An application before the county asks for a special use permit to put a 180-foot wireless communication tower and its support facilities on land zoned Open Rural at 6705 Collier Road, and the ceiling the county’s own code sets for a tower built to carry one user in that district is 150 feet.

The application is SUPMAJ 2026-000016, filed under the name Trout Creek, and it comes to a northwest sector public participation meeting on Wednesday, Sept. 30, at 6 p.m. The meeting is at Trout Creek Community Park, which the county calendar gives as 6795 Collier Road. A special use permit is the mechanism that lets a use the zoning district does not allow by right be approved parcel by parcel with conditions attached, rather than by rezoning the land underneath it.

The notice cites Section 2.03.26 of the Land Development Code, and that section is also what puts the application in front of a public meeting in the first place. It allows antenna towers as a special use, then adds that any tower proposed within 250 feet of the nearest lot line of a residential use, a residential zoning district, the residential portion of a planned development or an Open Rural district shall be reviewed as a special use. The Open Rural land is the trigger, not an exception to it.

The height rule is a ladder, and 180 falls between two rungs

The number itself is governed by Section 6.08.12, on page VI-129 of the Article VI edition dated Jan. 12, 2026, and the code does not set one maximum. It sets four, and which one applies depends on how many users the tower is built to carry.

In residential districts a tower built for a single user may reach 90 feet, and one built for two or more may reach 150. In every other zoning district the rungs are 150 feet for a single user, 250 feet for two users, and 300 feet for three or more. Open Rural is not one of the districts the code calls residential: the district list at Section 2.01.02.B carries Open Rural under its own name, separately from the districts whose names begin with the word Residential.

So a 180-foot tower on this parcel sits above the rung the code gives a single-user tower and below the rung it gives a two-user tower. The same section defines the difference. A tower counts as constructed for more than one user, the code says, “if it is constructed so as to provide sufficient excess capacity over the initial single user loading for one or more additional comparable users.” The notice on the county calendar does not say how many users this one is designed to carry.

Height is measured the unforgiving way. Section 6.08.12 says the measurement “shall include, base pad, and other all appurtenances and shall be measured from the finished grade of the Tower Site to the top of the tower or the top of the highest appurtenance whichever is higher.” A 180-foot tower is 180 feet to the top of whatever is bolted on last.

The collapse zone is the part that reaches other people’s land

The code requires that the distance from the tower to the closest residential dwelling, school or designated emergency evacuation shelter, measured radially, be at least the designed collapse zone, and that the zone be certified by a registered engineer. No dwelling, school or designated emergency shelter is allowed inside it. Other non-residential uses may be, subject to the rest of the code.

Where that zone extends past the tower site, the requirement moves onto the neighbors. The code calls for covenants and restrictions or another legal document acceptable to the county, granted by the fee owners of all residential and Open Rural property inside the radius, recorded, and prohibiting residential dwellings within that distance of the tower. A collapse zone larger than the site is a recorded restriction on somebody else’s ability to put a house on their own land.

The notice carries no collapse zone figure, and the calendar entry has no site plan and no staff report attached to it.

One more condition decides a good many tower applications. Section 2.03.26.C requires the applicant to demonstrate that there are no other suitable existing towers or structures on which it could reasonably place its antennas, under the standard set out at Section 6.08.12.R. Nothing in the notice addresses that either. Questions before the meeting go to the applicant’s engineering firm, Tower Engineering Professionals, at 336-210-9684, which is the contact the notice gives.

Two other meetings come first

Thursday, Sept. 17, 6 p.m., the Village Church, 4229 Pacetti Road. Tractor Supply Company is asking for a rezoning and a small-scale comprehensive plan amendment on approximately 5.03 acres at 4430 State Road 16, just east of S. Francis Road. The rezoning, PUD 2026-02, would take the property from Open Rural to Planned Unit Development, which is a custom set of zoning rules written for one site in place of the standard set. The plan amendment, CPA(SS) 2026-03, would change the Future Land Use Map designation from Rural/Silviculture to Rural Commercial. The notice puts a ceiling on what the PUD would allow: a maximum of 48,745 square feet of Rural Commercial uses, including commercial retail and outdoor display. That is a ceiling on floor area, and the notice carries no trip figure, no level of service finding and no school capacity number. Questions go to the applicant’s representative at 251-380-8373.

Wednesday, Sept. 23, 6 p.m., Mill Creek Academy, 3750 International Golf Parkway. This one is listed on the county calendar under the name Fruit Cove Baptist Church of Jacksonville, for applications CPA(SS) 26-08 and REZ 26-16. What the notice says about the substance is that “a community meeting will be held to discuss the referenced proposed application.” It gives no street address, no acreage, no current designation, no proposed designation and no use. The two project-site links on the entry open the county’s GIS viewer against application numbers CPA(SS)_2026000008 and REZ_2026000016, and that viewer is the only place a reader can find the parcel before walking into the room. Questions go to 904-376-6304.

The concurrency answer, for all three

There is not one, and at this point in the process there is not supposed to be. A public participation meeting under the northwest sector process happens before the county’s recommendation exists. The notices are written and signed by the applicants’ own consultants rather than by county planning staff, and none of the three carries a trip generation figure, a level of service finding or a school capacity number. The staff report comes later, at the Planning and Zoning Agency.

Which is where the arithmetic will be. None of these three is on the Sept. 17 agenda.