Beats me. Paul, I'm leaving this morning for vacation out of state, so I will be out of touch for a week. I think it is the current issue of Florida Trend. It is possible that it was 1 or 2 months ago... but I still think it is the current issue.
I'll have to wait until 8-10-98 before I can look into this any further. The author suggested that St. Joe will not see any big profits from its real estate development efforts for a good 3-5 years. Too much permitting approval to go through. Plus, they are trying to convince people (retirees?) to move to the Florida Panhandle - a place where retirees do not traditionally retire to.
I personally can speak to the permitting issues and the long lead time it takes to get permits. I am a city planner in Florida and am well famililar with the long lead times for the state's permitting process, particularly for large-scale developments which are referred to under Florida Statutes as Developments of Regional Impact. I am one of the bureaucrats that adds to the long delays in permitting. Yes, it does take a good 18-24 months to go through the DRI approval process. And that is just the conceptual process. After the DRI is approved, the applicant still has to get engineering and construction permits, which can take another 6-12 months.
Surprisingly, in most DRI projects I have reviewed, the applicant himself adds to the lead time by a good 6-months. typically, they want to fight about every little thing and drag out the process. If I were a developer in Florida, my #1 goal would be to get through the permitting process as quickly as possible. I would agree to just about any condition or information request made of me (unless I thought it was a project killer) so I could get on with construction.
Hopefully, the new CEO at St. Joe realizes this. However, there is an excellent chance that he does not since he comes from Disney. When Florida allowed (?) Disney into the state, they gave Uncle Walt a blank check and made his property virtually immune from state laws. I'm not certain if Disney's Celebration even went through the DRI process. Also, I'm not particularly impressed with what (little) I've seen/heard of Celebration from a design standpoint. It could/should have been better. |
