Can North Florida Housing Market Handle Rapid, Inevitable Expansion?

The state population is predicted to double by 2060, with growth spilling into rural Northeast Florida counties. Will they be ready?

While Florida mortgage costs have become higher than many buyers can handle, there’s no doubt that the Sunshine State is - and will keep on - growing rapidly. Can its last remaining undeveloped areas handle that kind of development? Are they ready?

The businesswoman in Terri Faudree likes what she’s seeing, but the parent in her has concerns for the future. Her Macclenny eatery has picked up to the point that she’s had to extend hours.

It’s a sign of growth in rural Baker County.

But if several big-ticket developments come through, replacing wooded land off U.S. 90 with thousands of houses, her twin 15-year-old sons could find themselves wading through a flood of new students at school.

“One thing I’ve always enjoyed about being in a small town is all the teachers know your name. The kids have the opportunity to be more than a student,” Faudree said.

During the next 50 years, development could erase that small-town feel, according to a study released by growth-management group 1000 Friends of Florida. Urbanized land in Baker County is expected to increase by almost 400 percent because of spillover from a built-out Jacksonville.

The recorded population in 2005, 24,343, is expected to grow to 44,421 by 2060, but not everyone agrees with that projection.

Baker County Manager Joe Cone said he thinks the county population could easily triple within 25 years, especially given the relatively low cost of Florida home mortgage loans compared to much of the rest of the state.

In a county with a $21.8 million annual budget, virtually no sewer service, hundreds of miles of unpaved roads and a hospital with only 25 beds, the potential for an influx of new residents has everyone thinking.

“As scary as this may seem with the major changes we’re going through, if you look at it from a planning and management standpoint, it’s really an opportunity,” Cone said.

Urbanizing Florida’s open spaces and small towns is a familiar concept in the growing state.

Before James Darby moved to Flagler County and took the helm of its County Commission, he was a young man in Miami watching development poke at the Everglades. With developers eyeing the countryside he now represents, it’s important to balance economic development and environmental impact.

“As long as we try to keep a reasonable balance, I think we’ll pull it off. What the home builders understand is this makes their product better by preserving a quality of life,” he said.

That’s not always the case, said environmental writer and documentary film maker Bill Belleville. He commended Florida for developing a comprehensive growth-management plan. He just wishes everyone would stick to it.

“Unfortunately, we are a state driven by growth and development,” he said, “which means builders and Realtors and developers have a huge amount of power and they use it.”

Flagler and Baker counties are among eight rural areas identified by the 1000 Friends of Florida study as projected to undergo the greatest change by 2060.

The study projects a state population burst of 18 million people - doubling the number of residents here now, at the rate of more than 900 a day - as development swallows 7 million acres, or about one-third, of Florida’s farms and open land. Almost 11 million acres of conservation lands would remain protected.

The North Florida housing market is projected to more than double, going from 1.5 million to 3.5 million. Duval County is expected to run out of building space after 2040, and that will send droves flocking to Nassau, Clay, St. Johns and Baker counties, the study says.

Charles Pattison, 1000 Friends of Florida’s president, said his group commissioned the study as a wake-up call to state and local leaders.

“It’s like this was the U.S. in 1830 and people were thinking we’d never get enough people to fill this country,” Pattison said. “We think it can show people you can have growth and do it responsibly.”