Most of Tuesday night’s five-hour City Council meeting, August 4, 2026, circled one issue: Palm Coast’s “westward expansion,” a proposal that would pull roughly 20,000 acres west of the current city limits into Palm Coast for future housing, employment, and new transportation corridors. By the time the gavel finally came down, the council had advanced the annexations on a first reading, but only after adding new strings, and it kicked the two most consequential votes to a special meeting later this month.
All five council members attended: Mayor Norris, Vice Mayor Pontieri, and Council Members Gambaro, Miller, and Sullivan.
Quick Business Before the Main Debate
Public comment opened with a mix of frustrations that had little to do with westward expansion, but set the tone. Several residents urged the city to slow down on approvals for new homes, data centers, and cell towers. Mr. Webb pointed to fading lane markings and pushed for regular neighborhood patrols by code enforcement. Jeanie Duarte pressed the council on pay, the tax rate, and the fact that two members were appointed instead of elected. Glenn Davis described a drainage swale that, in his words, has become a ditch the city still hasn’t repaired. Wendy Tremarchi returned to concerns she had raised with the county about recent animal cruelty cases, calling for a new shelter and tougher animal-control enforcement; council members said staff would look into it.
After that, the council cleared the seven-item consent agenda with one unanimous vote.
What “Westward Expansion” Covers
The overall tract spans about 20,144 acres, generally west of the FEC Railroad and north of Espanola. The owner, Radiant Palm Coast LLC, is asking the city to take three related actions: annex the property into Palm Coast, amend the city’s future land use map, referred to as the “flume,” by creating a “master plan mixed use” designation, and approve a Master Plan Development (MPD), essentially the governing framework for how the area would be built.
If adopted, the MPD would supplant two previously approved Development of Regional Impact plans, Neoga Lakes and Old Brick Township. City staff said roughly 7,041 acres were included in the annexation requests the council took up that night.
One fact hovered over every part of the conversation: the city’s Planning and Land Development Regulation Board had reviewed the proposal and voted unanimously to recommend denial.
Step One: Annexations
Three annexation ordinances came first, 440 acres owned by Radiant, 6,601 acres also owned by Radiant, and 1.9 acres consisting of city-owned water well sites embedded within the larger area. In plain terms, annexation shifts jurisdiction from the county to Palm Coast. Staff told the council the parcels are contiguous to the city and would not create an “enclave,” the two core requirements under state law.
Vice Mayor Pontieri’s objections arrived early and stayed central. She argued the annexation language, as written, did not match what the developer said it intended. Radiant’s team described the annexations as tied to the larger approvals, if the flume change and the MPD fail, the property should not come into the city. Pontieri said the documents did not clearly state that.
“This does not say that this annexation shall fail if the MPD is not accepted,” she said, warning the city could end up annexing land only to face pressure for higher densities than the county would allow. “That’s why all the developers wanna annex into the city. We’ve seen it time and time again.”
Radiant’s land representative, Micah Hodge, said the developer would accept that condition before second reading. “We would be comfortable with that condition,” he told the council.
Council Member Gambaro then moved forward with first-reading approvals that included the added requirement: no MPD and no flume amendment, no annexation. Each ordinance passed 3-2. Gambaro, Miller, and Sullivan voted yes, Pontieri and Mayor Norris voted no.
Residents spoke out as well. Duarte urged the council to follow the planning board’s recommendation. Others repeated concerns that water and wastewater systems are already strained. Luke Robbins, who lives in nearby Espanola, focused on the 440-acre piece, saying it erased what had been a buffer around his community. “We now are surrounded on three sides,” he said.
Questions also came up about Old Brick Road, a historic county-owned corridor crossing the property that the county wants to maintain as a linear park. Staff and the developer said annexation would not alter the county’s ownership or control of the 8.6-mile road, and Radiant said it supports keeping the corridor as a linear park.
Step Two: The Flume Amendment
The next item was the future land use change. City planner Jose Papa explained that a vote that evening would not finalize anything, it would only transmit the amendment to the state for review. The scheduled final vote remained set for October 6.
A motion to table the flume until a written agreement with a historical society was received failed 3-2.
Then Radiant’s team presented its case at length. Hodge pushed back on what he called “a lot of misinformation,” and described Radiant less as a traditional builder and more as a coordinating landowner. “People like to call us the big-back developer. We’re not,” he said. “We’re a landowner that organizes the property, typically when asked by the municipality to accomplish economic development goals.”
Infrastructure and funding dominated much of the exchange, particularly the proposed “loop road,” estimated at about $227.5 million. Officials said roughly $130.5 million in state, city, and FDOT dollars has been identified so far, leaving about $96 million still unaccounted for. Radiant argued that internal roads and stormwater infrastructure in the new area would be funded and maintained through a special taxing district, often described as a stewardship district, keeping those costs off existing city taxpayers.
Radiant also offered projections: about 17,000 direct jobs and roughly $1.5 billion in city revenue over 30 years, with additional proceeds to the county and school district. The team said close to half the land would remain as open space and greenway.
Council members, especially Pontieri, questioned how enforceable the jobs and commercial promises would be. She said she wanted commitments with real bite, not language that could still result in mostly residential buildout.
“You will have a no from me until the cows come home if we do not have some type of guarantee that before 2036 there is something besides houses in the westward expansion,” she said, adding she is looking for “meaningful jobs,” not “a Publix here and there or a Wawa here and there.”
Radiant’s team argued that trying to mandate commercial construction through strict requirements can backfire, calling it a “poison pill” that produces empty “ghost buildings.” Their view was that the city gets better outcomes through cooperation and market timing.
The Flagler County School District asked for a seat at the table as the plan advances. Lauren Johnson, speaking for the district, urged the council to require a complete and enforceable school agreement before any MPD approval or before eliminating the old DRIs, given the roughly 19,000 homes contemplated. School board attorney Chris Wilson noted that the existing DRIs already contain school sites and mitigation requirements, and he said the city can carry those obligations into whatever replaces them. When the developer suggested it was difficult to merge entitlements and mitigation at the same time, Wilson quoted a law professor: “Not only is it possible, but I’ve seen it with my own eyes.”
Public comments echoed similar doubts. Jeremy Davis questioned whether the loop road, by itself, would really pull in business investment. Darlene Shelly pointed to a city survey that placed westward expansion near the bottom of residents’ priorities and asked who drove it forward anyway. Peter Johnson recalled that Palm Coast once required roads and utilities to be in place before homes could be sold, and he urged the city to take that same cautious approach now.
After hours of discussion, the council voted unanimously to table the flume amendment to a special meeting on August 25.
Step Three: MPD and Rezoning
The final section of the night turned to the zoning map amendment and the MPD agreement. Council members went line by line through changes they wanted before considering approval.
Miller asked for language that ties the city’s financial positions to future mitigation agreements, so the city does not unintentionally concede “no financial hardship” before those deals exist. He and others also called for full mitigation agreements to be completed before any technical site plan moves forward. Miller wanted data centers removed as a permitted use, meaning any such proposal would have to return to the council. “We’re not a big fan of data centers right now,” he said.
The council also pressed the home-to-jobs balance. Members talked about a 70-30 or 75-25 split in residential versus non-residential value. Gambaro pushed for about one million additional square feet of industrial space, with half in the first phase, framing it as a way to create “careers.” Pontieri, meanwhile, objected to the removal of 1,000 townhomes, saying attached housing often serves as an entry point for “nurses, teachers, first responders.”
Pontieri flagged specific items in the MPD’s use tables, including single-family homes listed as allowed in the greenway, “farm animals other than horses and cattle” within village areas, and solid waste transfer stations. She also raised broader issues: a density provision she said could allow tall apartment buildings concentrated in one area, sections where the land development code would not apply, and language that could allow major changes, like density shifts or use changes, to be approved administratively rather than by elected officials.
“That is unacceptable,” she said. “You’re asking our city, the future of our city, to not be governed by the people.”
Mayor Norris ended the discussion with a quote he read from a 2009 newspaper story featuring former Mayor John Netz, whose name is on the meeting room, about the same DRI concept. “If all it is is a nice residential community, it’s a net loss for the city as a whole,” Norris read, then added, “I think it’s deja vu all over again.”
Near the end of the night, the council agreed to table both the zoning map amendment and the MPD until the August 25 special meeting as well, giving city staff and the developer time to respond to the council’s requested revisions. The special meeting was scheduled for 1 p.m., following the city’s budget workshop that morning.
The post Palm Coast Council Puts the Westward Expansion Plans on Hold During Marathon Meeting first appeared on Flagler County Buzz.
