Fruit Cove neighbors fear the Daily’s gas station will bring dangerous traffic increases, pollute well water and endanger kids at the nearby bus stop.<\/p>\n
FRUIT COVE, Fla. \u2014 Neighbors in the Fruit Cove Estates say a proposed Daily’s gas station and car wash doesn’t belong at the corner of State Road 13 and Otoes Place, right at the entrance to their 44-home neighborhood.<\/p>\n
Michael Dunlop, president of the Fruit Cove Estates Homeowners Board, said the community is united in opposition.<\/p>\n
“As a community here, we do not support this,” Dunlop said.<\/p>\n
First Coast Energy, Daily’s parent company, wants to rezone the former plant nursery site from retail to allow fuel pumps and a drive-thru car wash. The plan calls for an entrance cutting directly through Otoes Place.<\/p>\n
Krista Dub\u00e9, a neighbor, called it a dangerous idea.<\/p>\n
“That is our only neighborhood entrance in and out for all the residents that live here, for emergency vehicles, for deliveries, for all of that,” she said.<\/p>\n
Renderings show a large convenience store and car wash just feet from backyards. Dunlop questioned the need.<\/p>\n
“We scratch our heads because within sort of less than a 2-mile radius, there’s 3 or 4 gas stations serving northbound east and west traffic, so the need for yet another gas station just seems overkill on such a beautiful piece of land,” he said.<\/p>\n
Krista Dub\u00e9 also noted the property isn’t zoned for fuel sales.<\/p>\n
“This is retail space,” she said. “This is zoned for retail. This is not zoned for a gas station and a car wash.”<\/p>\n
Residents raised alarms over environmental and safety risks.<\/p>\n
“Both from an environmental, we all live on well water, the runoff, the chemicals from a gas station and car wash, and most importantly, the safety,” Dunlop added. “There’s a bus stop with schoolchildren here, that’s trying to cross a very busy road that’s only getting busier.”<\/p>\n
It’s not the first time this has been proposed. Neighbor Keith Dub\u00e9 said the county has rejected similar plans before.<\/p>\n
“This is gonna be the 3rd time, and we don’t want it to be a 4th,” he said. “We don’t want it at all and no one around here wants this.”<\/p>\n
Residents challenged county commissioners to consider their own backyards.<\/p>\n
“Would they want something like this built right in front of their neighborhood? I just don’t see everyone raising their hands saying, ‘oh yeah, we want this,” Keith Dub\u00e9 went on to say.<\/p>\n
Ultimately, they want the land preserved.<\/p>\n
“This is a beautiful piece of land, and we ask them to try and save it and keep it beautiful and to keep our neighborhood, the children, the adults safe,” Dunlop said.<\/p>\n
As the fight continues, a community meeting with First Coast Energy is planned for Feb. 15. Neighbors urged Fruit Cove residents to attend and speak out.<\/p>\n
First Coast News reached out to all five St. Johns County commissioners and First Coast Energy but has not yet heard back.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Fruit Cove neighbors fear the Daily’s gas station will bring dangerous traffic increases, pollute well water and endanger…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":512450,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5136],"tags":[5229,3188,723,7310,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-512449","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-jacksonville","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-fl","10":"tag-florida","11":"tag-jacksonville","12":"tag-united-states","13":"tag-united-states-of-america","14":"tag-unitedstates","15":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","16":"tag-us","17":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115886122890357060","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/512449","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=512449"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/512449\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/512450"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=512449"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=512449"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=512449"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}