Planning Commission - Regular Meeting

It is now 6 p.m. on the 10th of August, 2026. I call this meeting of the Planning Commission to order. May I please have a roll call?

David Dole.

Here.

Dean Haddock.

Here.

Nicholas Andrews.

Here.

Matthew Feiler. Justin Henderson.

Here.

John Linus.

Here.

Lindsay Haga. Here. Thank you.

Okay, thank you. Are there any changes or corrections to the minutes stated 26 May, 2026, noted by any member? If not, may I have a motion to approve the minutes?

Motion to approve. Second.

All those in favor, please signify by saying aye.

Aye.

All those opposed, signify by saying nay. Motion to approve the minutes from 26 May, 2026 is approved. For the staff, is there any correspondence for any item on the agenda?

No correspondence.

Okay, is there any old business?

No old business either.

All right, so moving on to new business. Prior to new business, for the public, the planning commission meetings are generally quasi-judicial in nature. I apologize for that. All decisions of the commission will be based on competent, substantive evidence, including testimony provided in this meeting. Any person who is not an applicant or agent that wishes to speak will need to fill out a speaker card, which are located at the side table by the door item. Please refrain from speaking from the audience and applause or cheering will not be allowed. And please silence your cell phones. Okay, for the staff, can you please read the application by title?

Possibly. All right. This is PC0526. It is a conditional use application. It is for a property located at 100 North 3rd Street. It is a conditional use application requesting an essential public service for a privately owned C cable landing station and data distribution facility per section 34721 requirements for a property located in the, actually that should be community commercial C2 zoning district. Pursuant in this section. So this is the old Vivestar building. It's been vacant for at least a year, I think longer. I know it's been for sale for quite a while. As I mentioned, the property is zoned C2. This is basically one block north from the intersection of Beach and Third Street. And just to clarify, this is not a AI data center. This is a distribution facility. We actually have two of these already in Jacksonville Beach. There's one just south of Beach Boulevard, and then up on the north end near the school, there's the building with the whales on it. That is also one of these facilities. Let's see where did I leave off. The site currently consists of a single commercial structure that was built as a bank with a drive-through and teller lanes. The property itself is basically three-quarters of an acre, a little bit more. It's 37,500 square feet. The property currently has road frontage along North 3rd Street as well as Pablo Avenue and North 4th Street to the rear. There's an undeveloped alley to the north as well. The site is composed of five lots of record in the Atlantic Beach, Pablo, Atlantic Park replant of Pablo Beach North. The site, again, is located one block north of the intersection of Third Street, which is Highway 8 winning and Beach Boulevard. The site has existed, has existing water and sewer services, as well as a small stormwater retention pond, the drive-through lanes, and the required LDC landscaping. The property currently has primary access on Pablo Avenue with a one-way in-only driveway on North Third Street. The proposed use is that of an essential public service, which is, in essence, utility and infrastructure. It's utilities, installation of water, sewer, gas, telephone, and electrical systems, and all equipment and apparatuses associated with that. So, although this is technically internet, it falls under the telephone franchise agreements. Under 34.618.833, an essential public service is permitted, but subject to the conditions of section 34.721 and supplemental standards, without going through all that. In essence, it means that it could be permitted or it may require conditional use depending on its intensity and what zone district it's in. This isn't allowed use in C2, but again, per this secondary section, which again, I noted here, under that it basically says that this division shall not, the permitted section, not be deemed to permit the erection of structures for commercial activities such as retail sales and merchandise. And within the limits of the proposed function, the architecture and landscaping shall be harmonious with the surrounding areas. So this is the site. Again, to the right of the screen is Third Street. To the south, to the bottom, is Pablo Avenue. The site, like I said, is the current ViStar building where it has the small retention area to the front. I don't know if this thing works. That's not the right one. It's been a while. Okay, cool. So that's your retention area. You have your one-way in on Third Street, existing parking. You've got entrance and exit on Pablo here, and then entrance... entrance and exit here for the drive-through lanes. This is the current survey. Again, you've got Pablo Avenue to the south, 3rd Street to the east, and then that's the unopened alleyway along the north end, and then 4th Street to the west. The proposed design, and it's a little bit difficult to kind of see here, but I'll do my best to explain it. So the main dotted line here is the property limits. This is the proposed kind of revamping of the existing stormwater facility. This portion is basically two-story with office and other electrical equipment. And then this is also inside the structure. You can see this like heavy dashed dotted line here. This is internal ground floor parking, but the building itself will basically be that whole area. And then there are some on-street spaces existing on Pablo Avenue. They're proposing to add on to that because they'll be closing the one driveway here and the one driveway on Third Street there. As required in the supplemental standards, the architecture and landscaping is supposed to be harmonious with the surrounding neighborhood. The applicant looked at a number of the commercial buildings in the area, the existing five-star building, as well as City Hall, Carrabba's, the former Wells Fargo building, and are proposing a Mediterranean-style design. So this would be the side that would face Pablo Avenue, facing south. And then this would be the part along 3rd Street that you would see if you're driving up and down A1A. So, although it will be fully enclosed, the windows will be non-functional, the aesthetics are designed to mirror that of existing commercial structures in the area. That's not relevant yet. So although essential public services are permitted, the location and intensity is a real concern of planning staff. Since this is such a prominent commercial corridor, and this corner in particular is sort of the main commercial gateway to the city, this is kind of a dead space in the block. It's not going to have any interaction with the public. It's not going to have any interaction with the pedestrian community. or the bicycle infrastructure, there's not going to be any in or out for the public. As I mentioned, although it'll aesthetically look like a commercial building, it's basically going to be unoccupied for all intents and purposes from the outside. Our comprehensive plan has a bunch of strategies related to where to locate commercial based on the zoning, the intensity of the zoning, and its proximity to roads and streets, and it encourages the adaptive reuse of existing structures that has, you know, flooding and energy-based standards as well as just, you know, the tear down and rebuild constantly that we see trying to prevent some of that. We're genuinely concerned that this would be a permanent piece of infrastructure and we would lose this commercial space in such a prominent area. C2 is designed to provide community-level commercial. It's our most intense commercial category, so that's where you see your shopping centers and restaurants and the bowling alley, those kind of things. Typically these kind of structures are either in industrial or they're things like lift stations, which are significantly smaller and they'll take up large areas. Being that this is a little over three quarters of an acre and the majority of it's gonna be building, that's a pretty big impact we think on the community and its ability to provide adequate commercial spaces, especially at that peak intersection. Industrial zoning category is more typically where we see these. The other two facilities are actually in industrial. And industrial, you know, obviously allows a lot more intense uses anyway. Not that we necessarily think that this will be a nuisance generating property, because again, it's basically going to be, you know, perfectly quiet, self-contained. It's not going to be offensive in any way. It's just going to be basically non-existent as far as commercial space. Part of the reason that they are looking at this site has to do with the fact that the cable's gonna be coming in from the ocean, and obviously the closer proximity to the beach, the better. I think part of it is because the building was for sale, and there's not a lot of commercial space in the area. But in essence, going through the conditions, we basically felt that although there are some conditions that the project meets, it certainly is an essential service. Obviously data is becoming more and more important as technology grows. We just think really it's a function of the location, that this is just a really prominent corner and it would be detrimental to the city to lose this as a potential future commercial space. So ability to meet all criteria, particularly its proximity to Beech and Third, and it's not meeting the intents of the C2 commercial zoning category or the community commercial land use. I'm happy to take questions, of which I'm sure there are many.

All right. Thank you. So we're going to move into the presentation, and we'll do questions after. Is that okay with everybody here? So as a reminder to the public, each member of the public will be given three minutes to speak when we open the public hearing. All right. Does any commission member have any ex parte communication to disclose? All right. Not seeing any. Would the applicant please come forward and be sworn in to give any presentations? As a reminder to the commission, before we do this, please refrain from interrupting the presentation or questions to the end.

You're just going to tap on the little red button on your microphone. There we go. Please raise your right hand and state your name and address.

William Schaefer, 3003 Claire Lane, Jacksonville, Florida, 32068.

Do you swear and affirm that the testimony you are about to give in this matter is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth to help you God?

I do.

Thank you.

Oh, yeah, thanks. Christian, appreciate that.

Okay, great. Well, thank you so much.

I want to thank everyone for taking the time. I see we're probably the one and only item on the agenda. So it's taken away from your personal time, your family time. And I just want to say thank you for hearing us. I didn't know that. christian was going to recommend a denial that kind of caught me a little bit off guard but hopefully when we're all said and done we kind of share a little bit about what we're proposing to do here everyone will feel a little bit more comfortable about it um this property's been sitting open and vacant and has had a lot of people look at it because it gets a lot of traffic and no one has found something that they want to do on it there's a nice building there existing and so um We think this is a very suitable use for this because it's allowed under the current zoning. We're here because we couldn't be by right, but we're here because there's a lot of questions about what it is. It's a fiber optic landing station. We remember the old fiber optic lamps, and this is what it is. It's a lamp that just pulls light through pulsing light. And so it receives cable from offshore. It takes it inside the building, and then it distributes the information it gets. It boosts it and distributes it out into the network.

So that is...

what it is. It doesn't fall under a category of a water treatment plant or a wastewater treatment plant. It doesn't use any water. It doesn't do anything with processing data. It just transmits data. There's already a couple of them here, and we'll go ahead and start our actual presentations as we walk through with them. So there's three what I would call telecommunications facilities. Atlantic and Southern Bell was a cable landing station. It had a copper wire at one point in time. They've abandoned that because everything going across the oceans and out into the water is fiber optic now. We have American Tower. We have the Conditional Use, which is us right here on 3rd Street. Then we have the TELES, which is actually a true cable landing station. It's identical to the station that we're proposing. However, ours is going to be a lot prettier. This is a quick comparison about the property. So the TELUS has a I-1, we have a C-2, and the AT&T is on a C-1, which is a lot less intense commercial. It's been there a while. This is the TELUS and TELUS CLS, and you can see it's, well, it looks more like a water treatment plant than anything else to me. This is it and tells a little bit of information about it, the square footage is. So we're building something with similar size square footage of that building, but we're going to do it a lot nicer. It's going to have a lot nicer appeal. This right here is the AT&T building. It's a landmark. I've lived out here in the beaches for many years and I don't right now, but this is something everybody knows where it is. Something behind it, you see a big old tower. We don't have any towers or anything like that going in. And this is the American Tower Management Company. It's got some pretty nice fish painting on it. I like that one when I drive by. But it's telecommunications and was a former cable landing station as well. This is the proposed telecommunication building from the front. It's got the look and the feel of everything in the area. It has windows. The bottom part is going to be office. The top part will be where the cable runs into and then gets redistributed out into all the fiber optic systems that run on the East Coast. This is a schematic of the elevations for the telecommunication building. The east side, you see the front east facing, which is what you'll see from the street. And then we have the side elevation, which faces north. We don't have windows there because it's right there against a commercial building. And then on the south side, we have an in and an out on the left side of the building. There's one for loading. And then there's a pedestrian pathway over there on the right side on the fifth arch. These are real windows. The rear elevation, we're probably going to put shutters on that because shutters, I think, will make sense and look real well there. We don't need windows there, but it'll fancy it up a little bit, make it look nicer. So what is a cable landing station? You know, it's a place where it's telecommunications. That's how we communicate with people. If you were to pick your cell phone up and you were to call somebody in Miami, most likely it would go to one of the local towers. It would go out to a fiber optic cable, either on land or out on the water, would go down to the nearest tower. And then the person you called, if it was a cell phone, then they would pick up. It's how we move data. It's how we move telecommunication calls. It's how we move it around. America and across over to Europe and other places. So it's part of the network that's necessary. And it's part of the redundancy that's necessary because if something happens to one facility, the other facilities pick up the weight that they would normally have. So communications just doesn't stall and data doesn't stall. It's a proven industry. It's been here since 1858. So this is nothing new. Back then they used wires. Now we use glass. And so it's a little different. There's today 95% of the global internet traffic travels via subsea cables. 95% does. And this project is just continuing a long-established proven model that's out there. And so subsea cables have operated globally for decades. They coexisted with coastal communities, tourism, fisheries, designed to be low-profile and low-impact. And you can see some of the cable landing stations that's here on the east coast of the United States. Who used the cable landing station? It's a shared telecommunications infrastructure. It's used by multiple networks. Some of them would be connecting to this, would be, of course, you can see their names there, AT&T, Verizon, Cox, Lumen, Comcast, Colt. There's a bunch of them that would use. They support each other. They work together in the network. And so it has regional and national providers that connect with this location. There's a demand. And so why does infrastructure matters? Because it supports that global communications and established statewide and international connectivity for the US. It provides redundancy and resiliency. We're in Shoreline, and we have designed this building so that all of the information carrying would be upstairs. This office would be downstairs so that if there was a hurricane, we'd have 8, 10 foot of water come aboard along shore. This thing would still continue to operate, and that's the goal is to try to keep it up, keep this information moving. Our family relies on it. The world relies on it, really. This is not AI infrastructure. It's not hyperscale development, not an AI factory or anything of that nature. This is really just communication infrastructure. It's not speculative development. Common questions and misconceptions is data center. No, this facility does not host clouding, cloud computing. It does not contain hyperscale servers. It doesn't operate like a data center. It's just a telecommunications infrastructure site. And it's really not an industrial facility. It's an office facility that has some additional uses in it. Will it use a large amount of water? No, this just does not have cooling towers. It doesn't have any industrial water demand. There's no non-contact cooling water. None of those things. It's going to be similar to a small office building and probably use the same amount of water as the Bistar did. We'll increase traffic. No after construction. Staffing is going to be about five persons, and so it's not going to increase. Currently, the usage right now, and I have it listed, A little deeper in here, it generates around 2,400 trips is what our engineering calculations show for the Vistar based on the number of drive-ups and the walk-ups. And so for this right here, it's going to be five people coming in and five people leaving. And so... It will be noisy. The nighttime noise limits are generally going to be about 55 decibels, which is quieter than someone talking next to each other. So it's not going to be noisy. There won't be any homes. There won't be any noises. So it'll be a good neighbor for everybody there. It's going to generate some jobs. So there will be some jobs during the construction phase, operation phase, and then... So, but the standard telecommunications security, you know, we're going to have controlled access and things like that, probably be some cameras. So, that's about it on that. Misconceptions about cable landing stations, you know, people hear data centers, industrial facility, high power use, water use, noise, it doesn't have any of that. It's a good neighbor. The reality is that telecommunications facility is what it is. It's just that like the three other neighbors that are here in Jacksonville Beach. It's no large-scale computing, you know, very little water use, no real major power demands. There is some power demand because it is a building. And it's not an AI campus or any of that kind of stuff, and we went over that earlier. What noise will it make? It does have a, and being honest with you, because that's what we are is we're honest and genuine. And so it'll meet the local noise regulations. There will be a backup generator that'll be operated a few minutes a week just to make sure it runs or a few minutes a month. I think it's more a few minutes a month. And that is a equipment that's housed inside the building with an outside fence. So, you know, so about five minutes a month. that's it that's that's what we're going to see as far as noise other than that it's going to be a quiet good neighbor um what is being powered at the cls um you know it's uh the it's just telecommunications equipment it's takes the existing light that is comes in from offshore and it amplifies it and then sends that light that pulse light which is where the communications information is on. It's in that. It's just in that fiber optic lines. And the power demand is very low, stable, and predictable. We're not going to have big spikes in power or anything like that, you know, causing brownouts or anything like that. It's just going to be, like I said, a little bit more than just an office building. The project does not require upgrades to the local power network. It doesn't. And so we're not going to cause any outages. And we do have our own backup power to make sure we have continuous operations storing outages. We do store some diesel fuel on site for that. And that's what this is telling you, that we do have those. And we do have that. And that will be stored in an approved, you know, diesel storage tank. So that will be there. So, you know, this is just telling you again, it's similar to an office building level, office buildings, banks, a lot of those have backup generators as well, and they exercise those the same. Why this location? Well, there's a You know, coastal points is really where it needs to be. There's a demand in the Jacksonville area for this. And so you need to be close to the landing station under two models. We're currently looking at locations. And so where we're going to actually bring the cable in. And we think this is a good location with a number of landing points. So as we move inland, it increases environmental disruption and increases construction complexity. and reduces the system reliability. So we think this is a great location for the cable landing station. It's driven by necessity, not preference. Here's site access. I use, you know, so we use the standard calculation of the ITE code for this building. We can't walk up and drive up, and so it's 2,400 trips a day is what it calculates. And I could do the other as an office building, and it would be significantly less because we know there's only going to be five people in it. And there may be more people coming to visit, maybe tweaking some of the equipment, so we have more than five parking spaces set aside for the building. But when it comes to lowering traffic, we'll be closing the exit here, the entrance here. So we're going to be taking the potential for a vehicular collision or rear-ending or anything like that. We'll be closing that. We'll be closing this dual in and out right here, which I think is very good. And pulling out of there is difficult with the cars parked here. And there's almost always cars parked here. And then this entrance will be the only entrance in and out. It's going to be basically the same size. It's going to be slid a little bit to the west. about it. So this is our existing site. When it comes to impervious areas, there's actually less impervious area here with this proposed building than is with what is there existing. And so there's about 1,500, I think it's 1,500 square feet less. This is our current site plan proposed. We're going to relocate the parking down there to maintain those seven parking spaces on Pablo Avenue because we know the importance of on-street parking and maintaining that. And I think that's about all you can get is about seven spaces, keeping the same number that was previously there. We have adequate setbacks all the way around. maintain the existing stormwater pond. It's adequately sized for the current because we're decreasing impervious areas. We actually can make the pond a little bit smaller, but we'll probably make it a little bit bigger. And so this is just a Just the office building, it's two-story, and there's some pictures, and we went through a lot of discussion in our submittal on the conditional use approval. So we hope we can get your support on this. I know it does take a commercial thing out. I heard Christian talk about that, but this is a great use. I mean, it has a nice look, doesn't use much utilities, it doesn't cause a lot of issues, reduces traffic. There's a lot of traffic in that corner. It reduces a lot of the traffic. If I was to put in a heavy-use commercial, there'd be 50 people behind me screaming about all the traffic. So it eliminates that issue, minimizes adverse effect, including visual, because it's going to be a beautiful building. No adverse effects on the permitted uses of the zoning district. Doesn't adversely impact anybody there. No adverse effects of the values of the adjacent properties. If anything, it may raise those properties. Some of them around them are a little older, could use a facelift themselves. There are adequate public facilities, water, sewer, storm, everything is right there. We don't require any lighted signs or exterior lighting impacting traffic. In fact, there are five lights that are pole-mounted that are going to be completely removed, and the lighting on this building for the parking will be under roof. So as far as glare and to the traffic, it makes the safer streets around this building. Where if you are commercial, you would have all the lighting you would want. You would want a ton of lighting because you want people to see you so they can come there. And it has adequate ingress and egress. We've removed two access points and we have significantly lower traffic. It increases the open space and reduce impervious areas. Like I said, I think it's about 1600 square feet of less pavement. complies with the comp plan, LDC. We don't need a variance. We think this is by rule. We should be able to come here. We were asked to come do a conditional use to come before you all so you could hear about us. And we are hoping that that was more over so that you could understand what the building is going to be. That it's not a data center. There's been some stuff on the internet and Facebook. I saw that. Sorry, Matt. It's a data center. They're going to suck all our water out. This is not that. It's just another telecommunications facility, just like down the street. And it's something that's needed. It's needed for the redundancy. And I hope that you all would support this project. And I stand by for any questions. Thank you.

Thank you. Okay. Do any commission members have any questions for the applicant?

Great. Hi, good evening. Through the chair. In the discussion, after reading the staff report, have you given any consideration to any additional furnishing elements that would provide for pedestrian engagement? That seems to be a point that's raised in the report.

You know, that's a great point, Ms. Haga. There's some, you know, this is just like any office building. If someone was to go here with an office building and let's say they were an engineering company like mine. I mean, we would want a place to store our vehicles underneath, keep them out of the way so no one, you know, damages or anything like that. They're not getting beaten up with the sun and the spray. I mean, so we would have some bicycle parking out there. So I think we would definitely add that. That would be something we would add, a nice bicycle parking area out there for 10 or so bicycles I think would be fine. They'll allow people to come and park their bikes there if they want to. And we have sidewalks, we have adequate sidewalks. We're making sure that there's a connectivity from the building to the sidewalks as well. And some of the features that would engage people as they drive so they see it would maybe do some uplighting on the building that would be more of a residential tone, nothing heavy duty, big lights like some of these commercial centers do, just to give it a nice as you drive down the street and say, hey, that blends well with the neighborhood and looks good with the community. Thank you.

Good. Thank you for that. One last question on the architectural element. Um, we, we've talked about the windows being real windows, but not operational art. What's the transparency on that? Can you just clarify that point for me?

Um, well, the windows with the office would be regular windows. So that would be the, the ground floor windows around the front of the building.

Yeah.

That's where the office and storage is going to be. Those will be real full windows. Transparent. Yep. Now, and upstairs, um, This is Eric. He represents the owner of Upstairs Windows. Would they all be regular windows?

Well, one of the things that we keep in mind in the design of this is the security of the networks that are going to be going through. So, no, they're not going to be your standard windows. All the windows are going to have to be super secure.

Can I interrupt for once again? Can you come to the microphone and get sworn in? That way we have it on the record. Sorry.

Please raise your right hand and state your name and address.

My name is Eric Santiago. I live in New Jersey, 924 Bender Muir Avenue.

Do you swear and affirm that the testimony you're about to give in this matter is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth to help you God?

Yes, ma'am.

Thank you.