Concerns that included further deterioration of a waterway where oysters once thrived brought residents living in the Garcon Point Road area to the Santa Rosa County Commission Sept. 25 to express worries about a planned 96-unit RV Park.
The park would be located on Escambia Bay at the end of Michael Drive, and the recreational vehicles utilizing it would be obliged to drive down that thin strip of asphalt, past the homes located in the rural residential area, to arrive at their destination.
Fifteen area residents turned up to complain that their roads couldn’t bear the increased large vehicle traffic, that a transient RV community could endanger their quality of life and that campers cooking with propane tanks or charcoal grills could add to an already significant danger of wildfire.
Commissioners agreed the massive RV Park, advanced by Dayna Hornich through Pensacola Bay RV Park LLC, was a bad idea, but said because the zoning allowing park development is already in place, there’s not a whole lot they can do.
“This is totally irresponsible,” said Commission Chairman Kerry Smith. “I’m struggling about what we’re going to do. … This is some of the stuff that is beyond me, especially when you see that you’re going to have to go through a (residential) neighborhood to get to the camp sites. This is crazy.”
One of the residents who addressed the commission had compiled a brief history of the approximately 10-acre site where the RV Park is to be built. Much of the story was later confirmed by Santa Rosa Planning and Zoning Director Shawn Ward.
Prior to 2004 the area was home to a small RV Park and campground. It was destroyed by Hurricane Ivan in 2004.
In 2006, the area was rezoned to residential to allow for home construction and in 2019 it was rezoned again to allow for a park area, a zoning that would allow for an RV Park. This zoning gained passage through the county’s Zoning Board and the Board of County Commission at that time.
The year after the rezoning took place, it’s owner sold the land to Pensacola Bay RV Park LLC.
At some point, the county also agreed to vacate a portion of the existing parcel to the new owner, Ward said. That was done so that the owner could prevent late night visitors to the bayfront property.
Smith told the residents of the Garcon Point neighborhood that his decision to run for the seat he now holds followed a battle he and his wife waged against a development similar to the one contemplated now by Pensacola Bay RV Park LLC.
He said he feared then that what was being billed as a high-end development would fall into disrepair and that permanent residents would create what he termed “low income housing.”
The zoning change that allowed for this Michaels Drive site to be developed as an RV Park, he said, occurred at around the same time he was fighting the battle to prevent a similar development in East Milton.
“I didn’t see this one,” he said, promising to check archived records before laying blame for how the rezoning had been allowed to occur.
While the county may be powerless to stop the nearly 100 space development from going in, the Florida Department of Environmental Protection could have a say in what the RV Park ultimately looks like.
Among those in attendance to speak Monday against the RV Park was Shana Alford, a lifelong resident of Garcon Point, oyster farmer and owner of a water quality laboratory in Milton.
Alford, whose commercial fishery is located in Escambia Bay off of Garcon Point, was present to make sure that commissioners were aware that in 2022, when the Florida Department of Consumer Services decided to close more than half of the Escambia Bay system open at that time to wild oyster harvesting, it had established one of its boundary lines just north of Michael Drive.
She reminded commissioners that the closing of much of the historic harvest area had been done due to rising bacteria levels caused by a lack of stormwater infrastructure and a lack of sewage treatment facilities, increased development primarily reliant on septic tanks, and a decrease in the natural vegetation that retains and prevents runoff.
Alford presented commissioners a map that showed her farm to the south of Michael Drive, another 10 acre Escambia Bay site where an oyster farm lease has just been obtained, and a third location directly off Michael Drive where she said the old Nichols Seafood lease—where oysters were pulled to supply a restaurant that opened in 1974—exists in perpetuity.
“As you can see (by noting how close the existing leases are to the closed harvesting boundaries) those leases are at risk,” she said.
Park plans call for the parcel to hold not only 96 RV slots, but also an office, a pool, a restaurant and a parking area. A stormwater management plan and drainage report that acknowleges the impacted waterway status of Escambia Bay concluded that two retaining ponds will be able to prevent water borne contaminants from leaving the site.
The county no longer does stormwater permitting, Ward said. That task now falls to DEP. It is conceivable that the state agency steps in to limit what the developer can ultimately do due to its proximity to the already damaged bay as well as its potential impacts to existing aquiculture businesses operating just off of Michael Drive.
This article originally appeared on Pensacola News Journal: Residents want to keep RVs from rumbling through their neighborhood. It might be too late
Reporting by Tom McLaughlin, Pensacola News Journal / Pensacola News Journal
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
