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Island Brief

Amelia Island • Nassau County • First Coast

Happy Wednesday, Nassau County. One beach note before anything else: the National Weather Service has a rip current statement up for our coast through 8 p.m. tonight, so today is a day to look at the surf rather than swim in it. Highs run 86 in Fernandina, 87 in Yulee and 88 in Callahan and Hilliard, with lows tonight of 77, 76, 74 and 72. Showers are close to a coin flip, 44 percent on the island and 57 percent out in Hilliard. Thursday is the island's clean day, 87 and a 13 percent chance, but the mainland does not get one: Callahan and Hilliard sit at 55 to 58 percent tomorrow, and Friday and Saturday run 60 percent or better everywhere. If you are on the island, take Thursday. If you are not, take the morning. This morning: the city golf course's rough August, a million-dollar gift for Nassau County land from somebody who will not say who they are, and the things Tuesday night's commission agenda quietly decides.

📰	What You Need to Know

The Fernandina Beach Golf Club counted 19 days with a heat index above 100 and just 3.25 inches of rain last month, General Manager Jeffery Biggers told the Parks and Recreation Advisory Committee Tuesday, and the course paid for it: rounds slipped about 7 percent to around 105 a day, golf revenue fell about 4 percent, and pythium root rot got bad enough on three or four north-course greens that play was restricted while crews treated them. The north nine is back open but will probably stay limited through September while the greens recover. Then there are the e-bikes. Committee members described young riders tearing across greens, police have been called to the course twice, and staff are asking golfers to phone in descriptions of the bikes, the helmets and the direction they went. The bright spot is memberships, 203 sold through August, or 113 percent of what the city budgeted for the whole year, and that is before the new rates: cart fees up $1 and green fees up $2 to $3 depending on the time of day, with memberships up roughly 5 to 8 percent, all on second reading at Tuesday's commission meeting and taking effect Oct. 1 if approved.

Read More → Fernandina Observer

The North Florida Land Trust announced Monday that an anonymous donor has given it $1 million restricted to conservation work in Nassau County, made in memory of a person the donor also chose not to name. The timing is hard to miss: it lands six days after the city commission approved the agreement with the trust that lines up about 28 acres beside the Egans Creek Greenway for purchase, the deal we walked through Monday. The trust says the money lets it move quickly when a parcel comes up rather than waiting to raise the funds, and it is already targeting two more properties on the island by the end of the year, on top of the 1,247 acres it has protected on or beside Amelia Island and 6,281 across the county. President and CEO Allison DeFoor put it plainly: "These natural spaces are irreplaceable, and once they are gone, they are gone forever."

Read More → Action News Jax

The headline act at City Hall next Tuesday is the 5:05 p.m. hearing that adopts the final tax rate of 4.8530 mills and the $228 million budget, but the 6 p.m. regular meeting that follows carries an agenda nobody has written about yet. On it: $274,450 in work orders to Passero Associates to finish the design, engineering, permitting and bid documents for tearing down the former Brett's Waterway Cafe, the paperwork that has to exist before the demolition itself can be bid out; a $1,164,144 contract to Earth Tech Enterprises for the first segment of the waterfront resiliency work; a $338,892 change order on the Area 6 drainage project; conceptual designs for a rehabilitation of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Park; a three-year franchise agreement with the tourism bureau to keep Dickens on Centre in the downtown streets; and a resolution backing a census tract in Fernandina Beach for federal Opportunity Zone status, the tax break for investors who put capital gains into property and businesses inside its lines. The city's public information session on the marina rebuild follows the next afternoon, Wednesday Sept. 16 at 2 p.m., in the same chambers.

Read More → City Commission agenda, Sept. 15

🌟	Community Spotlight

Next Tuesday the city commission proclaims Oct. 4 through 11 "Les DeMerle Amelia Island Jazz Festival Week," with the drummer and bandleader himself and vocalist Bonnie Eisele there to accept, so this is a good week to say what the festival actually is. Founded in 2001 and held every October since 2003, it is a nonprofit with a headliner week most people know about (the Four Freshmen on Oct. 9, Gunhild Carling on Oct. 10, a free kickoff concert at the Atlantic Recreation Center on Sunday Oct. 4 from noon to 2 with the University of North Florida's Jazz Ensemble 2) and a year-round side most people do not. Its Jazz in the Schools workshops, led by master musicians, reach more than 2,000 area students a year, with sessions over the years at Fernandina Beach Middle, Fernandina Beach High and Yulee Middle; its Jazz for Seniors program takes the same music into senior centers; and every year the festival's proceeds fund a scholarship for one graduating senior heading off to study music, with Rory Ames this year's winner. Les DeMerle is the artistic director, which is why his name is on the thing.

Read More → Amelia Island Jazz Festival

💼	Business Brief

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Wildlight's next phase is about jobs, not just houses. Ten years into building out 24,000 acres in Yulee, Wildlight's vice president of real estate, Wes Hinton, told News4Jax the next push is commercial: attracting employers to the mixed-use town district, then opening the Garden District, which is planned around preserved green space alongside new businesses, amenities and homes, with land already set aside for schools and parks and a new road network designed for the growth to come. One measure of how many people are already there: the YMCA branch in Wildlight says more than 700 family units have joined there alone. (More)

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Coastal Tea Cafe has a ribbon-cutting on the calendar. Tonya Blanchford's tea shop at 27 S. Fifth Street downtown, which we have been tracking since she bought the building in the spring, opens with a chamber ribbon-cutting on Thursday Oct. 1 at 10 a.m., three weeks from tomorrow. That matches the Oct. 1 opening date she gave over the summer, so the date has held. (More)

➤	Century 21 Miller Elite is moving to South 14th Street. The real estate office cuts the ribbon on its new location at 1888 S. 14th Street on Thursday Sept. 24 at 4 p.m., per the Nassau County Chamber's calendar. (More)

📌	Briefly Noted

🗓️	Quick Picks This Week

Thu 10

Amelia Island Dance Festival opening night Amelia Community Theatre, 207 Cedar St. • guest artist performance 7 p.m. • free workshops from 2 p.m. at the Residence Inn, 2301 Sadler Road • runs through Sunday

Fri 11

September 11 Remembrance Ceremony, 25 years on Nassau County Sheriff's Office, 77151 Citizens Circle, Yulee • 9 a.m. • open to the public

Sat 12

Nassau County Animal Services adoption day Petco, 463713 State Road 200, Suite 200, Yulee • 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. • adoptable dogs from the county shelter

The city is buying land beside the greenway and somebody just handed the land trust a million dollars for Nassau County. If it were your call, which piece of ground in this county would you protect next, and why that one? Hit reply and let us know. We read every response.

You can see manatees at the city marina this month, and plenty of people assume they live in the Amelia River year-round. They do not. What sends them away, and where do they go?

Answer: water temperature. Florida manatees roam the coast in summer as far as the Carolinas and the Gulf states, and they clear out of our waters once the ocean dips below roughly 70 degrees, heading for the warm springs inland, places like Blue Spring State Park in Orange City and Three Sisters Springs at Crystal River, where they spend the winter. There are only about 10,000 Florida manatees, the state's official marine mammal since 1975, so the ones in the river right now are worth a look before the water cools.

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