Roads are also
under construction for a second phase to the west of Branan-Chaffee
Road, a 1,000-acre golf-course community to be built by Centex
Homes. Preliminary plans show a golf course bounded by navigable
canals at the core of a community.
Land designated for a regional mall, office and industrial parks
and commercial centers will remain a tree farm for the time being.
So will a chunk of residential land the size of the first two phases
combined.
"It's an area of our county and Duval County where we needed some
top quality development," said Clay County Commissioner Larry
Lancaster, one among a chorus of officials who welcomed the project.
Many will be on hand today for a ribbon-cutting ceremony on Argyle
Forest Boulevard.
OakLeaf is similar in scale to Nocatee but, although Nocatee was
announced three years ago, OakLeaf should start home construction
first. Hutson already holds the necessary permits, hand-me-downs
from the Gulfstream Corp., which set out in the mid-1970s to build
Argyle Forest, an almost exclusively residential community between
Blanding Boulevard and the outskirts of Cecil Field.
Gulfstream ran
out of money and sold its land holdings to Hutson in 1994. Hutson
used the land for hunting and tree farming until Branan-Chaffee Roadd and Cecil Commerce Center boomed.
Development will begin as Jacksonville prepares to plow millions
into area road construction as part of the Better Jacksonville Plan
and Clay County prepares to finalize a land use and road
construction plan for the surrounding area.
"This will be Main and Main," said Hutson president Donald
Hinson, standing among pine trees and waving at the future.
Homebuilders seem to agree. Already, the company has racked up
$60 million in lot sales.
Like Eagle Harbor and Fleming Island Plantation, OakLeaf will
cover the cost of its own infrastructure with municipal bonds that
will be paid off by future residents. Hutson will also donate sites
to Clay County for five schools, two fire stations and a library.
It is a welcome gesture in a county struggling to pay for
evermore roads and schools.
"To me, this is the optimum kind of development," Lancaster said.
"This is growth with planned infrastructure."
The fact that those plans include a mixture of homes and jobs
also brings smiles to official faces.
"It provides a liveable and sustainable community," said
Jacksonville Councilwoman Alberta Hipps. "I'm looking forward to
seeing it."
The possibility of working where you live is a ways down the
road, however. The first phases are entirely residential.
As with other planned communities, OakLeaf's developers and
homebuilders are betting they can sell homes at a premium by selling
the idea of community.
The first phase, OakLeaf East, features a village center with 15
surrounding subdivisions on a bronchial road network -- arterial,
feeder, cul-de-sac.
Hinson said the community was designed with kids in mind. The
village center will include an elementary school, a water park and
playing fields within walking distance from most of the home sites.
Bike trails will connect cul-de-sacs, giving pedestrians and
cyclists greater freedom than drivers. Bridges will fly over major
roads.
The preliminary plan for the Centex golf course community
substitutes a golf course for the village center. The concept for
the course, by Weed Golf Course Design of Ponte Vedra, is a compact
run of holes with a residential periphery. The firm has also
designed courses at Fleming Island, the World Golf Village and
Amelia Island.
"It's a journey over hill and dale rather than through someone's
back yard," said Weed designer Chris Monti.
Monti could well be describing the fate of commuters if OakLeaf
fails to attract employers. After all, the community is adjacent to
the vast and largely vacant Cecil Commerce Center.
But Hinson is confident OakLeaf will not suffer the same
frustrations visited upon previous attempts to bring employers to
Clay County. He said the presence of Cecil Commerce Center is a
positive because smaller companies will spin off to the outskirts of
the giant aerospace park.
"We know we're not going to be working on airplanes, but smaller
companies will want to be here," he said. "I don't think there is
any other place in Clay County that has this much good
transportation and is this close to downtown."
The initial push may come on the strength of existing communities
along Argyle Forest Boulevard. The Regency Realty Group, a developer
of supermarket-anchored retail complexes, has purchased properties
at the northwest and southeast corners of Argyle Forest Boulevard
and Branan-Chaffee Road. The company did not return calls for
comment.
Staff writer Binyamin Appelbaum can be reached at
or bappelbaum.
