- November 26, 2024
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Avalon Park Daytona Beach has become synonymous with the construction of 10,000 homes on the outskirts of the city of Ormond Beach.
But its developers have now reduced the scope of the residential development proposed for the 3,000 acres of land located west of I-95 and south of State Road 40 near Breakaway Trails. Instead of 10,000 homes, the development is aiming to construct 7,878, composed of both single-family and multi-family units, said Jeff Fuqua, a partner in the Avalon Park development.
That's the longterm plan. The first phase of the development, Fuqua said, consists of 1,609 residential units and 90,000 square feet of commercial development on 783 acres.
"This is a 30-year project," Fuqua said. "We're starting with 90,000 square feet of commercial and 1,609 residential units — that's not much bigger than a lot of other developments going on around the area. It's just that we happen to own a lot more land, but those other developments have land next to it that somebody is going to develop."
Avalon Park Group, whose CEO is Swiss national investment banker Beat Kahli, is tentatively eyeing a 2025 start to constructing the first phase of the project.
And the roads needed to navigate the development — aimed at also mitigating traffic impacts — will be built concurrently with the first phase, Fuqua said.
Extending Tymber Creek Road north of Margaritaville Avenue to West Granada Boulevard across from Breakaway Trail, creating access to LPGA Boulevard, is at the top of the infrastructure to-do list.
"The goal is you construct enough additional transportation network to minimize or diminish any impact on other people," he said. "We have a model which purports to show that."
Avalon Park Group is seeking to present a development plan that doesn't stray from its existing comprehensive plan entitlements with the city of Daytona Beach.
The land, formerly owned by Minto Communities, is currently permitted by the city of Daytona Beach to construct 3,250 homes and 200,000 square feet of commercial.
The developers' transportation model, Fuqua said, will only support 7,878 homes and one million square feet of commercial.
"We're very comfortable with that," Fuqua said. "We're intending to try and make it similar to Avalon [Park] Orlando ... dense to the point that the town center is walkable and we provide a lot of services, not just for the people in our community, but for adjacent communities, without having to deal with 95, which we think is a huge opportunity."
The reduction from 10,000 homes is a step in the right direction, said Ormond Beach Mayor Bill Partington. But, it still will be the largest master-planned community in the Volusia-Flagler area.
"Ten-thousand homes was always too much," Partington said. "Seventy-eight hundred is better, but it still far exceeds the current allowable density of 3,250."
Phasing will be critical, he added.
"If it's going to happen over 30 years, once the initial couple of phases occur ... if it's working well, I think it will change people's perception of the project and become more acceptable," Partington said. "If there's problems, it's probably going to have the opposite effect and slow things down — make people fight harder against any increase in numbers."
It's a project that has well-respected developers behind it — Kahli and Fuqua — and Partington said he's certain they're both capable of funding and seeing the development to completion.
"I think it's imperative that we continue to work with them," he said. "I think they're well aware of our concerns and our residents' desires — what they want to see, what their fears are — and I think they're willing to address those. That's going to be critical moving forward."
Extending Hand Avenue across I-95 is another road improvement Avalon Park Group is hoping to help bring to fruition.
"We don't plan to build it, we want to help facilitate the building of it," Fuqua said.
Avalon Park Group already has the majority of the rights of way needed to construct the extension. Volusia County also owns a portion of the right of way. But help is needed to construct the extension over the Tomoka River and I-95.
Fuqua said Avalon Park Group plans to design and permit the extension so the engineering plans are finished.
"That's way, way, way further down the road, and by the time all of this comes together, we will be able to do it, I'm confident of that," Fuqua said.
Transportation consultant, Maryam Ghyabi, CEO of Ghyabi Consulting and Management, hasn't seen Avalon Park Daytona Beach's transportation plan, but she has spoken with the developers. And she still has concerns.
Mainly surrounding funding and construction schedules for the road improvements Avalon Park Group is proposing.
"Let's say you come up with a transportation plan, if you don't have construction plans, you can't really use that when you calculate your science," Ghyabi said.
Meaning, you can't point to a Hand Avenue extension — which will carry a "pretty hefty" cost, she said — or connections to an already traffic burdened LPGA Boulevard as transportation solutions without a construction schedule attached to it, she said.
"I think [the developers] want to do good," Ghyabi said. "I think they mean well, but you can't really use roads to say, I cover my impact of this 100 or 1,000 homes until you have a construction date and funding with it."
LPGA Boulevard is overcapacity, Ghyabi said, and the future improvements that are coming to that road shouldn't be used in Avalon Park's traffic calculations because they haven't been built yet.
When you look at the overall traffic patterns, it's evident that Granada Boulevard cannot handle the impact that Avalon Park Daytona Beach could bring, Partington said.
"Something has to be done to provide some alternate routes for people just to solve or ameliorate the traffic situation," he said.
It boils down to concurrency with the infrastructure, Partington added. Infrastructure needs to be in place at the same time, or prior to, construction of homes. That's the city's primary timing concern.
Who will be providing water and sewer to Avalon Park Group?
Based on a 2006 comprehensive settlement agreement between the city of Ormond Beach and the city of Daytona Beach, Ormond is supposed to sell utilities at a wholesale price to Daytona to service the development, with Daytona reselling the utilities to Avalon Park at a retail price.
"What it appears is that Daytona Beach is desperate to find a way out of [the agreement] so that they can control the growth and basically, not have to negotiate or work with us," Partington said. "Our position is, that's our utility service area. It is a matter a law. It's been in existence for many years and the court-ordered settlement agreement recognizes that."
Some residents believe Ormond Beach should opt out of providing utilities to Avalon Park Daytona Beach, but Partington said he'd be concerned that by doing that, the city would be giving Daytona Beach the leeway it seeks.
"Then they could just ramp up the west side of 95 there exactly as they did along LPGA, and I think that's something that nobody wants to see," Partington said.
The property will be developed at some point in time, he added, and that's where the need remains for cooperative planning between the cities and the developer.
"Everybody has different interests and wants and needs, and so trying to negotiate and balance all those is the tough part of cooperative planning, but we owe it to our residents to get it right and make sure we have a quality area for, not only the people who are here now, but the people that'll be here in 10, 20 or 30 years," Partington said.
The utilities agreement is between the cities, Fuqua said. While Avalon Park Group is a beneficiary of it, it's not party to it.
"The only thing I know is that both cities have a utility department," Fuqua said. "... The agreement says that somebody will provide, so I think we can make the assumption that eventually, you'll get something from somebody."
