In the midst of federal and state budget crunches and a protracted slump in the housing construction industry, work surges on at the gigantic Nocatee development.
The irony isn’t lost on the developers, St. Johns County officials and others. And they’re loving it.
“During this downturn in the market, they’re still out there making progress on this project,” County Commission Chairman Tom Manuel said. “These are the kinds of projects we like, no doubt about it. ... Projects like these help make us the Pebble Beach of the East.”
Amid a recent tour of the Nocatee site west of Ponte Vedra Beach, Richard Ray (pictured), a partner with the Parc Group, the Nocatee developers, echoed that.
“We’ve planned for this to be a 25-year project, and we had contemplated one or two down cycles in the housing construction market,” Ray said. He called it a “luxury” to be involved in such an insulated, long-term job.
Nocatee is expected to eventually, by about 2025, have about 15,000 homes on 30,000 acres. It’s far from a quick, modest development that’s caught short in the latest down cycle and has to bail out, like so many across the state and the nation.
And the Parc Group and county officials are heaping thanks on the Davis family, which has donated so much to Nocatee, including land, schools and money, as well as inspiration for the concept of the huge, self-contained commercial-residential development.
Manuel and Ray referred to the Davises as “patient.”
“They’re such great citizens for this community on so many levels,” said Manuel, who represents the Ponte Vedra Beach area. “They’re patient; they’re moving the ball forward every day. ... Others don’t have that ability to keep something like this going. They’re deep-pocket investors.”
Ray said, “We’ve planned for this to be a 20- to 25-year build-out. ... There’s no doubt we’re in the middle of a market correction. But the Davis family is very patient. Their charge to us is, do it right.”
During the recent tour, Ray gazed at swaths of wooded areas segmented by the Nocatee Parkway and other wide, landscaped roads. He said he looks at those areas and sees not woods or clear-cutting projects but water parks, apartment complexes, commercial town center areas and condo complexes, as well as designated natural “buffer” areas that will leave green expanses between the developed ones.
He and Manuel are proud of the fact that roads, sewers and other infrastructure are being installed and that thousands of residential units, schools, office complexes and other features have been planned, well before even the first residents moved in.
If you wait for the natural migration of people and then install the buildings, they said, you end up with areas like Jacksonville’s “University Boulevard.” Crowded, willy-nilly planning, street and drainage problems.
“Even with an area like Ponte Vedra Beach,” Ray said, “you have a beautiful area, but you suddenly find that you’re stuck with infrastructure problems.”
Manuel jokes about people who lament big development. “They say, ‘I like the way it way it was 25 years ago; I’m all for progress, change is the part I don’t like.’”
And the issue of paving over the natural areas? “They aren’t natural woods [where Nocatee is being developed],” Manuel said. “They’re all man-made.
"The Davises have donated so much land to the Jacksonville area, and look how much better of we are for it," he said. "We wouldn’t have TPC, the Mayo Clinic, other things that make this area so special. ... These things happen because we have these deep-pocketed investors who don’t need a buck today to make the mortgage payment. They’re patient.
“There are three [PGA Tour] golf tournaments that never move — Pebble Beach [California], TPC [at Sawgrass] and Augusta [The Masters],” Manuel said. “Thanks to [the Davis family], one of them is here.”
