The densely-wooded 10-acre enclave in the South Shores
addition on the Southbank is Florida at its most unexpectedly luxuriant.
Here yellow-crowned night herons and belted kingfishers, ospreys, red-tailed
hawks and at least 30 other bird species find a home in thick stands of laurel,
sweetgum, longleaf pine, cherry, magnolia, cypress and more than 20 varieties of
tree and vine, as do multiple flower and butterfly species, not to mention a
small alligator in a tidal creek. The Audubon Society is working on a list of
what lives here.
Across the St. Johns River lie Alltel Stadium and Metropolitan Park. The
industrial waterfront of Jacksonville stretches into the distance.
The Southbank enclave serves as a buffer between the 150 or so homes in a
60-year-old subdivision and the rest of Jacksonville as it marches downstream
along the St. Johns River from the headquarters of the Duval County school
system and JEA's Southside generating station.
Homeowners in the area want future generations to enjoy this small patch of
nature.
"We want it to stay the way it is," said Gary Ulrich, a 30-year resident of
this neighborhood of neat, smaller houses, where American flags and flags that
say "Welcome" are common.
And if all goes well, and with the help of the North Florida Land Trust, the
city of Jacksonville, JEA and City Councilwoman Suzanne Jenkins, that 10-acre
riot of plant and animal life will remain untouched by future development.
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For more
information
NORTH FLORIDA LAND TRUST
Address: P.O. Box 350567; Jacksonville, FL 32225
Phone:
Fax:
E-mail: nfltdirector
Web site: www.nflt.org
For more information about land trusts: www.lta.org
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The idea here is that the city will retain ownership of the land but will
grant what real estate lawyers call a "conservation easement" to the North
Florida Land Trust.
The trust is a newly-organized non-profit organization designed to help
property owners preserve from future development areas in the region that are
special, and in some cases -- but not in the South Shores case -- maybe get a
tax break along the way.
If some future city administration decides to declare the 10 acres surplus to
its needs and sell it for development, the conservation easement which the trust
is expected to own will stop new building in its tracks.
"An easement guarantees that the property will stay as it is forever," said
Mark Middlebrook, executive director of Preservation Project Jacksonville and
the staffer who is the city's point man on the project.
"I think what the North Florida Land Trust offers is a set of tools for
conservation that we didn't really have before," said Middlebrook.
And the tools are available to anybody, not just officials.
How it works
There are more than 1,200 local and regional land trusts around the country,
with about one-third of them in New England, where they became popular at the
end of the 19th century.
They have become increasingly popular in the past 10 years or so.
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An offshoot
of Black Creek is framed by trees of the North Fork Ranch in Middleburg. The
ranch that borders the North Fork of Black Creek is owned by Elizabeth Towers,
who is working with the North Florida Land Trust to protect the property through
a conservation easement. -- Bob
Mack/Staff--------------------------------------------------
The number of land trusts jumped more than 60 percent between 1988 and 1998,
according to Caren Coleman, a lawyer who is executive director of the North
Florida Land Trust.
Trusts operate in two main ways.
The first is where a property owner donates the property and the donation is
structured so that the owner can live out the rest of his or her life on the
property.
The second is to create a conservation easement, which is a legal agreement
that reduces part of the property rights owned by a property owner, namely the
right to develop the property.
At least 1.4 million acres in the United States are protected by conservation
easements, according to the Land Trust Alliance, an umbrella group in
Washington.
Carving out value from a piece of property and disposing of it is common in
some parts of the country.
In oil-producing states, land owners sell the rights to any oil and gas that
might be found below the surface of their property. Water rights are also sold.
In Florida, land owners routinely sell right-of-way to companies that want
to, say, lay fiber-optic cable across their property.
Similarly, a conservation easement carves out the right to develop a piece of
property while still allowing the landowner to live on the land, farm it, cut
timber and in the fullness of time pass it on to heirs.
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Caren
Coleman, executive director of the North Florida Land Trust stands near the main
house of the North Fork Ranch in Middleburg. -- Bob
Mack/Staff--------------------------------------------------
But eliminating development rights also reduces the market value of that
land.
One hundred acres that can be used to build apartments is more valuable than
100 acres that cannot be built on.
And with a reduction in market value come tax breaks since under the IRS
code, the donation of a qualified conservation easement may be treated as a
charitable contribution, said Coleman.
For example, say a couple with a taxable annual income of $80,000 a year
grants a conservation easement on 100 acres, which reduces the market value of
that land by $140,000 -- from $300,000 to $160,000. They now have a nice
$140,000 deduction on their taxable income, which they can deduct at the rate of
$24,000 a year over the first five years and $20,000 in the sixth.
The estate tax benefits of a conservation easement can make the difference
between a family having to sell the place to pay taxes and keeping it in the
family, said Coleman.
Work the deal right, and income tax deductions could --in the grand old
tradition of doing good and doing well at the same time -- help pay off the
mortgage taken on to buy the property in the first place.
But don't think that your suburban quarter-acre lot is a tax break waiting in
disguise.
The trust is picky about the conservation projects it takes on and an
easement has to serve a recognized public benefit.
It wants to conserve the special places of Northeast Florida, not the places
already lost.
The kinds of property the trust wants to help conserve are farm land,
forested land, wildlife areas, wetlands, areas with scenic vistas.
That in turn means that conservation easements are not done in cookie-cutter,
one-size-fits-all style.
They have to fit the particular circumstances of the individual land owner,
said Coleman.
For example, Coleman is working with Betsy Towers, who manages the family
farm consisting of 250 acres of woodlands and pasture and a mile of river
frontage along the bluffs of Black Creek near Middleburg in Clay County.
"This parcel is the last large piece of privately held land on the north
fork," said Towers.
The parcel is all that remains of 1,500 acres, which the family has sold off
over the years.
What was the ranch hay pasture is now occupied by manufactured homes.
An other home development occupies the rest.
In an ideal world, Towers wants the state of Florida to buy 238 acres and
then deed it to Clay County as a park.
The remaining 12 acres she would like to have carved out, along with her
family house, and sold to someone who will operate a bread-and-breakfast
operation.
She also would like her neighbors along the creek to grant a conservation
easement to preserve the whole idyllic setting.
Overall, she wants to get $2 million out of the property and head over to
live in the condo she has bought in Orange Park.
Plan B is to sell the land for development in ranchettes.
"We've been trying to help Betsy with the conservation options for her
property," said Coleman.
"We want to be a resource to help people with those options," she said.
Work in progress
The North Florida Land Trust is very much a work in progress.
Its Web site, for instance, is still being built -- for free as a donation by
Website Pros -- although it does have one page up, at www.nflt.org.
Founded 18 months ago by Bill McQuilkin, a retired Eastman Kodak Co.
executive, the trust has been established to serve a seven-county area from
Flagler to Nassau counties.
A working board, which includes bankers, a landowner and philanthropist and
assorted professionals, reviews all land protection projects.
The trust is working on a three-pronged, three-year strategy to build an
organization and expand its funding; build an education program to tell people
and other organizations about its work; and work on a series of conservation
projects.
Funding so far is coming from private sources and memberships, which start at
$25.
The Community Foundation, formerly known as the Jacksonville Community
Foundation, has donated $10,000 to fund an educational program to spread the
word about conservation issues and hold workshops.
A chapter of the trust in Flagler County has been started.
And there are some skeptics to be won over.
As in just about every public policy question, says Louis A. Woods, professor
of geography at the University of North Florida, there is both a negative and
positive side.
Restricting what the land can be used for lowers its taxable value and
reduces the tax income which communities use to fund government services.
Public access is not a requirement when making a conservation easement, which
means rich people can come in and buy large tracts of scenic property and seal
off future public access if they wish.
But Coleman points out that lands set aside for conservation require less in
the way of public services than they pay in taxes.
She also sees a crying need for the trust.
"I don't think the North Florida area is known or admired for its
metropolitan sprawl but [rather] for its unique land areas and coastal charm,"
she said.
"So what we would like to do is help with the preservation of some of those
areas, so everything isn't developed."
