Published by former Mayor George Gardner January 7 2015
The Report is an independent publication serving our community
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Quality Inn (left) and proposed Hyatt Place on North Ponce de Leon Blvd. (US 1)
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Plan for Hyatt Place hotel
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Hotelier Fred Ashdji proposes to demolish his Quality Inn on US 1 and replace it with a Hyatt Place hotel.
Ashdji, owner of Hampton and Hilton hotels on St. Augustine Beach, won approval by the city Planning and Zoning Board (PZB) Tuesday for a Planned Unit Development (PUD) with a 50 foot high, 5-story complex.
The action came at the end of a 7½ hour PZB session which included 1½ hours of discussion before approving fellow hotelier Kanti Patel's similar request for property further north on US 1 and two hours before approving Marine Use District zoning for the St. Augustine Lighthouse & Museum.
Lighthouse Marine Use District approved
Ashdji's request should have followed Patel's but was set aside as the board took up a St. Augustine Lighthouse & Museum request to rezone the lighthouse property to a Marine Use District. Both endorsements for the lighthouse operation and opposition from Lighthouse Park residents concerned with growing visitation overrunning the neighborhood ended with a 4-2 vote favoring the Marine Use District zoning.
All the PZB actions go to the City Commission for final approval.
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The year ahead
As the New Year opens, familiar issues continue to boil.
Traffic
No question growing gridlock will be the major focus in 2015.
450
Two sitting commissioners voted against an increase in the multimillion dollar City hall managed 450 budget, and new Mayor Nancy Shaver pledged new directions in this commemoration year.
7-Eleven
An appeal of a city permit issuance goes to the City Commission January 15, while an appeal of an earlier city denial goes to court January 13.
San Marco/May Street
The 7-Eleven issue has brought the congested intersection to the fore. Florida Department of Transportation is seeking solutions.
VA Clinic
The Veterans Administration continues silence on where some 5,000 area veterans will be treated when Lowe's takes over the current county health complex in March.
Vision
A consultant-driven vision project continued Monday as a citizen steering committee pored over seven pages of procedure.
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Mayor Shaver looks forward to New Year
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 | | Mayor Shaver |
Nancy Shaver says she's "never been a fan of New Year's resolutions that are overly ambitious," but taking the mayor's seat "I find myself resolving to put my best efforts into what can really make a difference.
"So what does that mean for the City we love in 2015?" she writes. "It means celebrating our heritage-and working to preserve and protect what makes us a lively and delightful place to live and work."
Highlights of the mayor's New Year letter:
- We still have a "Birthday Party" to plan and we all want it to be a memorable celebration for everyone who lives here.
- Moving around our City - whether it's parking or car traffic or bicycling - needs to get easier for all of us and our visitors.
- Active citizen participation in helping address opportunities and issues is critical.
- Transparent budgeting and regular reporting of how we are doing, and where our City revenues are spent will help us all.
- All of our infrastructure needs a clear, fact-based assessment so we can plan, prioritize and budget sensibly.
- Taking a good look at our zoning, neighborhood by neighborhood, and making the needed changes will take some time, but we are beginning the process.
- Listening to what citizens have to say-whether at coffee, or a neighborhood or merchant meeting, or in Publix or at the gym.
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VA Clinic relocation stonewall continues
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 | | Dudley |
"As we end 2014, we are shuttering the year with still no word from our VA as to the future of our local CBOC. We are well past the point where any decision by the VA will certainly have an adverse effect on our Veteran's health care service."
In a New Year letter to veterans, Veterans Council Chairman Bill Dudley writes, "I'm sure many of you have been receiving letters and updates from Secretary McDonald as I have about all the improvements in the VA system that are being made to better serve our Veterans.
"No doubt this is true, but this in no way gives us any reassurance here in St. Johns County about the future of our Veterans Community Based Outpatient Clinic.
"The VA administration in Gainesville and Washington continue to stonewall us and refuse to even discuss the future of our local facility.
"I find the arrogance of these highly paid administrators appalling and contemptible. In this regard, I don't see much change in the way the VA has done business in the past and the ineptness of the management is still as prevalent as before.
"We can only hope that our fear of an interruption or abatement of our Veterans health care services in St. Johns County will not become a reality."
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Help count homeless
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The Emergency Services and Homeless Coalition needs our help in a count that's critical to designing programs and bringing funding to help the homeless.
The Homeless Point in Time Count and Survey will be conducted January 22 throughout the county from Ponte Vedra to Crescent Beach to Hastings to Fruit Cove.
"It's a huge undertaking to ensure a thorough count," says Coalition Director Debi Redding. "We need 40-50 volunteers to assist us.
Mandatory volunteer training will be held January 15 at noon at First United Methodist Church. Contact Debi Redding at 904-824-6623
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Visioning is in the details
Once the goals are established, the Committee will be asked to engage in a critical analysis of the capacity of the City to move the goals forward. This is a particularly important discussion if there are more than 5 tier A goals. While it is the Steering Committee's decision, the consultant's recommendation is that there be no more than 5 tier A goals. If the Committee concurs, and if there are more than 5 tier A goals, a multi-voting process in which each Committee member has 5 votes will be used to identify the top 5 goals.
Vision 2014 & Beyond Consultant Herb Marlowe
The Vision 2014 & Beyond steering committee hosted a Town Hall session Monday afternoon at City Hall, wading through seven pages of procedure including the third versions of Strategic Themes and Vision Statement Alternatives, second version of Draft Goals and a Logic Model.
A 16-member citizen committee, chaired by Vice Mayor Roxanne Horvath, has been laboring since last summer, filtering 500 survey comments, holding committee and town hall meetings, and adjusting to
Consultant Herb Marlowe's procedural charts.
Next up, a workshop with city commissioners in February.
Monday's meeting is live streamed here.
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Archaeologists to present
findings from mission site
 | | Deagan (center) at a dig |
What makes the nation's oldest city unique is the actual preserved site of its founding and first settlement 450 years ago, documented in both historic records and archaeological studies.
Drs. Kathy Deagan and Gifford Waters of the Florida Museum of Natural History have led research teams for nearly half a century in excavations at the Mission of Nombre de Dios and Fountain of Youth Archaeological Park - areas where the founding and original settlement occurred.
They'll share their findings Tuesday, January 13, at 7 pm in the Flagler Room at Flagler College's Ponce Hall at the Annual Meeting of the St. Augustine Historical Society.
Adding to the free event, Cantorae St. Augustine a Capella choir under the direction of Mary Jane Ballou will present songs heard in the early mission church that's among the excavations.
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History's Highlight
Old Spanish Trail's 100th
245 days to St. Augustine's 450th anniversary
In the south courtyard of the Visitor Information Center a six-foot diameter coquina ball represents the Zero Milestone of the Old Spanish Trail.
September 8 St. Augustine will commemorate its 450th anniversary. That same month will be the 100th anniversary
of the beginning of Old Spanish Trail, America's first transcontinental highway, from St. Augustine to San Diego along the trails of early Spanish missions and forts.
 In September, 1915, a coalition of businessmen presented the concept to the national Jackson Highway meeting in Nashville.
Harral Ayres, managing director and driving force of the Old Spanish Trail Association, called it a highway "following the footsteps of the Padres and Conquistadores."
The Old Spanish Trail got its start in a city with little claim to Spanish history, Mobile Alabama, founded in 1702 as a French colony and coming only briefly under Spanish rule between 1783 and 1813.
It was envisioned as "afford(ing) tourists the ability to see Florida towns, come through Mobile and go west along the Mississippi coast through New Orleans and to California."
Unlike other Southern transcontinental highways that stitched together existing roads across the continent's relatively flat and dry midsection, much of the Old Spanish Trail was forged over formerly impassable swamplands in the Southeast, including five major outlets into the Gulf. Along with these geographical impediments, the Old Spanish Trail Association protested that the uncooperativeness of individual states and the federal government ultimately hampered its completion.
The Old Spanish Trail was completed in 1929 at a cost of more than $80,000,000, billed as the most expensive and most highly engineered of all the transcontinental trails.
To celebrate the completion, St. Augustine hosted a three-day gala, including the dedication of a six-foot diameter coquina stone monument marking the beginning of the trail. A representative of the King of Spain dedicated the trail and honored Ayres with the title of Knight Commander of the Royal Order of Isabel la Catolica.
At the dedication Ayres gave a speech praising the work of the Association, and challenging people "to go on with this work and keep this far-southern land a joy for travelers for years to come and a memorial to all that is good in that age of art and chivalry and adventure and great mission works."
The lure of the Old Spanish Trail continued to captivate travelers until the early 1960s, when new interstates redirected traffic off the old road. Interstate 10 replaced much of the historic trail, running from Jacksonville to Santa Monica CA
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The St. Augustine Report is published weekly, with additional Reports previewing City Commission meetings as well as Special Reports. The Report is written and distributed by George Gardner, St. Augustine Mayor (2002-2006) and a former newspaper reporter and editor. Contact the Report at gardner@aug.com or gardnerstaug@yahoo.com
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