JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — A developer wants the Jacksonville City Council to rezone land off of Winton Drive to build 96 apartment units, clashing with the area’s single-family home zoning and longtime residents’ wishes. The city’s planning department recently denied the zoning change because of that but on Monday night, neighbors gathered to discuss concerns about the project potentially moving forward. 

“As residents of district ten, we are standing in alignment to express our strong opposition to bills 2025-0242 and 2025-0243, which proposed the rezoning and development of an apartment complex called McMillan Apartments” said resident Clancy Brown while speaking at Monday’s meeting.

The proposed development involves transforming a currently vacant plot into a five-acre site for multi-family housing, consisting of six buildings and a total of 96 apartments. While the plan may seem like a typical urban expansion, locals are apprehensive about more than just the influx of renters or potential traffic issues. Their primary concern centers around environmental factors, particularly the condition of the land beneath the proposed construction site.

The people who live in the area around what would be McMillan apartments, aren’t opposing the development just because they don’t want renters, or they’re concerned about traffic. It’s mostly because they’re concerned about the environment, and specifically what’s under the ground there. 

“We don’t know what’s there, there has not been an environmental protection agency study. There has not been a study to find out what is leaching in the system and our water table,” said Brown. 

They’re concerned about forever chemicals or p-fas, chemicals that don’t break down easily in the environment or human body. Residents in this community believe the land there has been contaminated due to previous years of dumping trash and two nearby cemeteries.

“See where the trees are at and where there’s no trees are at? That ought to tell somebody something? I mean, I haven’t been to no great universities but that’s common sense to me,” said longtime resident Reverend Aaron Flagg. 

Reverend Flagg has been living in this neighborhood since the 70s. His grandmother lived in the house before he purchased it. He says he remembers people dumping on the land the developer wants to use, so much so that he won’t even drink the tap water. Another neighbor, Jocelyn Glover says she’s been living in the neighborhood more than 60 years and remembers it too.

“When I moved over here, they dug a lot of dirt out,” said Glover. “That’s when they sucked out all the water and start dumping debris, all kind of debris, warehouse stuff, Coca-Cola products, Pepsi-Cola products, grocery store products, all that.” 

We did reach out to the developer for comment but have not heard back. The last chance for public comment on this development will be at the city council meeting on October 14th at 5pm.