Two applications to build a church on U.S. 1 in the north of this county are open in St. Johns County’s land development tracking system, filed about seven weeks apart, and between them they carry one measurement: a parcel number each.

The first is MINMOD 2026000015, issued Aug. 6, for the Shoppes of Valley Ridge. A MINMOD is a minor modification, which is a request to change the terms of a planned unit development that has already been approved rather than to rezone anything, and the PUD this one reaches into is the Pope Site PUD, adopted as Ordinance 2019-37 and amended since. The county’s record names the owner as Shoppes of Valley Ridge, LLC, puts the parcel at 023840-0010, zoned PUD with a comprehensive plan designation of MD, and prints the request in one sentence: a modification “to allow for the construction of a church that will exceed 350 parking spaces and 1,000 seats, pursuant Section 2.03.12 of the Land Development Code.”

The second is PREAPP 2026000122, issued Sept. 24, for 11600 U.S. Highway 1 North. A pre-application is the stage before an application, where a developer puts a concept in front of county staff and gets comments back. Its parcel is 023300-0000, zoned OR, open rural, with a comprehensive plan designation of R/S. Its description says the proposal “exceeds the capacity and parking thresholds of church use under Section 2.03.12(C)” of the code “and, therefore, qualifies as a Large Place of Assembly under LDC Section 2.03.55.”

Both applications therefore say on their own face what the code does with them, which is unusual and useful. It is also the whole of what the county publishes about their size.

What the two sections do

Section 2.03.12(C) of the Land Development Code, in the edition dated June 2, 2026, sets the line in one sentence, and it is a line about parking and seats rather than about floor area. A church with more than 350 paved or unpaved parking spaces, including every space reserved for its use, or one capable of holding more than 1,000 people, has to satisfy Section 2.03.55, Large Place of Assembly.

That section is a page and a half and it is mostly distances. Buildings set back a minimum of fifty feet from property lines. All improved areas, including the parking lot paved or not, set back thirty-five feet. Screening by a finished masonry wall or a decay-resistant fence that is not chain link, at least six feet high, painted and architecturally finished on both sides if it is masonry, with the Planning and Zoning Agency free to enhance, reduce or otherwise modify it according to what is next door.

Then the part that is about roads. A Large Place of Assembly must have direct primary access to an arterial, a major collector or a minor collector, with secondary access to local roads only considered. And it must provide a Land Development Traffic Analysis to address its site access points.

The review factors in subsection C are the ones a neighbor would recognize. They are the size and scale of the use, the effect of increased traffic, and the proximity to residences, schools, hospitals and churches. Then the roads: the impact on roads and bridges, whether the access road is substandard in a way that creates safety or capacity concerns, and the number of peak trips the use will generate. Lighting and noise close the list. Subsection D then lets the Planning and Zoning Agency waive any of it except the access requirement, on five findings it has to make one at a time, which means most of the distances above are a starting position rather than a floor.

One sentence in that section decides who the rules reach at all, and it is worth printing whole: “Properties owned and operated by St. Johns County shall not be subject to the provisions of this Section.” That is the county exempting its own buildings from a standard it applies to everybody else’s, written into the code rather than granted case by case.

What the county’s own screen leaves blank

The tracking system has a tab on every application called Proj Data. It has fields for Acres, Wet Acres, Cleared Acres, Square Footage, No Lts/Unts, Peak Hr Trips, No. Liftstations, No. Land Uses, Type Dev, Project Address and Location, among others.

On MINMOD 2026000015, every one of those fields is empty. On PREAPP 2026000122, every one of those fields is empty. What each screen carries is one row in the parcel table, the zoning class and the comp plan designation, and nothing else.

So the county is holding two applications whose own descriptions turn on exceeding 350 parking spaces and 1,000 seats, and the screen with the field marked Peak Hr Trips on it is blank for both. The number of peak trips is a review factor the code names in subsection C.4. Whether a traffic analysis has been filed against either application cannot be established from this system, because there is no field on these screens that would show it and the submittal management tab answers a 404.

That is the concurrency question on this story. The answer is that the county’s published record does not give one, which is a different and smaller finding than the county not having asked it.

What is moving and what is not

Each record keeps a dated note log, and the two logs are short enough to print in full. The Shoppes of Valley Ridge file was opened on Aug. 6 at 9.54 in the morning with the project description updated, a fee email went to the applicant a minute later, and a minute after that staff logged “Routed Submittal without receiving payment.” The description was updated again on Aug. 10 and comments went to the applicant on Aug. 20. Nothing has been written to that log since.

The 11600 U.S. 1 file is three lines. Comments went out on Oct. 1 at 9.11, and at noon the same day two entries record a Development Review Committee slot: “DRC 10/7/2026” and then “DRC Confirmed 10/7/2026 10:30-11:00 in person.” That is the Development Review Committee, the staff table an application crosses before any board sees it, and that meeting has happened. Nothing has been written to the log since Oct. 1.

Neither application carries a completion date. Neither has anything in its Conditions tab.

The measurements, and where they came from

The St. Johns Citizen reported on Oct. 12 that the Valley Ridge filing describes a church of 44,928 square feet on a property of nearly 12 acres at 10640 U.S. 1, and that the 11600 U.S. 1 proposal is 32,148 square feet on roughly seven acres with 408 parking spaces listed and no seating capacity given. It quoted the church’s chief of ministry staff saying the congregation meeting at Ponte Vedra High School and the permanent campus next to Creekside High School have both outgrown their space, that the Creekside campus is not going anywhere, and that final plans and timelines for the two sites are not settled.

Those figures are that outlet’s, obtained from the files themselves, and this paper has not independently got the site plans. What can be established here is how they traveled. Of the nine rows the county returns for a search on the name Eleven22, five are public records requests. Three of them name the Shoppes of Valley Ridge application and two name 11600 U.S. 1, they were opened on Aug. 31, Sept. 1, Sept. 24, Sept. 25 and Sept. 29, and the county’s own titles for them carry the word Media.

A square footage that reaches the public through five records requests is still public. It is just slower, and it arrives only for whoever asked, and nobody searching the county’s project screens tonight would find it there.