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Sutel Drive Aggregate Storage Rezoning

At a glance

  • What: Ordinance 2026-0532, a PUD rezoning of 16.73 acres on Sutel Drive in Northwest Jacksonville from Industrial Light to a PUD for a concrete aggregate storage and distribution facility. Material arrives by rail, is stored in piles and trucked out. The original version included a concrete batch plant; the applicant removed it (revised written description and site plan dated 2026-09-21) after community opposition.
  • Where it stands: passed the full council 14-1 on 2026-10-13, as amended. Earlier, the committee: approved by the Land Use and Zoning Committee 5-2 on 2026-10-06 as amended. At the committee stage the district's council member, Pittman, was absent (per the captions); the council roll call shows her present and voting yes.
  • Conditions adopted: the traffic study (the Planning Commission's version; the second planning staff condition on employee-parking landscaping was dropped with staff's agreement) plus five dust-control conditions offered by the applicant: water unpaved roads three times a day during operations, water the pile face before loading, portable sprinklers on windy days and during piling and loading, a sprinkler at the conveyor discharge point, and a contracted weekly sweep of the entrances and exits.
  • Support: planning staff found it consistent with the comprehensive plan (infill on long-established industrial land, rail frontage, wetland buffer from homes); the Planning Commission approved it unanimously on August 6 with no speakers in opposition. The applicant's team said Sutel Drive runs at about 37 to 39 percent of capacity and is a designated truck route, half the truck trips go to a parcel next door, there is no rock crushing on site, and the noise ordinance applies.
  • Opposition: dozens of residents filled speaker cards against it. Concerns: silica and fugitive dust, runoff and retention ponds, truck traffic and road wear, noise, property values, nearby schools and new housing, no written list of stored materials or safety data sheets, differences between verbal commitments and the filed application, and that the October 1 community meeting reached only about five residents. A local pastor urged a no vote.
  • Committee debate: Dr. Johnson said he consulted the city's chief health officer and an EPA air-quality monitor north of I-295 and saw no evidence that storage (as opposed to processing) would harm air quality. Arias asked why the city's Environmental Quality Division had not been at the community meetings; planning staff said that division reviews all PUDs and civil plans and issued no new comments once the batch plant came out. Staff and several members stressed that storage is allowed by right today, that the PUD adds enforceable dust conditions, and that any batch plant would need a new rezoning. Gaffney voted no and said he would have deferred a week.
  • 2026-10-13 update (City Council): about a dozen members declared ex parte contacts, nearly all opposed (from 15 letters to more than 100 emails). Mr. Harvey, answering for the Land Use and Zoning Committee, said the amendment strikes every mention of the concrete batch plant from the PUD, site plan and written description and carries six conditions: the traffic study and the five dust-control measures. He and others stressed that storage is allowed by right under the current zoning, so a no vote would leave the developer free to proceed without the conditions. Arias backed it as the lesser of two evils; Amaro was skeptical that the community's petition changed anything; Dr. Johnson said the conditions came from a community meeting between the district member and the developer and was "not a bait and switch." The amendment passed by voice and the bill 14-1 (the captions do not say who voted no). In public comment, residents asked how the amendment could pass if it still named a concrete batch plant (staff said all mentions were struck), asked for an independent environmental review and a wider notice radius, and said industrial uses keep landing in historically redlined Northside neighborhoods.
  • Official minutes (2026-10-13, City Council): the bill is 2026-0532 (the minutes call it the Soutel Industrial PUD, applicant Preferred Materials, Inc., 16.73 acres, Industrial Light to PUD, District 10). Amended and approved 14-1: Gaffney voted no; Pittman, the district member, voted yes. Sixteen members declared ex parte contacts.

Sources

Discussion time

About 86 minutes across 2 meetings (from transcript timestamps; approximate).

Meeting Minutes
2026-10-13 - City Council 17
2026-10-08 - LUZ 69

Log

2026-10-13 - City Council

Amended (batch plant removed, six conditions) and passed 14-1 after ex parte disclosures and questions from Clark-Murray, White, Amaro and Arias; three public commenters raised the batch plant wording, independent review and notice.

Minutes: amended and approved 14-1 (Gaffney opposed).

2026-10-08 - LUZ

Public hearing with a long line of opposing speakers; amended to attach the revised plan, the Planning Commission's traffic condition and five dust conditions; passed 5-2.