbles.”
“Nobody is going to be developing anything in this economy,” Kelly said. “If it is developed, it will be in a way that is complementary to The Players (Championship). We don’t want to build something that’s bad.”
That could be in the eye of the beholder, Kohnke argued.
“I do not trust the tour,” she said. “They (the PZA) never should have messed with our rules.”
