Florida governor Rick Scott and the Florida Cabinet have agreed to purchase 5.85-acres along the St. Johns River for $630,000. The deal secures the development rights for the property located west of Naval Station Mayport in Jacksonville. Mayport employs approximately 10,700 military and civilian personnel. The base is home to 17 ships and four squadrons.
The deal is viewed as a way to restrict the amount of future development within the neighboring Mayport Village and as a defense against potential military downsizing in the next round of the federal process known as “Base Realignment and Closure,” which could occur in 2017. Under the agreement, development rights for the land will be transferred from the Jacksonville Port Authority to the state and will be monitored by the U.S. Department of the Navy.
“We don’t know what is going to happen in ’17. That’s really speculative,” said Rocky McPherson, vice president of military and defense programs at Enterprise Florida, the state’s public-private jobs recruitment agency. “But we don’t want to have a development that’s impinging upon the ability of the base to do its mission. And then when people start looking at bases and say, ‘that’s a problem,’ we want to avoid that.”
