PALM BAY, FL (The Palm Bayer) — One night after the Planning and Zoning Board hears it, Three Forks reaches the body that can actually approve it. On Thursday, November 5, at 6:00 PM in the Council Chambers, City Council decides the Three Forks final development plan (Case FD23-00013), a quasi-judicial item. The same night, it takes the project’s development agreement (DA24-00002) on first hearing. The applicants are Parkside Commons Center, LLC and West 80 Acres, LLC. The plan is the one our P&Z preview walked through: 376 single-family homes, 288 multifamily units (664 homes in all), a 119-space RV park, and about 50,000 square feet of commercial on about 124.56 acres south of Malabar Road at the St. Johns Heritage Parkway. Staff recommend approval of the plan with conditions.
What the agreement fixes
The development agreement, which the plan’s own Condition 1 requires, answers the largest open question from the P&Z packet: when the parkway gets built. Under Section 10.5, if no one else has started it, the developer must permit, construct, and convey the St. Johns Heritage Parkway extension south of Malabar Road before the city issues the first single residential building permit for Phase 1C. The extension runs about 200 feet wide and 1,276 feet long, two lanes ending in a one-lane temporary cul-de-sac. The work includes a 350-foot northbound right-turn deceleration lane and a 988-foot pedestrian path from Malabar Road to the property entrance. Under Section 10.3, the 288 apartments may not proceed until that same stretch of parkway has been permitted for construction.
Section 12 is new. The P&Z packet contained no fire protection material at all; the agreement adds a Fire Safety section. The temporary cul-de-sac must be all-weather, built to support the city’s heaviest fire apparatus (a minimum of 75,000 pounds), with an unobstructed radius of 50 feet, a 100-foot diameter, for aerial ladder trucks and pumpers. No vertical wood framing may go up for Phase IC or the apartments until the access road and turnaround are certified complete by the Fire Marshal. Water supply for fire flows must be operational, pressurized, and flow-tested before combustible materials are delivered or accumulated on site. The engineered flows must hold a cushion of 35 to 40 PSI at the hydrant outlet under full flow, rather than the municipal minimum of 20 PSI. A Fire Prevention Program Manager must be designated before the first building permit, enforcing a written Fire Safety Plan with a daily hot-work permit system. In the RV park, a minimum 15-foot clear horizontal separation is required between units, slide-outs, and attachments, and drive aisles need 13 feet 6 inches of vertical clearance and 20 feet of unobstructed width.
The limits are just as clear. The Section 10.5 trigger is tied to Phase IC permits, so Phase IA’s 238 homes and Phase IB’s RV park may be built and occupied before the parkway extension exists. And while Section 12 governs access, water, and construction-stage safety in detail, nothing in the agreement discusses fire station coverage or response times for the site. That subject is absent from both packets.
The activity center that nothing requires
Three Forks carries its zoning because of a bargain struck in 2022. The city annexed the land, amended its Future Land Use Map, and designated the site a Regional Activity Center, and Council approved the preliminary development plan by Ordinance No. 2022-101 on October 20, 2022. Staff’s consistency finding for the final plan cites Comprehensive Plan Policy FLU-1.6D and RAC Objective FLU 1.6: walkability standards, compact development patterns, a well-connected street system. A Regional Activity Center is, by the plan’s own definition, a walkable activity center.
Set the delivery schedule against that designation. Phase IA, December 2026 to December 2027, is houses only. Phase IB is the RV park, which the phasing sheet calls “the KOA Campground,” the only commercial use in the first window. Retail commercial arrives in Phases IC and ID, December 2027 to December 2028, and the Phase ID commercial is described on the phasing sheet as pad-ready lots. Every phase is stated to be subject to change based on evolving market conditions, and Section 3.3 of the agreement lets the timetable be amended or extended as approved by staff.
Here is the documented gap, and it is the question before Council on Thursday. The same plan and agreement that condition home permits on a parkway extension and fire access condition nothing on the commercial. There is no deadline, no trigger, and no milestone for it in the recommended conditions or in DA24-00002 as drafted. The record’s capacity findings are likewise silent on the commercial core that the RAC designation exists to create. The houses carry enforceable triggers. The activity center carries none.
The ask that follows from the document is not about forcing stores to open. It is the mechanism the agreement already uses for the parkway, applied to the designation: condition the later residential permits, Phase IC’s 138 homes and Phase II’s 288 multifamily units, on completion of the commercial pads and infrastructure. The place Council can write that condition Thursday is the agreement’s blank conditions exhibit.
Carried over, unrepaired
The Council packet is the November 4 P&Z staff report carried forward unchanged, and its known defects came with it. Recommended Condition 2(b) still ends mid-sentence: “All FDP Drawings - review/date/revision table must be updated to reflect:” and runs into Condition 2(c). The commercial acreage is still printed two ways, about 5.86 acres in the summary table and about 5.62 acres in the phasing narrative. The plan narrative says three commercial lots; the agreement’s recitals and its legislative memo say four.
Two drafting artifacts ride along. The staff report’s analysis section once calls Ordinance No. 2022-101 a Resolution; its background section and the ordinance exhibit call it an Ordinance. And Section 6 of the agreement, the permits and fees list, carries an item (iv) that reads “intentionally deleted,” an artifact in the document as presented.
And there are still no dollar figures anywhere. No impact fee amounts, no proportionate-share amount, and no off-site improvement cost appear in either document. The project’s off-site road obligations run through the Traffic Impact Analysis and the Proportionate Fair Share Agreements at Exhibit G of the agreement. Section 10.6 grants the developer dollar-for-dollar transportation impact fee credits under Section 106.26 of the City Code, at the fair market value of its out-of-pocket expenses, with the fair share fees credited toward the transportation impact fee, and the credits are freely assignable. The legislative memo transmitting the agreement leaves its fiscal impact field blank.
The blank exhibit
Exhibit D of DA24-00002, the exhibit that will carry the agreement’s conditions, reads in full: “Conditions (To be determined at first public hearing.)” That first hearing is Thursday night. So the sequencing on November 5 is this. Council is asked to decide the final development plan, whose Condition 1 requires the applicant to enter into this development agreement. The agreement receives its first hearing the same night, with its conditions exhibit still blank. Whatever conditions Council wants in this agreement, Thursday is when the page is open to write them.
Other terms in the agreement
The agreement’s own timetable moves the apartments. The final plan and its drawing legend start Phase II in September 2028; Exhibit C of the agreement starts it in September 2029 and closes it in December 2029, a window of about three months for 288 multifamily units.
Sections 10.5 and 10.7 carry the Diaz provisions. Under Section 10.5, the extension work includes a driveway cut of 40 feet or less to the Diaz Parcel (Diaz Treasures, LLC), whose owner owes no capital contribution to the off-site improvements. Under Section 10.7, if the developer does not proceed with the improvements, the Diaz Parcel owner may construct and convey them instead, and the developer remains entitled to the impact fee credits.
Section 15 requires any reservation or dedication of land for public purposes, including public safety uses such as police or fire rescue, to occur during the first phase, before the certificate of completion for phase one.
The agreement does have teeth. Under Section 16, the city’s periodic review runs under Section 163.3235, Florida Statutes, and on a finding of non-compliance the city issues no further development orders or permits until compliance is established. Under Section 23.9, default brings written notice and a 30-day cure period, extendable for good cause. Under Section 23.10.4, if the city cures a default itself and is not repaid within 30 days, its costs become a lien on the property, superior to other liens.
The budget amendment: Ordinance 2026-43
The night’s other first reading is a consent item, and it connects to the fire questions running through the development items. Ordinance 2026-43 (Consent item 4) is the fifth amendment to the Fiscal Year 2025-2026 budget, a year-end closeout with a total amendment impact of $3,531,590, revenues matching expenditures. Its largest net move is a transfer of $3,274,165 in fire apparatus funding from the General Fund to the Fleet Replacement Fund, booked there as “Contingency - Fire Apparatus (FY 26 Pre-Paid Assets).” The exhibit does not say which apparatus the money buys, or for which stations. In a season when fire coverage has been the deciding question on the city’s largest development approvals, $3.27 million for fire apparatus lands in a contingency line with the equipment unnamed. That question is open for Thursday.
The amendment also corrects the GO Bond Fund for errors made in the July 2026 ERP system conversion: a $55,220,246 transfer out, offset by a $55,220,246 reduction in reserves, for a net fund impact of zero. The rest is housekeeping. The amendment moves $2,293,286 of non-project funding for the Edge Switch Upgrade into the operating budget. It recognizes a $47,079 Brevard County PSAP grant (PSAP is the 911 dispatch answering point). And it reallocates year-end savings, including $89,405 for augmented procurement staffing and $210,346 to the Fleet Replacement Fund.
Septic to sewer: Zone A
Consent item 5 awards Task Order 2026-1-KH to Kimley-Horn and Associates, Inc. The price is $398,800, for engineering design only, funded from the City’s Utilities Project Fund (project 26WS12). The project converts about 99 residences in the Zone A area, an area identified in the Brevard County Save Our Indian River Lagoon Project Plan, from septic systems to sanitary sewer. The design covers about 1.5 miles of low-pressure force main in city rights-of-way, service laterals stubbed to the 99 properties, and the replacement and relocation of Lift Station 56. The city will receive $3,721,422 in FDEP cost-share grant funding, a state grant, with $2,747,373 designated for preconstruction and construction. Construction is required to be complete by October 31, 2030.
The point of this item is the work itself. Capacity projects let new houses connect. This is a conversion project: it takes 99 existing homes off septic tanks in a lagoon zone, street by street. That is the kind of project the lagoon program exists to produce.
The rest of the agenda
Emerald Lakes: the first amendment to the Emerald Lakes RAC PUD development agreement with Excess Land Investment, LLC gets its final hearing.
Fuel: Council is asked to raise the Mansfield Oil fuel authority from $120,000 to $950,000. Staff’s memo states the $120,000 cap was inadvertently brought before Council and never reflected the city’s actual annual fuel use.
Easements: Ordinance 2026-42, final reading, vacates part of a rear public utility and drainage easement at Lot 6, Block 2343, Port Malabar Unit 44 (Case VE-6-2026).
Utilities: Utilities Director Gabriel Bowden gives an update on the South Regional Reclamation Facility.
Proclamations: the Mayor’s Business Spotlight goes to Shapes Precision Manufacturing, and November 2026 is proclaimed National Native American Heritage Month.
Minutes: Council adopts the minutes of Regular Meetings 2026-25, 2026-27, and 2026-28. The agenda prints the 2026-25 meeting date as September 17, 2025, a year off.
One appointment, two applicants
Unfinished business includes appointing one at-large member to the Infrastructure Advisory and Oversight Board. Jimmy Backus resigned the seat, whose term expires December 21, 2029. Two applicants are interviewed earlier in the same meeting. William Aaron Rhodes of Pineapple Avenue NE is a City of Orlando firefighter and Assistant Chief of Logistics. He owns Rhodes Construction and Property Services Inc., currently serves on the Community Development Advisory Board, and has been a Palm Bay resident for 44 years. Wilkena Luma of Tepee Avenue SE is the owner and CEO of Simply KE Financial, a 20-year Palm Bay resident with no prior city board service. The night will also carry vacancy announcements: one seat on the Community Development Advisory Board, in the employer, banking, or for-profit affordable-housing field, and one at-large seat on the Planning and Zoning Board, the McNally seat, with that appointment set for November 19.
How to be heard
One night earlier, on November 4, the same plan goes to the Planning and Zoning Board, which hears it first and sends its recommendation on to Council. Residents can put written comment in front of the Board ahead of that hearing by writing the members directly and copying the City Clerk for the record. The Board’s members and addresses are listed in our public comment guide.
The Three Forks plan item is quasi-judicial. The window to file written notice for formal party status under Section 59.03 closed on October 29 at 5:00 PM, but public comment at Thursday’s hearing remains open to anyone. The development agreement is a separate public hearing item on first hearing, with no party-status filing deadline, and Thursday is when Council sets the conditions that fill the blank Exhibit D. Thursday, November 5, 6:00 PM, Council Chambers, 120 Malabar Road SE.
