A large crowd is expected at the St. Johns County Commission meeting Tuesday, with supporters and critics in attendance.
ST. JOHNS COUNTY, Fla — The popular Ponte Vedra Inn and Club wants to make some big changes.
A discussion about those changes is expected to draw quite a crowd of supporters as well as skeptics to the St. Johns County Commission meeting Tuesday.
“I have a lot of work that I’ve done,” Elaine Ashourian says, sitting at a table full of documents with sticky notes and highlighted sections. She lives a few hundred feet from the Ponte Vedra Inn and Club.
The resort’s owners, Gate Hospitality Group, want to upgrade, build new buildings, and add on to others.
In a website, the owners John Peyton and Herbert H. Peyton explain the project. During a video on the website, John Peyton says “The Surf Club really desperately needs investment. The storms have been wreaking havoc on this facility.”
One of the big sticking points for Ashourian and others is the height the lodge. Documents filed by Gate indictae it would be 5 feet tall if measured at the finished floor or foundation. However, Ashourian pointed at the application and county staff report. She believes the numbers, if measured from grade, would make the building 64-feet-tall. No matter, it very well could be the tallest building in Ponte Vedra.
“They’re measuring from a different elevation than anybody else is allowed to measure,” Ashourian said. “It’s going to be a monstrosity.”
Another concern is the project’s density. Hundreds of new hotel rooms and retail space which application documents indicate says is several almost 700,000 square feet. Ashourian reads the numbers differently. She says she has found indications that the retail space is more thna a million square feet.
“It’s a massive overbuild,” she said. “We don’t want to be Dayton Beach. We don’t’ want to be Miami Beach.”
Peyton addressed that concern in the website’s video. In it, he says, “The notion that we’re going to make Ponte Vedra look like Miami Beach, it’s just silly to me.” He added that “the ocean front will not have high rise buildings.”
Ashourian and other critics of the project say they want the Ponte Vedra Inn and Club to do well and be successful.
However, she added, “We want them to put a pause on this. We want the commissioners to take their time, figure out what all is coming into this.”
Misty Skipper, Vice President of External Affairs for GATE Petroleum Company sent First Coast News a statement which said in part:
“Tomorrow’s hearing before the St. Johns County Board of County Commissioners is the culmination of more than five years of Master Plan development with expert architects, engineers and planners for the Ponte Vedra Resorts properties. The plans address resiliency issues, make our amenities competitive and honor the character of the community.
During the last year, we have met with thousands of neighbors, club members and stakeholders to share our plans and hear any concerns. We have received valuable feedback from those conversations that we incorporated into our plans. We have also completed hearings with three County advisory boards and incorporated nearly all of the changes requested by those committees into our application.”
It is a sizeable project that will documents state could take 25 years to build out.
“Some of the most valuable feedback we’ve gotten from the project has been from folks that live adjacent to the club with really good suggestions too,” John Peyton said.
Gate is asking for 31 variances (exceptions to the rules) for this project. Misty Skipper, a Gate spokesperson, told First Coast News the majority of those variances are already in place because of existing conditions.
