The Reserve at Haw Creek. Know what matters before you buy.

The 60-Second Overview

The Reserve at Haw Creek is the approved master plan for up to 6,100 homes on roughly 2,788 acres west and south of Bunnell, generally between State Road 11, State Road 100, County Road 302, and County Road 65. The plan mixes single-family homes, duplexes, townhomes, and apartments with roughly 625,000 square feet of commercial and 850,000 square feet of industrial space, a 50-acre mixed-use town center, an RV resort of about 650 units, parks, conservation areas, and a required 60 percent minimum open space. It is, by every measure, the largest single development approved in Flagler County since ITT platted Palm Coast in the late 1960s.

The approval itself was dramatic. The Bunnell City Commission rejected the project 4-1 in June 2025, when it was proposed at up to 8,000 homes. Two months later, after the project was revived and scaled to 6,100 units, the commission approved it 3-2 on September 8, 2025, with Commissioner Pete Young switching sides and Mayor Catherine Robinson and Commissioner Dean Sechrist joining him. Residents packed the meetings in opposition, petitions circulated, and legal challenges to the approval have been publicly threatened.

A city of about 1,000 households approved a project that would sextuple it. That sentence is the whole story: enormous upside for the developer, an identity question for Bunnell, and a decades-long watch for buyers.

For buyers, the practical facts are simple: nothing is for sale, no builder has been announced, no plats have recorded, and the build-out is projected across six phases over 20-plus years. This page exists because the entitlement record is public and rich, and because the people who track a project like this from the first plat are the ones who buy well when sales finally open.

The Approval Trail: What Is Actually Approved

The verified sequence: the project entered Bunnell's process as a development agreement and comprehensive-plan framework for what was then up to 8,000 homes and 800 RV sites, drawing sustained resident objection and a Bunnell Planning Board recommendation to cut the plan by 2,500 homes. The developer also asked the city to reduce the required open space from 60 percent to 50 percent; the commission said no, and the 60 percent minimum stands. In June 2025 the City Commission rejected the package 4-1. The revived, scaled-down version, capped at 6,100 residential units, received first-reading approval 3-2 in August 2025 and final approval 3-2 on September 8, 2025. The state reviewed the enabling comprehensive-plan amendment and signed off with non-binding recommendations.

What is not settled: residents have circulated petitions and publicly threatened litigation challenging the approval, including arguments about procedural deadlines and the form of the zoning. Separately, what remains before homes exist is everything: phase-one plats, infrastructure financing and construction at multi-thousand-acre scale, utility agreements, builder takedowns, and the governing documents that define what every owner pays. None of it has begun publicly.

The Honest Timeline, and What Could Move It

The developer's own framework projects build-out across six phases over roughly 20 years, and reporting around the approval put the full horizon anywhere from 15 to over 50 years. Before a single home sells, the project needs phase-one engineering, infrastructure financing, utility capacity agreements, plat recordings, and builder contracts, a multi-year runway even if everything goes smoothly. First closings before the late 2020s would surprise us.

What could move it: the threatened legal challenges (a successful procedural challenge could void or delay the adoption), infrastructure economics at this scale, water and sewer capacity agreements, absorption in a county that already counts well over 13,000 pipeline homes, and Bunnell's own election cycles, the 3-2 approval margin means the city's posture can change with one seat. None of this is a prediction of failure; it is the honest range of outcomes for a project this size with this approval history.

The Scale, In Context

Numbers this large need translation. Bunnell counted roughly 1,000 households at the last census; The Reserve at Haw Creek is approved for up to 6,100 homes, roughly six Bunnells on one tract. The ~2,788-acre site is more than five times the size of Palm Coast's Coquina Shores, the city's biggest approved community, and the ~1.4 million square feet of commercial and industrial space is an employment district, not a strip mall. The 50-acre town center is the plan's social heart, small next to Palm Coast's 2,000-acre Town Center district but transformative for a city whose entire historic core fits in a few blocks.

The other side of the scale: the 60 percent open-space requirement the city refused to relax means well over 1,600 acres stay green, and the conservation areas along the Haw Creek basin are part of why west Flagler looks the way it does. Whether the finished project reads as a new town or as sprawl will be decided plat by plat, and the plats are public.

West Flagler Context: Between Farms and the Pipeline

Bunnell is Flagler County's seat and its value quadrant: land-rich, infrastructure-light, and historically rural. The live new-build market here is Grand Reserve, the golf community on the city's east side where homes sell from roughly the $270s, including the Freedom Homes phase. South along US-1, Plantation Bay holds the area's gated golf-community ceiling, and Sawmill Estates represents the acreage-style alternative buyers move to west Flagler for. The Reserve at Haw Creek would not join this market; at build-out it would be this market, several times over.

That is precisely the tension. The buyers west Flagler attracts today come for space, quiet, and price. The project approved here promises a town center and jobs, and brings two decades of construction, traffic studies, and change. Both things are true, and we say so on every Bunnell page we write.

Schools, Honestly

Bunnell addresses currently feed Bunnell Elementary and the Buddy Taylor Middle / Flagler Palm Coast High lineup, but no district absorbs a six-fold city expansion without new schools and redrawn zones. School-site reservations and concurrency math will be part of this project's phase approvals, and we read those documents as they file. Verify the current assignment for any address with Flagler Schools, and treat any zone promise from a future sales office as provisional.

What Living Here Will Actually Be Like

Project from the approved framework, not renderings: a phased new town growing out of pasture and timberland, with early residents living closest to construction and latest residents inheriting the finished amenities. The 60 percent open space and the Haw Creek basin conservation areas should keep real green between villages. The town center, the RV resort, and the industrial district mean this will not feel like a bedroom subdivision, for better and worse.

5 Pre-Construction Mistakes We See Constantly

Mega master plans create predictable buyer errors years before launch. These five apply directly here.

The Land, and the Lots to Come

Anticipated relative desirability based on master-plan precedent; no Haw Creek Reserve plat or pricing exists.

The Early-List Checklist

• Legal docket. Whether threatened challenges to the approval are filed, and how they resolve.
• District formation. Any CDD or special-district establishment, and the eventual per-lot assessment math.
• Utility agreements. Water and sewer capacity commitments for phase one.
• Plat recordings. The phase-one lot map, village layout, and conservation edges.
• Builder takedowns. Which builders contract lots, and their incentive patterns countywide.
• Town-center commitments. What is contractual in recorded documents versus illustrative.
• Bunnell politics. Commission seats and any re-litigation of the framework, the margin was one vote.
• Deposit discipline. Refundable and escrowed until governing documents exist, no exceptions.

How It Compares to the Built Alternatives

The fair comparisons are what you can buy in and around Bunnell today.

The honest verdict: every built option wins on certainty, and several win on the exact rural character that drew people to west Flagler in the first place. Haw Creek's eventual case is a planned town with jobs and a center; its cost is two decades of construction and every number still being TBD. Both halves belong in the decision.

The Trade-offs, Plainly

The Momentum Playbook

How we run the Haw Creek watch:

• Docket monitoring. Legal challenges, commission agendas, and any framework amendments, flagged in plain English.
• Plat tracking. Phase recordings with the lot-map read the week they happen.
• District intelligence. Any CDD formation and its assessment methodology, translated into monthly dollars.
• Builder intelligence. Takedown contracts and announcements before launch marketing.
• Bridge strategy. If your timeline is now, we place you at Grand Reserve, Plantation Bay, or acreage product with resale positioning for when this delivers.

Questions We Ask Before You Commit

• What is the status of any legal challenge to the approval, in writing?
• What district assessments will this lot carry, per the recorded methodology?
• Which town-center and amenity elements are contractually committed versus illustrated?
• What phase is this lot in, and what construction surrounds it for how long?
• What do the utility and traffic agreements obligate, and by when?
• How does the all-in monthly compare to a Grand Reserve build the same week?

Who This Is Not For

An approved-but-unbuilt mega plan is a tracking play measured in years. It is wrong for almost every buyer today, and that is fine.