PANAMA CITY — The Bay County Commission on Tuesday endorsed a future 50-year development plan that calls for self-sustaining communities catering to people at least 55 years old.
The commission agreed to transmit to the state’s Department of Economic Opportunity a proposed large-scale comprehensive plan amendment outlining how the St. Joe Co. plans to develop 23,400 acres of its property in the coming decades.
On April 11, St. Joe Co. submitted an application to amend the currently approved West Bay Sector plan by adding 23,400 acres of St. Joe-owned property in Bay County west of the current sector plan, as well as 11,000 contiguous acres in Walton County. The application also retitled the plan as the “Bay-Walton Sector Plan.”
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The property in Bay County is west of State 77, north and west of West Bay to the Bay-Walton county line, including Breakfast Point. The total plan acreage with the amendment in Bay County is now 97,000 acres.
Commissioner Mike Thomas voted to transmit the plan, where it will be reviewed by a wide range of state agencies, but he had an issue with language in it that required a Bay County staff review of the plan every five years.
“If we don’t like what we see here, we ought to be saying something now,” he said. “But if we’re going to come back and make recommendations as a government what the private sector does [with its property], I just disagree with that.”
But other commissioners said they see the need for the five-year collaborative review with the St. Joe Co. of how the plan is proceeding, and county staff said the review would not delve into St. Joe’s business plans.
“A project this big requires we discuss it,” County Commission Chairman Guy Tunnell said.
But Thomas pointed out the plan requires St. Joe officials to come back every year and give an update of how the plan is proceeding. And, he said, each time a specific development comes up for review through a “detailed specific area plan” (DSAP), infrastructure and other issues related to the new development have to be analyzed.
“Inside that huge sector plan there may be 20 or 30 or 40 DSAPs in there,” Thomas said after the meeting. “When those DSAPs are done, they have to show all that stuff — water, sewer drainage.”
He said the five-year review of the plan is overkill. “It is creating more work for staff, which is wasting money,” Thomas said.
Questions about West Bay
During the meeting, Commissioner George Gainer said that instead of approving the major addition to the existing West Bay Sector Plan, he would like the focus to be on moving ahead with the goals outlined in the original plan developed in 2003.
“Really, nothing has happened out there yet,” he said. “I’ve got a little problem with them just diving right into this [amendment] without seeing some kind of indication that the (plan) that’s more centralized in Bay County is going to come into fruition, and that we didn’t make any mistakes there,” he said. “And I think there were a couple of representations that were made that didn’t come about, and are not going to come about, that I think we need to know and the citizens of Bay County need to know.”
Thomas said St. Joe Co. hasn’t veered from the plans it outlined in the original sector plan, but noted that development hasn’t occurred at the expected pace because of the down economy.
But Gainer said that’s not entirely correct, pointing out St. Joe has not built a new corporate office in Bay County that company officials had promised.
“As you say, the economy went south,” Gainer said. “But still, one of the big reasons that I voted for the sector plan originally was that we were going to get the home office of St. Joe.”
Jorge Gonzalez, senior vice president of development for the St. Joe Co., said the company decided to invest in infrastructure to bring in new industries as opposed to constructing the new corporate headquarters. He said the company has not given up on one of the original ideas in the West Bay Sector plan — using the airport as an economic engine to attract industry and economic development projects.
“In fact, our determination is as strong as it’s ever been,” he said.
Gonzalez said St. Joe has had one success by attracting defense contractor ITT Exelis to the VentureCrossings Enterprise Centre next to the Northwest Florida Beaches International Airport.
“Maybe the expectation was a little too high, but having Exelis out at VentureCrossings,” he said, “it’s a 100,000-square-foot building; it is a pretty big success.”
He said the economic downturn, combined with the 2010 Deepwater Horizon oil spill, slowed the development plans outlined in the initial sector plan.
“That clearly created some challenges in terms of the initial momentum, but I can tell you as the economy has started improving, people have started feeling a little bit better about themselves, the phone calls have been increasing, the interest from the industry and different companies,” he said.
He said through this amendment St. Joe is adding an adult retirement component of the plan.
“We think this is complementary to the area,” he said.
The details
The new Bay-Walton Sector Plan provides a 50-year vision for directing growth, development and environmental resource protection.
The plan, which has been compared to The Villages in Central Florida, proposes five self-sustaining “Town Center” communities that are “regional in focus.”
“Town Centers are to provide the commercial, retail, employment and service needs of a broad region and be the downtown places for the surrounding Village Center land uses,” the county staff report states.
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The Bay County portion of the plan calls for allowing 145,494 dwelling units, with 40 to 60 percent of them being age restricted to people at least 55 years old. The amendment estimates that at the conclusion of the 50-year planning horizon, the projected population in the Bay County component of the sector could reach as high as 319,213.
The amendment outlines the maximum number of land uses in Bay County, including: 4.5 million square feet of retail/commercial uses, 6 million square feet of industrial use, 11.2 million square feet of office/light industrial and manufacturing use, 2,780 hotel rooms, 19 golf courses and 1,350 hospital beds.
WaltonCounty has approved of its amendment to the plan and will be transferring it over to the state with Bay County’s plan. Walton’s plan calls for 24,704 residential units, 510,000 square feet of retail/commercial uses, 113,000 square feet of office/light industrial and manufacturing uses, 530 hotel rooms and 81 golf holes.