"Case by case" is very fair if you are the landowner and you are trying to develop your property,
Potential Land Use Changes are Far Reaching
- Thread starter Grayton Girl
- Start date
-
Trouble logging in? Send us a message with your username and/or email address for help.
"Case by case" is very fair if you are the landowner and you are trying to develop your property,
In my opinion and in my experience as a planning commissioner, developing land on a "case-by-case" basis was code for "whom you know." It is never fair for a landowner to have to guess what the rules are and to find out who makes the decisions, what they want, how they think, and what they will accept. Fairness is having a clear and legal plan which applies equally to everyone.
i am also familiar with land use issues, having been an attorney for a sewer/drainage district. i also know how walton county works. i have a road behind me that was built 3 or 4 years after we moved here that is about 5 feet above our property,and i could jump off my deck up onto that road. once this particular development started, i worked closely with the code enforcement person (seems there was just one person for all the development). while he was helpful, i saw first hand how some developers just thumb their nose at even the slightest regulation and do what they want. our homes shook for days as the developer built the subdivision roads by bringing in tons of dirt and compacting it without using water. one person's leaded glass window broke. the point of all this is that walton county has not progressed much in the development area except to allow overbuilding (which highly contributed to the loss of property values here-not just my opinion-has been written about in numerous articles as of late) or permit buildings that do not blend into the 30a landscape. i'm not against development - i totally understand that someone purchases property for the purpose of development, but walton county needs to rethink things carefully because what they do will have a major impact on all of us in the years to come.
Determining zoning & uses on a case-by-case basis is asking for trouble, at best. It invites abuses & back-room deals.
"Reasonable" and "unreasonable" uses & mitigations are so highly subjective that, again, it's just asking for trouble & inviting the kind of neighborhood quarelling that Grayton Girl first suggested.
If I'm understanding the proposed change correctly, it's not just at the intersections of two Scenic Corridor roads, but at any intersection along those Corridor roads? ... in other words, there's potential for commercial development at the corners of any cross-street along 30-A? Any corner along Defuniak St. or any corner along 395?
Who bought those properties (almost 100% of them residential) in the past expecting to be able to develop them into commercial? How would doing so be even remotely "reasonable"?
"Reasonable" and "unreasonable" uses & mitigations are so highly subjective that, again, it's just asking for trouble & inviting the kind of neighborhood quarelling that Grayton Girl first suggested.
If I'm understanding the proposed change correctly, it's not just at the intersections of two Scenic Corridor roads, but at any intersection along those Corridor roads? ... in other words, there's potential for commercial development at the corners of any cross-street along 30-A? Any corner along Defuniak St. or any corner along 395?
Who bought those properties (almost 100% of them residential) in the past expecting to be able to develop them into commercial? How would doing so be even remotely "reasonable"?
If this proposal gets passed, it will be the downfall of CR-30A as we know it. It'll be more like PCB -- a souvenir shop, etc., on every corner.
I read it as at any intersection along those roads.
At first I thought "whoa", then started mentally driving down those roads and realized that with the exception of a few pockets of strictly residential (mainly in Seagrove and Dune Allen) most of them had commercial there already. Art galleries, B&Bs, shops, offices, you name it.
At first I thought "whoa", then started mentally driving down those roads and realized that with the exception of a few pockets of strictly residential (mainly in Seagrove and Dune Allen) most of them had commercial there already. Art galleries, B&Bs, shops, offices, you name it.
You are correct, Passing Thru. Every single time a road converges onto 30A or DeFuniak Street (the road into Grayton), the owners of property on either corner will have the right to ask for their property to be changed to Neighborhood Commercial - whatever that is. Except for the location of Red Bar and Shorty's and the commercial lots at the beginning of Grayton, there has never been ANY commercial on the interior of Grayton. This property was sold as single family residential and has always (for the past 100 years) been single family residential.
The new language means that when and if the homes at the intersections of DeFuniak Street with Plank, Lydia, Hotz, or Grayton Trails are sold, the new owners (or for that matter, the present owners) could convert to commercial. Now I ask you, how does this "serve" our historic and already over-burdened Grayton community, protect the residents, or ensure compatibility? This change would be the downfall of our quaint and historic village and would do nothing but promote conflicts where none previously existed.
I am not against properly developed NEIGHBORHOOD-scale commercial development at specifically defined nodes on the outskirts of our currently-existing neighborhoods, but to imbed commercial at every intersection will be a huge mistake. There are NO standards that would make this agreeable or palatable.
Applying the same standard to 30A would also be ludicrous! Should there be commercial on 30A at our currently designated DRI new urbanist towns such as Seaside, Rosemary, Alys, Watercolor, or Gulf Place? Yes, of course. Should there be commercial at the major intersections, such as 393, 83, 283, 395? Yes, with some standards and restrictions (as most of this commercial would back up to neighborhoods).
Should there be commercial at the intersection of EVERY road onto 30A? Well, let's just look at Old Seagrove as an example. You have Dogwood St., Thyme St., Hickory St., Live Oak St., Nightcap St., Holly St., Azalea St., Camellia St., & Gardenia St., all intersecting 30A within a half mile stretch of road. These lots were platted in the 40s and 50s, were developed as residential, are currently residential, and have ALWAYS been residential. The new proposal would allow parcels at those intersections to now, magically, become commercial! And this is supposed to HELP our neighborhoods? How can this possibly be good planning?
Please, please.... write your county commissioners and planning commissioners and request that they re-think the placement of this new category called Neighborhood Commercial. In my mind, the name is sort of like an oxymoron as this new commercial is anything but neighborhood friendly.
Scooterbug44, rather than "mentally drive" 30A, I invite you to take an actual drive down the length of 30A.
As you do so, imagine the properety at every intersection as commercial.
If you do this, I think you will understand my point.
No, they haven't always been residential - Nightcap Street/30A has Pickets, Gardenia Street/30A had Yellowfin (now moved), Seagrove Cottages, and the Wheelhouse.
I'm not saying I want all current residential lots to be developed as commercial, but well done and properly scaled commercial along 30-A is not a death knell for those neighborhoods IMO.
My concern is more giant or inappropriate projects - like the gigantic beach club proposed at the Wheelhouse that thankfully fizzled.
I think not allowing any lots to be combined for commercial use would help keep that from happening.
No, I understand your point and definitely think there need to be severe restrictions placed on the lots in question (as a drive down those roads also shows far too many examples of what can go wrong) - but my point is that commercial does not necessarily mean a restaurant/bar with loud music and tons of cars and traffic. Uses like a real estate office, an art gallery, a nice specialty shop, an architecture or interior design firm, etc. currently exist in many of the places in question and are not "bad neighbors."
Last edited:
Again, wow. See my post regarding BCC agenda of 8/24. In my experience, wholesale zoning changes have been proposed by a county in response to denials of variance requests by developers. For ex, a developer wants to build a 10 story bldg where the limit, when he bought the property, was 3 stories. Goes for variance; approved over objection from many neighbors (abuts residential). Neighbors appeal variance, which stops it, but county comes in and makes wholesale zoning change which permits 10 stories on developer property, and anywhere else in the new district. I hate to see, as one poster said, Walton cty go backwards. You've all got a special place there. I would be alarmed at this proposal. The precedent it would set not good. Just my 2 cents.