By DOTTY NIST
The beach access easement to the Van Ness Butler, Jr., Regional Beach Access has been abandoned by Walton County, is now the private property of the Watercolor Community Association, Inc., and has been shut down by the association.
The large parking lot for the facility located on the north side of CR-30A remains Walton County property. The parking area is open to the public for the near future and possibly longer.
The Walton County Board of County Commissioners (BCC) discussed the parking lot during the course of the March 26 regular BCC meeting at the South Walton Annex. A number of options were explored, and Walton County Administrator Stan Sunday was directed to bring back more information at a future meeting.
This was in the wake of Walton County having recorded an abandonment of the beach access easement two weeks earlier. Also abandoned by Walton County were other related easements that had previously been agreed to decades earlier by the St. Joe Company, developer of the Watercolor beach subdivision, for use of the public.
The abandonment had been one of the terms of a settlement agreement in connection with a lawsuit filed in 2022 by the Watercolor Community Association against Walton County.
Located immediately west of Seaside along CR-30A, the Van Ness Butler, Jr., Regional Beach Access had been open and in use by the public since February 2008, featuring a path and dune walkover on the south side and on the north side restrooms and the 100-space landscaped parking lot with four ADA spaces. The facility has been maintained over the years by the Walton County Tourist Development Council (TDC) staff, currently known as the Walton County Tourism Division.
The access was named for Grayton Beach pioneer Van Ness Butler, Jr., who served as county commissioner for the beach area in Walton County when Walton County obtained the beach access easement and parking lot property. Butler died in 2014.
History of the easements
Before the Watercolor subdivision was developed on approximately 500 acres west of Seaside, there was a road under the ownership of Walton County running along the beach south of CR-30A, extending from 1,337 feet away from the western boundary of Seaside westward to the Grayton Beach State Park boundary. The road had previously been under state ownership and had been transferred to Walton County. It had been a popular place for local residents to park and go to the beach.
In 1997, the St. Joe Company, then known as the St Joe Paper Company, had requested that the county abandon the road, and the BCC had held a public hearing to consider abandonment of the two-acre road property.
According to minutes from the July 22, 1997, BCC meeting, “ Dave Tillis, representing St. Joe Paper Company, appeared before the Board to request the abandonment of the old roadbed between Seaside and Grayton south of C30A. In return, St. Joe Paper Company will develop a parking area and beach access on the north side of C30A to be turned over to the TDC for maintenance.”
As reflected by those minutes, the BCC approved the road abandonment unanimously.
In August 1997, an agreement between St. Joe and Walton County was recorded. Observing that the abandoned road had been used for “parking for beach access across private property,” the agreement provided for St. Joe Company to furnish two acres of land for parking in exchange for the abandoned right-of-way and for St. Joe to provide a 20-foot-wide easement to the beach with connection to the parking area for construction of a boardwalk by the TDC, with $15,000 to be paid by St. Joe toward that construction.
An April 16, 2002, easement agreement between Walton County and St. Joe followed, granting easements across some St. Joe parcels for the beach access easement and what was termed the “Beach Easement Parcel.”
Along with the beach access easement serving as an appurtenance to the public parking area, the agreement stated that the easements were to furnish “to the County, its citizens, employees, guess, invitees, and licensees, a way of passage, on or by foot only, over and upon,” the parcels.
The agreement provided for the county to construct a dune walk-over on the 20-foot-wide beach access easement. (A walk-over was constructed there in 2008.)
The agreement allowed for both the beach access easement and the foot passage easement, the latter being 75 feet in width running parallel with the shoreline, to continue in effect as long as used for the purpose set forth in the agreement. It also provided for the termination of the easements, and for those to revert to the St Joe Company in the event of the county using or attempting to use the easements for any purpose not specified in the agreement.
The use specifications and reverter language had not been present in the August 1997 agreement, and the latter would come into play later.
The 75-foot-wide easement for public pedestrian access was consistent with the terms of the December 1995 Consent Final Judgment that set St. Joe’s land use/land development rights and conditions for development of company property in Walton County , including the portion that would later be developed as Watercolor. The pedestrian access was also stated in the consent final judgment as “being construed to meet” county requirement for native vegetation and habitat protection and providing of open space.
St. Joe’s December 1999 development order for the property now known as Watercolor contained beach access requirements, as well, including the recording of the 75-foot-wide easement for pedestrian access and a prohibition on restricting public access within the 20-foot-wide beach access easement granted to the county.