'It does not work for us': Neighbors turn out in force against Botanic Miramar mixed-use project

MIRAMAR BEACH — Walton County commissioners have rejected a proposed developer agreement for construction of a mixed-use project on 25 acres along the north side of U.S. 98 that includes 321 apartments, 16,544 square feet of retail space, a 4,209-square-foot fast-food restaurant and a 5,000-square-foot convenience store and gas station.

The tract currently is occupied by Golf Garden, a golf-centered private business that includes a nine-hole course, an 18-hole putting course, a driving range and miniature golf area.

The proposed mixed-use project has been moving through the county review process for months. The county previously purchased a 10-acre tract of the Golf Garden, behind the proposed Botanic Miramar project, and has been urged to turn the area into a public park.  

Background: Miramar Beach 321-unit apartment proposal heads to Walton commissioners

Last week's 4-1 decision — Commissioner Tony Anderson, whose district boundary ends on the side of U.S. 98 opposite the proposed development site, cast the lone dissenting vote — doesn't outright halt the Botanic Miramar project.

Instead, it sends the proposal back through the process of seeking approval of a development order from the commission. That will require additional appearances by the developers in front of the county's Technical Review Committee, a group of county government department heads led by county Planning Director Mac Carpenter. The proposal also will go once again to the Walton County Planning Commission, a seven-member body appointed by the county commissioners.

The county commission vote to reject the developer agreement does, however, place into question whether the mixed-use project will include an affordable housing component, a proposal that was integral to the developer agreement considered and rejected by the commission at its Feb. 24 meeting.

Also on 98, last year: Walton County commissioners reject U.S. 98 hotel proposal; residents applaud

Under that proposed agreement, the project developers — Atlanta-based Davis Development and The Garden of Destin Inc. — planned to reserve 64 of the 321 apartments for people with moderate incomes, such as teachers and emergency responders, in Walton County. According to information presented by the developers during public meetings on the proposal, rental prices for qualified moderate-income residents of Botanic Miramar would be $1,395 monthly for an efficiency apartment, $1,494 for a one-bedroom apartment and $1,791 for a two-bedroom apartment.

The commission's 4-1 decision on the Botanic Miramar project, which has been controversial throughout its progress through various levels of public review and comment, came after more than three hours of discussion at the Feb. 24 meeting.

In addition to presentations from the land planner, the attorney and the engineer working on the project, along with comments from a representative of the development group, those hours included still more public comment against the planned development.

Broadly, those public concerns, as had previously been the case, focused on concerns about Botanic Miramar bringing traffic into the nearby single-family neighborhoods, its incompatibility with those neighborhoods, potential drainage issues from the tract and whether the residential portion of the project might become short-term vacation rental accommodations.

With regard to the concern about the project's apartments becoming vacation rental properties, rented through third parties such as Vrbo or Airbnb, the land use planner working with the developers' attorney on the project said at the Feb. 24 meeting that the "general commercial" zoning classification sought for the property as part of the development process would have allowed for the outright development of a hotel.

"If we'd wanted a hotel, we wouldn't have gone through two and a half years of trying to get a conditional use permit and come forward as (a project including) affordable housing," said Melissa Ward, the land planner working with local law firm Dunlap & Shipman, counsel for the development team.

Ward also countered residents' arguments about compatibility by contending that meeting a compatibility standard simply means that there is a buffer between dissimilar uses, and that a buffer for Botanic Miramar is provided by the 10-acre parcel to its rear and the fact that the buildings proposed for the tract are set back 100 feet from property lines.

"We are bisected from them (neighbors) by a wetland and a 10-acre parcel," added Ed Stanford of Core Engineering and Consulting, the Destin-based firm providing engineering services for the proposed project.

Among the more impassioned speakers at the Feb. 24 commission meeting was Lori Echols, who lives on Shore Drive, a dead-end street at the edge of Choctawhatchee Bay within the shadow of the Golf Garden property.

"This does not work for us," Echols told commissioners prior to their vote against the developer agreement.

"It does not work for Miramar Beach as a whole," she continued, noting in particular that plans for Botanic Miramar include the installation of a traffic signal on U.S. 98 a short distance from an existing traffic signal at Holiday Road. Echols contended that the addition of the light itself, outside of the hundreds of cars that would be moving into and out of Botanic Miramar, would add congestion to an already choked U.S. 98.

"We need y'all to be advocates for us," Echols told commissioners. "Y'all are all we have."

Echols went on to note the longstanding character of the area as single-story or two-story single family homes, and told commissioners that she and her neighbors "didn't move into an apartment complex. We moved into neighborhoods."

Also addressing commissioners at last week's meeting was Anna Schmitz of Forest Shore Drive, another neighborhood street in the immediate vicinity of the proposed Botanic Miramar site.

"We are literally choking down there," Schmitz said of the traffic and flooding problems that already exist along U.S. 98 in Miramar Beach, where hotel, condominium and commercial development is widespread.

"I just wish we could start fixing these problems that all this development is creating before we approve more development to create more problems," Schmitz said.

It was not clear following the Feb. 24 meeting when the Botanic Miramar project might begin making its way again through the county approval process.

County procedures won't allow the proposal to be resubmitted immediately, and there were indications at the meeting that the development team would be revamping its plans for the project.