Site plans in metro Jacksonville

What shapes a site plan in metro Jacksonville

Jacksonville is the Florida metro where one city code governs most of a county. The Consolidated City of Jacksonville applies one zoning code, Chapter 656, across most of Duval ^[1], so a site in the urban core and a site on the county edge are read against the same districts and the same supplementary standards. Five conditions follow, and each one changes how a preliminary site plan is drawn here.

1. One code, most of Duval. Chapter 656 sets the districts, the uses each district allows, and the Part 4 supplementary regulations that attach standards to specific uses ^{[1, 2]}. The city it governs reached 1,017,689 residents in 2025, 8,319 more than a year earlier ^[4].
2. Car wash limits are written into the code. Sec. 656.401 caps an automated car wash at 3 vacuum stations, requires frontage on a minor arterial or higher, orients openings away from residential, and counts its signage against primary wall signage ^{[2, 3]}.
3. CCG-2 is the auto and storage district. The CCG-2 district summary lists service stations, truck stops, personal property storage and travel trailer parks ^[3].
4. The collar counties are restricting one use. On June 8, 2026 the Nassau County commission unanimously adopted Ordinance No. 2026-044, a moratorium of up to 12 months on data center permits, rezonings and site plans ^{[6, 7]}, and on June 23, 2026 the Clay County commission voted 4 to 1 for a one-year moratorium on data center permitting ^[8]. Both sit in tension with the state freeze described below.
5. Duval keeps growing. Duval County went from 995,569 to 1,062,963 residents, growth of 6.8% from 2020 to 2025 ^[9].

The state layers reach Jacksonville in their own way. The SB 180 freeze covers every Florida county through the Debby, Helene and Milton disaster declarations, retroactive to August 1, 2024 ^[10], and it bars moratoria and more restrictive land development rules ^[11]; the law is under litigation, with 25 local governments among the plaintiffs ^[12], so the Nassau and Clay moratoria sit beside a state law whose own reach is being tested in court. SB 1080 sets the city's decision clock at 120 days after an application is complete, or 180 days with a hearing ^[13]. Under F.S. 166.033 the city must keep a written minimum information list, and an applicant has 30 days to cure deficiencies the city identifies ^[14], so the submittal is built to the list. The High-Velocity Hurricane Zone of FBC Sec. 1620 covers only Miami-Dade and Broward ^[15], so the wind regime on the Miami page does not reach a Duval site.

Jurisdiction map: who governs where

Ch. 656 review clocks and fees are not set out in the documents cited on this page. Confirm both before a schedule goes to a lender or a capital partner. What the code does settle is the order of reading, set out below.

Site plan process: the Chapter 656 code read

A Jacksonville preliminary plan that shows the district, the use permission and every Sec. 656.401 standard that applies, drawn on the sheet (the vacuum count, the frontage road and the direction of every opening), gives staff a direct answer to the items they check. The general steps of commercial review are set out in this post on the commercial site plan process.

Asset rules in metro Jacksonville

The CCG-2 rows make one district the natural home for a fuel, storage or auto program, and the Part 4 standards attach to each use inside it ^[3]. Layout standards for these assets sit on the car wash, gas station, truck stop, self storage and RV and boat storage hubs. The statewide car wash picture is on car wash site plans in Florida, and this post on car wash development in 2026 covers the market side.

Hotels: recent Jacksonville-area approvals

Two recent hotel records show how the city and its neighbors read a prototype. In Collins Town Center in Southwest Jacksonville, a StudioRes extended-stay hotel has 124 keys on 4 stories, 53,711 to 55,082 sq ft, on 2.01 acres ^{[22, 23]}; it moved from water management district modification and civil plan submission on April 3, 2024 to a building permit issued January 6, 2025 ^[23]. Downtown, the Downtown Development Review Board approved a Home2 Suites on 1.2 acres with surface parking, even though staff objected that the Downtown Zoning Overlay requires structured parking; the applicant argued that a garage was not "feasible or financially viable" ^[16]. In St. Johns County, a Fairfield by Marriott of 103 rooms on 4 stories, 61,117 sq ft on a 5-acre parcel, needs a St. Johns River Water Management District permit, county design approval, a shell building permit and a separate interior build-out permit ^[18]. The hotel site plan hub covers the layout program, and hotel site size by prototype compares footprints.

RV parks: the state layer under Chapter 656

A park needs a Department of Health permit: no one may establish or maintain one "without first obtaining a permit from the department" (s. 513.02), and the permit fee is no more than $6.50 and no less than $3.50 per space (s. 513.045) ^[20]. Parks are licensed annually through Florida's 67 county health departments, and the application carries "a plan of your park, information on the water system, the sewage disposal system, any swimming pools and the required permit fee" ^[24]. Once a park is approved, s. 513.1115(1) holds its geometry:

"Separation distances between recreational vehicle sites within a recreational vehicle park must be the distances established at the time of the initial approval of the recreational vehicle park by the department and the local government." ^[25]

That makes the first approved layout the long-term record of the park, which is why the spacing on the preliminary plan matters. The state rule sets the floor on the sheet: each space needs at least 1,200 sq ft, density stays at or under 25 units per gross acre ^[26], and a park built after the rule took effect provides a sanitary dump station for each 100 spaces or fraction of 100, or for each 250 spaces where more than fifty percent of spaces have sewage hookups ^[27]. The state regime in full is on RV park site plans in Florida, the layout standards on the RV park site plan hub, and density per acre in the RV sites per acre guide. The Polk County RV park model project shows the same state floor applied in Central Florida.

Growth

The city of Jacksonville reached 1,017,689 residents in 2025, up 8,319 ^[4]. The metro counted 1,785,500 residents in July 2025, 26,153 more than the 1,759,347 of a year earlier, in Census data republished by FRED as series JAXPOP ^[5]. Duval County grew 6.8% from 2020 to 2025 ^[9]. Across the region, the Census Bureau reports that the South grew 6.0% between April 1, 2020 and July 1, 2025, "nearly double the nation's 3.1%," driven by outlying metro counties ^[28].

Site factors

• Wind. Duval is outside the High-Velocity Hurricane Zone, which FBC Sec. 1620 limits to Miami-Dade and Broward ^[15].
• Road class. An automated car wash needs frontage on a minor arterial or higher ^[2]; confirm the road class before the site is under contract.
• Residential edges. Car wash openings face away from residential ^[2], which sets the orientation of the wash building on a parcel that backs onto homes.
• Stormwater permits. Rule 62-330.020(2), F.A.C. requires an Environmental Resource Permit for, among other triggers, more than 4,000 sq ft of impervious area subject to vehicular traffic or more than 9,000 sq ft of total impervious area ^[21]. In St. Johns County the hotel record names the St. Johns River Water Management District as the permitting agency ^[18]. The site data table carries the impervious area; the engineer of record designs the system and files the permit.
• Soils, water and sewer. Site-specific; the engineer of record confirms capacity and designs the connections.

What the preliminary plan carries in Jacksonville

In Jacksonville the plan answers the Chapter 656 code read: the district, the use permission and every Part 4 standard that applies ^{[1, 2, 3]}. That is the preliminary site plan: site layout, buildings, internal roads and drive aisles, parking, pads and yield, organized with a site data table (acreage, zoning, density against the cap, setbacks, parking required against provided). Developers use it to choose the site, to take to a pre-application meeting, to have a general contractor price it, to show a lender and to raise capital. The engineer of record then adds grading, drainage, stormwater, utilities and access, and builds the sealed set on the approved layout. The site plan consultant and site plan services pages explain how the studio works with the engineer and architect of record, the Tampa page and the Orlando page cover the other Florida metros, site plans in Florida covers the statewide regime, the case studies show the method on model projects, and service areas lists every metro covered.

By Viola Sauer, Principal, Innowave Studio