BAY COUNTY — Residents of the Marina Bay condominiums spoke out against a nearby proposed industrial development during a recent Bay County Commission meeting.

The proposed project involves the construction of a barge offloading facility and a cement and aggregate terminal with associated access road, parking, utilities, and stormwater management facility. The project would be constructed on a 7-acre lot on McKenzie Road in Southport. 

Less than a mile away, the Marina Bay residents have not been happy about the development. A flyer recently was posted around their building, urging residents to “make time and help fight this project,” as well as to attend Tuesday's meeting to protest the construction. 

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Residents, including Marina Bay Condo Association President Alan Comerford, brought up several issues they had with the industrial development, such as residents’ exposure to the toxic chemicals from the proposed cement silos, how the chemicals will affect the hundreds of students at Southport Elementary School and how it would be an eyesore in the community. 

“We've already experienced the devastating effects of a natural disaster with Hurricane Michael in 2018, we are concerned about what will happen with the potentially toxic and corrosive cement particulate, which is to be stored in the proposed silos,” Comerford said. “If there's a malfunction of equipment and subsequent release of that particulate, due to mechanical or human error or due to a natural disaster, we have concerns about how that dispersed particulate could impact neighboring residential areas and the waters of North Bay, both short term and long term.” 

Cement silos, like the ones proposed, are structures used to store chemicals to make cement, according to Commissioner Philip Griffitts. 

Jim Mitchell and other residents said they were caught off guard by the proposed construction and saw no public notice of it.  

“I was informed that there is no requirement for public notice, but maybe as a common courtesy, it'd be nice because this is going to be in our side yard or a 10th of a mile from us, less than half a mile between us and the facility, our homes, residences,” Mitchell said. “And so, the distance between these homes and this particular silo storage, 16-story, 153-foot silos, the new Frankenstein landmark of Southport, it concerns us.” 

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The commissioners told the residents that with the way the current process works, if an applicant has appropriate zoning, the owner of that property is allowed to make an application for development work. Commissioner Robert Carroll said the applicant of this project does have the right zoning. 

“I understand they're making some modifications to it. They will go through planning staff, planning staff will review it, make comments, go back and forth,” Carroll said. “Whichever that meets all the aspects of the land development code, a development order will be issued for them to proceed. Once that is issued, then you have an opportunity to object to that.” 

Carroll told residents that the development orders do not go through them and they will have to wait until it is issued. 

Griffitts said he sympathized with residents and understood their concerns. He said it is a complicated situation since Bay County doesn’t have any other places like it.  

“This development is within the current code, but it is in a different kind of situation," he said. "It's an industrial zone that is surrounded by residential areas, which is an anomaly in Bay County. It's the only place we have like that.” 

Griffitts said the project is in its beginning stages and residents will have to wait for the development order, but he hopes it all will be solved after negotiations with the developers. 

“That's essentially in negotiation between county staff and the developer to talk about issues like this,” Griffitts said. “So, once the development order is issued, the residents can challenge it for a 10-day challenge period. Then they'll have a type of hearing.” 

Griffitts said he and the commissioners want to do whatever they can to address existing concerns and please as many people as they can. 

“We're listening to the residents' concerns. We're going to try to figure out if there's maybe some guardrails that we can put on this to try to make everybody a little happy,” Griffitts said. “You don't want to put people out of business, but at the same time, there's got to be a balance between the residents as well.”