EDGEWATER, Fla. — City leaders in Edgewater met for a special meeting Monday to address a state judge’s ruling that the city cannot stop Lennar Homes from building phase two in the Parks at Edgewater neighborhood.
Circuit Judge Randell H. Rowe III said Lennar met the criteria to win approval and ordered the city to let the company continue development.
What You Need To Know
Edgewater city leaders approved Lennar Homes’ phase two development, pending city manager approval
A judge had earlier ruled the city couldn’t stop the development due to legal criteria being met
Concessions were made by Lennar, including the elimination of phase five and enhanced flood prevention measures
During the meeting, Edgewater leaders unanimously decided to move forward with approving the rest of the development.
Edgewater Mayor Diezel Depew is taking solace in the fact that Lennar Homes agreed to several concessions so long as the city does not appeal the ruling, including the developers dropping a request for attorney legal fees and scrubbing plans for a phase five, which eliminates 68 lots, and instead adding more flood prevention methods.
“What we saw tonight was a win,” Depew said. “All we wanted to begin with was to add more stormwater and more retention areas, and that’s exactly what they’re doing.”
Depew, though, thinks the city’s legal team should have been more aggressive in how they handled this case.
“I’ve seen that development’s concerns with my own two eyes,” Depew said. “It was a long and dragged-out legal process. If the communication was present with the former city manager, and if he had a stronger legal team, then I don’t think that it would have gotten to this point.”
Court documents say that during Hurricane Milton, a breached retention pond on the phase two land sent a surge of water flooding 35th Street. City leaders say there was some photo and video evidence from residents showcasing this, but city attorney Aaron Wolfe says he didn’t offer up any of this evidence and didn’t bring it with him to the hearing.
“The city attorney’s role is not to act as an advocate for or against the applicant, in the same way a private attorney would,” Wolfe said. “And that’s because when the city council is deciding on a quasi-judicial hearing, they’re sitting as the judge, and the judge must be impartial and unbiased.”
While some residents acknowledge some changes are being made, they feel the lack of evidence hurt their case.
“We got something out of it. And you know it’s better than getting nothing,” said Edgewater resident Joe Ryan. “But I think if we had an attorney fighting for us and not whatever he’s fighting for, I think we could’ve gotten a lot more, and I think the citizens would be a lot happier.”
Other residents near Lennar’s phase two say the city dug drainage ditches in their yards following the flooding incident during Milton, but they are not effective during heavy rainstorms.
“It’s go, go, go to build these houses to get people in, and there’s no real thinking beyond that,” said Thomas Kennedy, who has lived on 35th Street for 14 years.
Kennedy worries his property values could go down if flooding happens more often.
“What happened to putting in storm drains, then building a development?” he asked.
The next step for Lennar’s plat application is for it to be brought before the city manager for approval.