The St. Johns County Commission has approved a zoning change that will allow an area flea market to move 1,000 feet north and expand. The County Commission voted in favor of the project Aug. 17. “They’re approved for a flea market,” says Michael Roberson, a planner for the county. “Basically it is a shift from where it exists now, to the parcel that’s adjacent to the north. They got the land use changed to allow this use.”
The site had been approved for residential use, but the owners of St. John’s Flea Market came to the commission with a request to rezone part of it for the market and a couple retail businesses. “They came in with a modification to incorporate some commercial, including the flea market,” says Roberson.
The new market will be an L-shaped building covering 124,000 square feet, according to Roberson. He indicated that preliminary plans include vendor space to the east of the new building under a covered roof, but exposed to the air on the sides. “On the site plan, I believe the applicant said they were intending to have indoor plus outdoor,” says Roberson. “There’s going to be some sort of outdoor space associated as well. Like a covered area.”
The market faces a few more government hurdles, but nothing that can keep the project from completion, he says. “There will be construction plans that will need to be approved, but those are smaller details. Is the right of way wide enough, do they meet accessibility requirements, those types of things. But ultimately they are allowed that use, and they are allowed a flea market.”
The approved plan allows residential use as well. “There’s other stuff on the site,” says Roberson. “Just north of it there’s going to be multi-family, and then north of that, there’s going to be residential. But there are gaps and buffers, so they are not right next to the flea market.” The site will be used for an existing RV park and may attract a couple big-box retailers in later stages, according to two reports in the St. Augustine Record.
FleaMarketZone hopes to be able to add a comment from the market to this story in the near future.
In depth: The St. John’s Flea Market expansion from the air
FleaMarketZone obtained aerial photos of the expansion site from Bing.com and the developers’ map of the proposed expansion from St. Johns County. Click on these links to see how the development will proceed:
- The current site as photographed from above.
- The developers’ map of the plan.
- The plan map laid over the aerial map.
Photo credit, with thanks: Bing Maps and St. Johns County.