Sierra Club joins legal action against City of Fernandina Beach over Amelia Bluff

Sierra Club
Press Release
Submitted by Bob Weintraub
May 29, 2019 9:00 a.m.

The Sierra Club’s Nassau County Group has joined two other local environmental- and conservation-focused organizations in a complaint with the Florida Division of Administrative Hearings (DOAH) that the city of Fernandina Beach violated state law and the city’s Comprehensive Plan in approving the Amelia Bluff residential development on Citrona Drive.

The administrative law judge assigned to the case, E. Gary Early, accepted Nassau Sierra’s application to join the complaint originally filed by the Amelia Tree Conservancy and the newly formed Conserve Amelia Now! on May 14. The national Sierra Club approved Nassau Sierra’s participation in the legal action after the initial filing had been made.

The plaintiffs are represented by attorney Robert C. Apgar of Tallahassee. Apgar submitted a separate complaint on behalf of Nassau Sierra and Judge Early consolidated the two complaints in an order dated May 23.

Judge Early also allowed Amelia Bluff LLC, the residential project’s developer, to participate in the hearings as intervenor in the May 23 order.

The DOAH adjudicates administrative disputes with independent administrative law judges who conduct hearings on complaints. Tentative dates for the hearing, to be held in Fernandina Beach, are July 15 to 18 at a site yet to be determined.

The complaint lists ten state laws embodied in Florida Statutes and ten Objectives and Policies of the Fernandina Beach Comprehensive Plan that it claims were violated by the approval of the Amelia Bluff development.

At the crux of the issue is a conflict between the Future Land Use Map Conservation designation of the property and an R-1 designation on the city’s zoning map. The FLUM shows a large triangle of Conservation land extending from the Egans Creek Greenway into the center of the property.

As the Comprehensive Plan is the city’s controlling law, the Amelia Bluff development, a 30-home project across Citrona from Fernandina Beach High School, could not continue unless the FLUM was changed. The developer, Amelia Bluff LLC, has acknowledged knowing about the conflict but was told by city planners it was a scrivenor’s error that would be corrected. The conservation issue never came up again in the many meetings of the city’s Technical Review Committee, Planning Advisory Board and City Commission. At each meeting there was a staff report that included the statements that the development is “significantly compliant with the Comprehensive Plan” and is “consistent with the underlying FLUM category of low density residential.”

In November 2018 the new chairman of the PAB, Frank Santry, discovered the conflict and called attention to it. As a result, the city brought an amendment to the Future Land Use Map that would change the Conservation designation to Residential. At three city commission meetings, hundreds of protestors overflowed city commission chambers and more than 90 speakers voiced their opposition to the FLUM change decrying the potential loss of maritime forest and danger to the Egans Creek Greenway. Despite the overwhelming opposition, the city commission voted twice to approve the FLUM change on 3-2 votes. Voting for the change were Mayor Johnny Miller and Commissioners Len Kreger and Phil Chapman. Voting against the change were Commissioners Chip Ross and Mike Lednovich.