Jacksonville: Where Florida Begins

Flagler County residents don't mind commuting to work; fully 40 percent have jobs in Jacksonville, St. Augustine or Daytona Beach. That's fine with county economic development officials, who aren't focused on attracting huge employers. Instead, they woo small operations with 10 to 25 employees that provide products and services for larger companies headquartered elsewhere.

NASSAU COUNTY/AMELIA ISLAND

Everybody, it seems, wants a piece of Amelia Island. Florida's northernmost barrier island, located 32 miles from downtown Jacksonville, has been ruled under eight different flags since French explorers first came ashore in the mid-1500s. In addition to the French, Spanish and English, past conquerors have included Mexican rebels, Scottish mercenaries, local insurgents and the Confederate Army.

Nowadays, the Stars and Stripes are firmly entrenched in this Nassau County oasis, which has more in common with Key West than with West Jacksonville. Of course, the 13.5-mile-long island still endures invaders, but they're generally friendly tourists seeking pampering at posh resorts, relaxation at pristine beaches and good times at frolics and festivals held in funky Fernandina Beach, the historic city that anchors the island's northern edge.

Fernandina's 50-block downtown district, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places, is packed with intriguing shops, incomparable restaurants and inviting taverns that occupy charming 18th century buildings. Victorian mansions, many of them built between 1870 and 1900, front the brick-lined residential streets.

The heart of the historic district is Centre Street, which stretches the width of the island from the Intracoastal Waterway to the ocean. there you can stop for breakfast at the Marina Seafood Restaurant or a cup of coffee and a pastry at Amelia Island Gourmet Coffee and Ice Cream.

Then take a stroll to where Centre Street meets the Intracoastal. There you'll find Fernandina's docks, where nearly 80 percent of Florida's sweet Atlantic white shrimp-nearly 2 million tons per day-is harvested. Clearly, Amelia is a cool place to live-but space is running out.

Massive Amelia Island Plantation, a 3,500-acre luxury resort and residential community at the island's northern reaches, is finally nearing buildout after more than 30 years. Although resales are available in the environmentally friendly community, the only new construction consists of several luxury condominium projects.

Elsewhere on the island are several infill residential projects, but the bulk of Nassau County's growth is inland. Indeed, the U.S. Census Bureau projects the county's population to grow by as much as 50 percent over the next decade. Most of that growth will occur around Yulee, the county's largest unincorporated area.

"We don't have the hustle-bustle of a Jacksonville or an Orlando," says Clyde Goodbread, executive vice president of the Realtors Association of Nassau County and son of a Nassau County farmer. "Nassau offers more of a laid-back lifestyle, but it's still close to Jacksonville. It's a beautiful place and so far, the development we have had has complemented the natural surroundings."

But the pace is picking up. The residential boom around Yulee, especially in the vicinity of S.R. A1A and Chester Road/Amelia Island Concourse, has already sparked plans for a 150,000-square-foot expansion of Trevett Construction Group's Lofton Square shopping center. The expansion will be anchored by the county's first multi-screen movie theater.

Facilitating more growth is a planned extension of Amelia Concourse from its current terminus at LandMar's successful North Hampton community to S.R. 107. Several new subdivisions are slated along that 3.5-mile, four-lane corridor.

In fact, county planners expect that of 10,000 new homes to be built in Nassau County over the next 20 years, 7,000 of them will be in and around Yulee.

Mark Major, senior planner for Nassau County, says the county is, for better or worse, the right place at the right time for growth. "Nassau County in general and Yulee in particular are at the apex of two growth pressures," Major says. "The first is from Fernandina and Amelia Island, which is built out, and the second is from Greater Jacksonville."

Goodbread and others agree that overdevelopment could affect the rural charm of mainland Nassau, turning it into another ubiquitous Jacksonville suburb.

"People are saying let's take it slow and do it right," says Goodbread. "High on our wish list would be to maintain our unique charm."

Fortunately, state and federally protected wetlands make up huge tracts of Nassau County, a happenstance that ensures some breathing room between developments. Commercial pine forests buffer the towns of Hilliard and Callahan in western Nassau, where one can still find working family farms.

ST. JOHNS COUNTY

C.R. 210 meanders across the top of St. Johns County, connecting the Atlantic Ocean with the north-flowing St. Johns River. In many places, it remains a quiet country road dotted by marshes and bays stretching inland from the Intracoastal and flanked by open fields where horses graze.

But along the length of C.R. 210 and throughout the northern reaches of St. Johns County, those views are changing. Now huge master-planned developments, some the size of small cities, are springing up in this once-rural setting south of Jacksonville.

The most recent data available from the U.S. Census Bureau indicates that St. Johns County is the third fastest growing among Florida's 67 counties and the 38th fastest growing county in the nation.

The population surged by 46.9 percent from 1990 to 2000-and much of that growth was in the county's northwest sector, defined as roughly 80,000 acres south of Duval County, east of the St. Johns River, north of S.R. 16 and C.R. 208 and west of I-95.

According to county records, St. Johns officials last year approved developments encompassing about 61,000 single-family homes and about 21 million square feet of industrial space. Most of this growth is slated for the northwest, along the burgeoning C.R. 210 corridor.

Staking its northwestern claim early was Julington Creek Plantation, a master-planned community that remains by far the region's hottest seller. The development, which is approved for more than 6,000 homes, notched an incredible 994 starts last year.

Primarily as a result of Julington Creek Plantation's success, other amenity rich, master-planned communities are taking root. Of those on the drawing board, Nocatee will be the biggest yet, with more than 14,200 homes and 4 million square feet of commercial space to be built over a 10- to 15-year period.

"Nocatee will surround many of the developments that are already here," says Matt Wilkinson, a realtor with KB Home who recently bought a home in Walden Chase on C.R. 210 near Ponte Vedra Beach. "It will bring in retail and offices and a lot of amenities that will bring up property values in the area. A lot of us feel lucky to get in now-the earlier the better."

The infrastructure required to support these massive developments is being funded largely by the developers themselves. For example, county officials expect to collect some $198 million for road construction from the developers of a half-dozen major projects approved since 2001, while others will chip in based on forecasts of their traffic impact.

Still, St. Johns County officials and residents are concerned about maintaining quality of life amid ongoing, rapid growth. In 2004, a 180-member task force called St. Johns Vision released a strategic plan for the county pinpointing six "foundation areas," including education, economic development, infrastructure, quality of life, government and private sector leadership.

Vision committees identified problems and set goals, and groups continue to meet to come up with ways of implementing the plan. Civic groups from Palm Valley and Ponte Vedra have joined the effort. The overall goal, according to Vision executive director Jim Sutton, is "to make St. Johns County the No. 1 place in the country to live and work."

No. 1 in the country may take some doing. But based on what's happening in the county's northern sector, a pretty strong case can be made that it's already No. 1 in Northeast Florida.

PONTE VEDRA BEACH

The home of The Players Championship golf tournament and some of Northeast Florida's most expensive real estate was a mining camp in 1914, when two young chemical engineers discovered that the dunes along the ocean contained more than a dozen industrial minerals.

What is now Ponte Vedra Beach was called Mineral City in those days, when the National Lead Company began producing titanium and zirconium during World War I.

But when the war ended and demand for minerals slackened, National Lead ceased its mining operation and converted the property into the region's first golf and country club-the precursor of today's Ponte Vedra Inn and Club-for the exclusive use of its executives and directors.

Jacksonville developer Telfair Stockton bought 800 acres from National Lead in 1942 and began building homes and expanding the golf course. Then, in the early 1970s, half-brothers Paul and Jerome Fletcher bought 6,000 acres from a company that had planned to develop a manufactured home community and began selling off tracts for such upscale developments as Sawgrass. The Fletchers also started their own luxury community, Marsh Landing.

In addition to luxurious living, Ponte Vedra Beach has also become synonymous with golf, and is home to the international headquarters of the Professional Golfers Association as well as The Players Championship, held each March at Sawgrass.

The PGA Tour was attracted to Ponte Vedra Beach by a now-legendary 1978 real estate deal in which the Fletchers sold PGA Tour Commissioner Deane Beman 415 wooded acres for one dollar. Beman certainly got a bargain, but the presence of the Tour and its signature tournament also vastly increased the value of the Fletchers' holdings.

Because of golf's high profile, sometimes overlooked is the fact that Ponte Vedra Beach is also home to the Association of Tennis Professionals, which holds its Pro Tennis Classic here each October as well as various exhibition matches and tournaments throughout the year.

Oceanfront or Intracoastal lots in Ponte Vedra Beach can command seven figures, although several new developments farther from the water offer the panache of a Ponte Vedra address for as low as the $200s.

There is little room for large new developments in Ponte Vedra or neighboring Palm Valley, but smaller projects are popping up. Last year, St. Johns County approved five developments along Palm Valley Road ranging in size from 14 to 61 single-family homes or condominium units.

ST. AUGUSTINE

The aspect of St. Augustine is quaint and strange, in harmony with its romantic history...it is impressive from its unlikeness to anything else in America. It is as if some little, old, dead-and-alive Spanish town, with its fort and gateway and Moorish belltowers, had broken loose, floated over here and got stranded on a sandbank.

-Harriet Beecher Stowe

That circa-1872 description of the Oldest City remains accurate, at least physically. But the St. Augustine Stowe visited was a sleepy, isolated place, where she noted, "the current of life has an indolent, dreamy stillness."

If you've ever visited St. Augustine on a weekend, the words "indolent" and "dreamy" are not likely to come to mind. This is a bustling place, teeming with shopping, nightlife and some of the state's best restaurants.

And there's always a festival of some sort going on, including Founders Day, Menendez Day, Greek Landing Day, the Minorcan Festival and the Gamble Rogers Folk Festival, held to commemorate the folksinger who celebrated Florida's heritage through his music.

Located 35 miles south of Jacksonville beside the Matanzas Bay, St. Augustine was founded in 1565 by Spanish Admiral Don Pedro Menendez de Aviles. That makes it the nation's oldest continuously occupied city.

Fort Castillo de San Marcos, completed in 1695, still overlooks the bay, while more than 85 other historic sites including the oldest schoolhouse and the oldest jail line the cobblestone streets alongside intriguing Spanish and Victorian-style homes.

Because the downtown historic district is built out, living in St. Augustine proper means buying and renovating an older-and we do mean older-home. Prices near downtown are now topping $300,000, although fixer-uppers can be had for less.