A business park of up to 250,000 square feet on Inman Road is dead for now, denied twice in one sitting. The number that killed it was not the square footage. The St. Johns Citizen reports the County Commission voted the plan down on Nov. 3, agreed at the applicant’s request to hear further testimony, and then denied it a second time, 4 to 1.

The mechanism first, because the mechanism is where this one was decided. MAJMOD 2025-12 asked for a major modification to the Last Mile Distribution Facility PUD at 3960 Inman Road, north of State Road 16 near Interstate 95. A PUD, a planned unit development, is the custom rule set a builder trades for the standard zoning. The modification would have renamed the project FL St. Augustine Inman and allowed up to 250,000 square feet of light industrial and flex warehousing on approximately 58.74 acres, of which 32.38 acres are wetlands the plan would have left as they are.

The staff report’s traffic assessment frames the vote, and its figures are worth printing exactly. Staff estimated the development would generate 1,318 average weekday trips, 154 of them in the evening peak hour between 4 and 6 p.m. The two road segments the site touches are already over capacity: SR 16 from I-95 to Inman Road operates at 126.2 percent of capacity on existing 2026 evening peak traffic, and SR 16 from Inman Road to Four Mile Road at 131.3 percent. Counting development already approved and committed but not yet on the road, those figures become 184.3 percent and 179.3 percent. None of that arithmetic includes this project. The same assessment notes it is non-binding. Non-residential development of this kind is exempt from concurrency under section 11.00.05 of the Land Development Code, so a failing segment did not by itself require a denial.

The board denied anyway.

The entitlement this vote leaves in place has its own history on the parcel. Ordinance 2006-136 rezoned 39.7766 acres to PUD, a later amendment added 18.97 acres to reach the current 58.74, and Ordinance 2020-43 renamed the development Last Mile Distribution Facility in 2020. The Citizen reports that Amazon’s plans for a distribution center there came and went, and that the denied proposal would have doubled the floor space of the distribution center once planned while lowering the building height cap from 50 feet to 35.

The hearing itself, as the Citizen reports it, turned on who would carry the traffic. Prospective buyer Michael McNaughton told the board his estimate of the property’s annual tax revenue would rise from about $22,000 to nearly $600,000, and confirmed the family’s sale of the land hinged on approval. He said a denial was tantamount to the tract being constructively condemned. John Stephens of Ponte Vedra Beach, whose late father-in-law bought the property in 2014, told the board the family had spent millions pursuing projects that never got built. On the other side, Commissioner Ann Taylor said she had received at least 40 emails opposing the plan. Ron Faircloth, president of the local Fraternal Order of Police lodge, which operates an adjoining shooting range, pointed to the developer’s estimate of 400 to 600 workers and asked what their commutes would do to a road the county’s own report rates past capacity. The applicant’s traffic engineer told the board the signals could handle the additional turns.

The plan arrived carrying a recommendation of denial by default rather than by vote. At the Planning and Zoning Agency on Oct. 15, a motion to recommend approval conditioned on prohibiting all on-site distribution centers failed 3-4, no further motion was made, and under the county’s procedure that failure is deemed a recommendation for denial.

The same meeting settled a date this paper left open on Nov. 4. The Citizen reports the data center moratorium passed 5-0 and takes effect Nov. 15, which matches the draft ordinance’s effective date rather than the immediate start another outlet had reported; the enacted ordinance itself is still not in the Clerk’s 2026 ordinance book, which this paper checked again Nov. 6. The Citizen also reports Deputy County Attorney Kealey West said staff will consult utility providers and the St. Johns River Water Management District during the pause, with a state study expected in July 2027.

What no reachable record yet carries is the roll. The Citizen’s account gives the second Inman tally as 4 to 1 and does not name the dissenter, and the outcomes of the three agricultural enclave certifications and the Planning and Zoning Agency appointment from that same agenda are in no record this paper can read tonight. The draft minutes ordinarily arrive as backup to a consent item about three weeks on, which puts them at the Nov. 17 meeting, and each of those outcomes will be reported with its roll when they do.