After a neighborhood opposition campaign that generated as many as 186 emails to one Jacksonville City Council member, Council rejected a rezoning request to redevelop the former Allstate Campus office park into residential, office and retail space.
Council denied the request on a 17-2 vote Dec. 10, one week after the Council Land Use and Zoning Committee voted unanimously to recommend the denial. Council members Jimmy Peluso and Tyrona Clark-Murray cast the two votes in favor of the rezoning.
Neighbors complained that the project, branded The Pondry, would create heavy traffic congestion and that the density of its residential component was incompatible with its surroundings.
Many of the opponents are homeowners in the affluent Pablo Creek Reserve gated community adjacent to the 30-acre campus near Butler Boulevard and San Pablo Road South.
An exhibit filed with Ordinance 2024-0828, which contained the rezoning request, shows a total office area of 192,836 square feet; 250 residential units among 24 row houses, 36 town homes and 190 condos; 20,019 square feet of retail space; and surface parking along with parking on the ground floors of the residential and retail space.
Neighbors said the condominiums and town homes were out of character in the area, where the lower-density Pablo Creek Reserve contains about 280 homes on 400 acres. Home values in the gated community are as much as $4 million to $5 million.
In declaring ex parte communications, which include emails and conversations with individuals involved in the rezoning request, Council members reported receiving dozens of emails almost exclusively from opponents. Council member Nick Howland said he had received 186 emails in opposition.
The Council vote, which constitutes final action on the request, came after a short discussion.
Member Will Lahnen, whose District 3 includes the Allstate Campus, thanked the LUZ for listening to the 50-plus residents who attended the committee meeting to oppose the project.
Peluso noted that the Jacksonville Planning Commission had voted unanimously to recommend approval of the rezoning, a recommendation that the LUZ Committee rejected.
Peluso said Council was “ignoring the fact that we need more housing” in Jacksonville and believed that denying the rezoning was bad community planning. He added, “We all know this is going to go to a lawsuit anyway.”
The rezoning pitted two prominent Jacksonville land use attorneys, Paul Harden and Steve Diebenow, against each other. Harden opposed the rezoning as a representative of neighboring property owners. Diebenow is the land-use and government affairs attorney for Trevato Development Group, the landowner and developer of The Pondry.
During hearings before the Planning Commission and LUZ Committee, Diebenow said Trevato met with neighbors three times and made significant changes to its original site plan based on concerns aired in those meetings. Among them, the developer removed a hotel and 10,000 square feet of retail space and replaced apartments with for-sale housing.
At the LUZ meeting, opponents and the developer disagreed on several points, including the per-acre density of the residential units and projections of traffic generated by the project.
The property is at 4920 San Pablo Road, near the Mayo Clinic. The rezoning request was from Commercial Office to Planned Unit Development.