NOTE: This story has been updated to reflect new meeting times and places.
A mass of people showed up for the Ponte Vedra/Palm Valley Architectural Review Committee’s July 26 meeting and forced it to be postponed until a later date and venue.
The committee was scheduled to hear a presentation from the Ponte Vedra Inn & Club regarding its proposed 30-year and multi-phase plan for development and renovations.
However, the site of the meeting was the Ponte Vedra Beach Branch Public Library in its FOL room, which proved not large enough to hold the amount of people who showed up for the public meeting.
It did not take long for those with county helping run the meeting to realize that they were dealing with an “unprecedented” crowd on hand that had never been seen for that specific committee.
By 4:50 p.m., 10 minutes before the meeting was initially scheduled to begin, the FOL room had already reached capacity due to fire marshal regulations.
The line of those who showed up after capacity was reached weaved through the library and out the facility’s front door spilling into the parking lot, where cars circled around several times in search of a parking spot.
One of those who struggled to find a place to park was committee chairman Sean Mulhall, who the rest of the committee waited for before they got started because he had been looking for a place to park for roughly 15 minutes.
“There’s at least three to four times the number of people here for this meeting,” said Christine Valliere, senior assistant county attorney, in an announcement. “My recommendation is that this meeting not continue until we find a bigger meeting location.”
According to Mulhall, he has been doing this for a while on the board and has seen renovations and plans take a place over, including ones at Sawgrass, but nothing has ever brought about a crowd like they experienced that night.
Various venue options have been explored and discussed by the county as they look to determine a new venue to hold the meeting. The times and places as of Aug. 16 were:
Each of the meetings is open to the public so residents with concerns or questions are welcome to attend and learn more about the proposed project and what it all entails.
Residents who wish to view the PUD application itself must submit a public records request to receive all relevant documents.
A public records request can be completed by emailing publicrecordsbldg@sjcfl.us or by submitting a request application online by going to webapp.sjcfl.us/sbmtlmgmtweb/ to obtain the request that way.
Questions regarding the online submittal process can be emailed to @dwillis@sjcfl.us for assistance.
There will be new staff reports for each hearing to incorporate information from the previous meetings as the project moves through the review process.
The reports for each hearing should be available online about a week before each associated meeting.
