Fernandina residents named overdevelopment the city's biggest threat

the

Island Brief

Amelia Island • Nassau County • First Coast

Good Morning, Nassau County! For the first Monday in a while there is no heat advisory up, which is not the same thing as a cool morning. It is 91 on the island and mid 90s inland, with a heat index near 105 and storms that hold off until the afternoon. This week the city found out what its own residents think of how it is growing, red tide moved up a notch in our water, and the riverfront project got sent back to the drawing board for the second time.

Fernandina ☀️ 91°/75° Yulee ☀️ 95°/75°

Callahan ☀️ 96°/73° Hilliard ☀️ 95°/71°

Today is the driest day of the week, with only a 20 percent storm chance and nothing arriving before 3 p.m., so anything you want to do outside, do it today. Storms roll in tonight before midnight and then Tuesday and Wednesday both run 50 to 60 percent inland with highs settling back into the upper 80s on the island. Thursday through the weekend keeps the same shape: high 80s, afternoon storms, mornings clear. Full forecast here.

📰	Top Stories

Overdevelopment. Not close, either: rising housing costs came second at 13 percent and traffic third at 6. That is the headline finding from a six-month planning process the Northeast Florida Regional Council ran for the city, collecting about 150 responses at neighborhood meetings and at community events including the opening of the beaches, the Publix reopening and the Sea Turtle Festival. Asked what the city's most important planning theme should be, 42 percent picked preservation of community character, and asked what should go on large vacant sites, 39 percent chose community amenities and public space and 38 percent chose development that fits the surrounding neighborhood, against 1 percent for multifamily housing. Officials were candid that the sample skewed heavily toward homeowners over 65 who have lived here 20 years or more, and said they need to reach younger residents and renters. Under state law the city now has a year to turn six guiding themes into actual Comprehensive Plan amendments, which come back for public hearings before adoption. That plan is what decides what gets built here between now and 2050.

Read More → Fernandina Observer

The state wildlife commission's Friday status report found bloom concentrations of Karenia brevis, meaning more than 100,000 cells per litre, in one Nassau County sample. A week earlier Nassau was down at very low and the first bloom samples of the season were in Duval; this week that flipped, with Nassau at background to medium and Duval back down to background to low. Satellite imagery from Aug 19 showed elevated chlorophyll off both counties. The part worth holding onto: no fish kills and no reports of respiratory irritation anywhere on Florida's east coast in the past week. Red tide is normally a Gulf Coast problem and it is unusual this far north on the Atlantic, which is why it is worth watching rather than worrying about. The report updates every Friday.

Read More → Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission

The Historic District Council split 3 to 3 Thursday and declined to give conceptual approval to Amelia Wharf, the 28,316 square foot, three-level complex proposed for North Front Street with restaurants, retail, a welcome center, a boardwalk and parking. City planning staff had recommended approval. The sticking point was the same one that sank the first design in June: mass and height on the riverfront. Waterfront design standards cap structures at 30 feet above base flood elevation and the proposed observation tower runs 19 feet past that, though developer Ron Flick pointed out that floodplain rules force the first occupied floor about 16 feet off the ground to begin with. Council member Tammi Kosack called it "such an ambitious project" and "the first major redevelopment of our waterfront," while Veronica Byrnes said she "would even love to see it be really just a one-story building." Vice Chair Dylan Psulkowski and Technical Review Committee chairman Jacob Platt argued the project met code. The applicant has to revise and come back before anything else moves.

Read More → Fernandina Observer

Carefree Boat Club has suspended operations at its Fernandina Beach, Jacksonville and St. Augustine locations, with the boats repossessed, and members told News4Jax the charges kept arriving anyway. Chuck Martoia said a $432 charge hit his account on Aug 18; dues at the club run over $400 a month. The national network told the station that it stopped billing network fees on Aug 14, that local club dues are owed under separate agreements it does not control, that member accounts remain active elsewhere, and that the network "is stable and operations continue." The nearest open locations are now Daytona Beach and St. Marys. Members say the harder problem is that nobody local is picking up the phone.

Read More → News4Jax

📍	Around Nassau County

➤	Fernandina Beach: Tonight's Waterfront Advisory Board meeting, 6 p.m. at City Hall, has been cancelled. If you were planning to go, that is your evening back.

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Fernandina Beach: The city's online permit portal has been down since Friday and stays down until CityView goes live Monday, Aug 31. In the meantime, emergency trade permits and re-roofs in the same material go by paper application emailed to [email protected], new construction and additions are by appointment starting Sept 2, and inspection requests are still taken by phone at 904-310-3135 up to 3:30 p.m. for next business day. The first public training session is Wednesday, Sept 2. (More)

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Fernandina Beach: The commission's next regular meeting is Tuesday, Sept 1 at 6 p.m., with a workshop at 5. The budget hearings that follow, Thursday Sept 3 and Tuesday Sept 15, are where the roughly $1.5 million of parking revenue the city had penciled in for the waterfront has to be accounted for, now that the meters come off in mid-November.

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Amelia Island: If you have ever wondered where the hatchlings go once they get past the surf, the Observer's nature column this weekend followed them out to the Sargasso Sea, the floating seaweed nursery in the middle of the Atlantic that shelters young loggerheads, greens and leatherbacks along with a hundred-odd fish species. (More)

📌	Briefly Noted

🗓️	This Week on the Island

Mon 24

County Budget Workshop Commission Chambers, James S. Page Governmental Complex, 96135 Nassau Place, Yulee • 3 p.m. • Commissioners work through the capital improvement plan and the FY 26/27 budget; the public is invited

Thu 27

The Artist's Studio with Della Jones Story & Song, 1430 Park Avenue • 4 p.m. • The visual design artist on where art comes from and how you keep creativity alive in children and in yourself

Thu 27

"And Then There Were None" Amelia Community Theatre, 207 Cedar Street • 7:30 p.m. Thursday, Friday and Saturday • Closing weekend of the Agatha Christie mystery and of ACT's 45th season; box office 904-261-6749

Fri 28

Chit & Chat Story & Song, 1430 Park Avenue • 11 a.m. • Angela Peterson hosts a standing gathering of local authors, writers, storytellers and poets; newcomers welcome

Sat 29

Fernandina Beach Farmers Market N. Seventh Street, downtown • 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. • Fifth Saturday of the month, so the Arts Market on Centre is off this week and the farmers market runs on its own

Sat 29

The Story of Jazz, Part 4 Story & Song, 1430 Park Avenue • 5 p.m. • "Bebop, Blues & Beyond" with Les DeMerle and vocalist Bonnie Eisele, about five weeks ahead of the jazz festival that carries his name every October

Seventy-three percent of the people who took the city's survey said overdevelopment is the biggest threat to Fernandina Beach. A percentage is a blunt instrument, though, so we would rather have it in your words: what has actually changed on your own street in the last five years? Hit reply and let us know. We read every response.

There is one sea on Earth with no land borders at all. Which one, and what does it have to do with the hatchlings leaving our beaches this month?

Answer: the Sargasso Sea, out in the middle of the North Atlantic. Instead of coastlines it is bounded by four currents, one of which is the Gulf Stream running past us, and it is filled with floating mats of sargassum seaweed. At least five sea turtle species, loggerheads among them, spend their early years sheltering and feeding in those mats. (Angela Ray, Fernandina Observer, Aug 22.)

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