Senior living facility not right for Old Florida wetlands

Palm Coast Observer
Opinion

Senior living facility welcome, just not in Old Florida wetlands

Dear Editor:
Recently, the Grand Haven subdivision proposed constructing a senior living facility with 216 condominium-style units, assisted living accommodations, a nursing facility and a commercial area for shopping, etc. This would consist of a half-dozen five-story buildings tightly bunched on the corner of Blare Drive and Colbert Lane.

While the idea of adding another senior living facility to the city of Palm Coast stirs no emotions in me, the area at which the facility is proposed to be built is extremely unsettling to me and too many other residents of The Woodlands neighborhood.

The facility would be placed on land that is currently zoned as conservation in exchange for a 16-acre tract of land that is currently zoned to potentially allow one house per acre. While the attempt to placate the residents who live near the land in question is admirable, I would like to point out that the 16 acres that would be rezoned to conservation is, according to the Flagler County property appraiser website, already zoned as conservation.

This land is also landlocked within the neighborhood, having no access to any major roadways. The land’s location and home restriction, which would allow for a total of only 16 homes to be built, make this property an extremely undesirable piece of land to a developer, so it would likely never be developed anyway.

That being said, even if the 16 acres were to ever be developed, the few houses that the land would accommodate would have a far smaller impact than the senior facility on The Woodlands neighborhood and the wildlife in the area. A typical home has four residents; if you do the math, 16 houses with four residents adds up to 64 residents, which would have a substantially smaller impact than a facility with 200 plus residents and their visitors, employees, shoppers, commercial vehicles and emergency vehicles.

My husband and I moved to Palm Coast three years ago. Out of all the beautiful houses we looked at in Palm Coast, we fell in love with the oldest and plainest one. We fell for this one not because of the house but because of the area it is in, which is laced with huge, beautiful old oak and cypress trees. The neighborhood is tucked away in a forested paradise and surrounded on the east side by conservation land in a city where most of the neighborhoods have been clear cut. This neighborhood is called The Woodlands for a reason, and it should stay that way.

Many of the residents in this area feel the same way and moved to this area because of this feature. Developing these woods would be like destroying the golf course in Grand Haven. Just as the golf course attracted many of the residents of Grand Haven to that neighborhood, the woods attracted many of us to The Woodlands.

In addition to decreasing our property values and the loss of the woods that attracted many of us Woodlands residents to this neighborhood, building on this land will increase traffic in the area. We have no sidewalks and very little street lighting in this area and already have a problem with speeding vehicles and pedestrians. The facility plans to have an entrance off Blare Drive near the corner of Colbert Lane and Blare Drive which also serves as an entrance to Daytona State College, making it a busy intersection. There is a bend in the road on both Colbert Lane and Blare Drive as they approach the intersection, making it dangerous for pedestrians and cars. Adding another entrance would be a disaster especially when you involve the commercial vehicles that will be delivering food to the senior facility and goods to the commercial area.

Other concerns that have been raised are about drainage in the neighborhood and the impact that this development will have on the Graham Swamp Trail. We already have a drainage problem in this neighborhood, and much of the water that builds up in the neighborhood eventually runs from our yards into the wetlands that are to be developed. I am not an expert on drainage, so I can’t say a whole lot about this, but I know that many of the residents in the Woodlands are concerned about how this development will impact our drainage.

The development would be placed alongside the Colbert Lane entrance to the Graham Swamp Trail, which is a beautiful wood-plank pedestrian and bicycle trail running through the Graham Swamp from Colbert Lane to Old Kings Road, which provides a peek into the majestic natural beauty of Old Florida woods. Parts of this trail near the Colbert Lane entrance will be impacted by this development.

The construction of this facility does not just affect residents of The Woodlands; it affects anyone who appreciates the beauty of the giant moss-covered oak and cypress trees. This land is a jewel in the community and should be embraced and left unaltered.

I would like to suggest that the city encourage developers to demolish or renovate the abandoned commercial businesses and plazas that are nothing but an eye sore to the community, instead of clearing wooded areas for development. If we offered developers incentives for cleaning up the city in this way, it would not only enhance the aesthetics of the city but would encourage the selling of some of the properties that have been sitting empty for years.

This proposal has already passed by the planning board at the community meeting which was held on Aug. 15, so I encourage anyone who loves nature or living in a beautiful community to please get involved with trying to stop this facility from being constructed on this land.

Please attend the public meetings; write to the county council and the mayor. We are up against a powerful force, but there is strength in numbers, and we need all the help we can get. Let’s conserve our conservation land and try to clean up some of these decrepit empty plazas and business sites by encouraging developers to build on that land.

Think of the impact this development will have on the residents of The Woodlands, the beautiful wetlands full of old oaks cypress trees, and the wildlife that call these woods home.

Acacia Driggers
Palm Coast

Editor’s Note: The first of two public readings regarding the rezoning of the land mentioned in this letter was brought before the City Council Sept. 4. See Saturday’s edition of the Palm Coast Observer for coverage.