18 minute read
Rosemary Beach Celebrates 25th Anniversary
The Family Beach Community Looks Forward While Preserving Its Values of Community, Family, Quality & Environment
Since its beginning in 1995, the success of Rosemary Beach has been remarkable. It is hailed as a successful example of New Urbanism, or traditional neighborhood development with an emphasis on human scale. Founded by Leucadia Financial Corp. President Patrick Bienvenue, and designed by architecture firm Duany Plater-Zyberk & Company (DPZ), The Rosemary Beach Land Company’s development plan is inspired by other classic beach neighborhoods. Yet the town is one of a kind.
“As you compare Rosemary Beach to all other types of towns in the country, Rosemary Beach uses traditional materials that are what they look like,” David Bailey, town manager, said. “For example, if we are going to build something that looks like it is made of wood, we use wood. That’s significant because that is what makes it traditional.”
Bailey credits the DPZ firm for designing a town that is concurrently traditional and progressive. “Building a lane behind houses is not unusual,” Bailey added. “But assembling it in a way in which they front onto a boardwalk rather than a street is very creative. While it looks traditional, it doesn’t mean it’s old fashioned.”
Named for the native rosemaryscented wildflowers on site, this 107-acre community was designed to be the best family beach community in the United States, driven by quality and excellence in everything it does. The town is defined by that vision, and its four values — community, family, quality and environment. With those values in mind, the town has aesthetically-pleasing architecture and an award-winning, expertlydesigned layout, which includes a town hall, post office, two churches, neighborhood shops, a fitness center, tennis center, seven major parks, 13 neighborhood parks and, of course, the long stretch of sugarwhite sandy beaches. All this to provide residents the opportunity to live and work in paradise.
The iconic community buildings, intensely landscaped public realm, restaurants and shops help define the town center. Families ditch the car and opt for bike riding and enjoying a leisurely walk along the many boardwalks and to the beach. As Rosemary Beach celebrates its silver anniversary, the residents strive to make a legacy for generations. COMMUNITY Rosemary Beach’s brand of New Urbanism consists of a diverse group of people interacting on multiple levels, all committed to the success of the town. The spirit of community permeates and directs the management of the town, its communications, events, and relationships with other communities.
Beth VanVolkinburg, chair of the Welcome Committee, said that Rosemary Beach is a community, rather than a commodity. “Our goal is to find ways to help owners connect,” she said. “We promote a sense of community by building rapport for each other, which can be difficult to find in a resort area. We find ways to bring people together.”
Beth and her husband John discovered Rosemary Beach when John was browsing real estate in the Northwest Florida area. “One year all our children had spring break at the same time, so we rented a house for a week,” she recalled. “It was the first vacation where everyone said, ‘Wow that’s someplace we can see ourselves going to again and again.’ It was almost a feeling of coming home. And the kids still enjoy coming.” The couple is now introducing their grandson to Rosemary Beach. “The whole idea of community is important,” she said. “We bring our families, and then the second generations, and so on.”
VanVolkinburg adds that while everyone is not always on the same page, people understand the value of maintaining your home. “Not just for yourself, but for your neighbors and the town,” she said. “As we go forward, we continue to look at the next step. That’s a premier focus of every commitment and action we do. Getting people who grew up here to come back. Keeping that quality, continuing to upgrade and update, and the uniqueness of the town builds into the idea of community.”
Originally from New Orleans, Malayne DeMars, executive director of the Rosemary Beach Foundation, and her husband Robert purchased a lot in 2000 and have lived here full time since 2007. “We walk throughout the day along the many paths and boardwalks in Rosemary Beach. This gives us a chance to talk with those who live, work and visit here,” she said. “The close proximity of homes, town center and green spaces encourages interaction with each other and has led to many impromptu cocktail parties.”
Rosemary Beach Foundation is integral in building a sense of community, DeMars added. “Established by homeowners in 2006, the Foundation hosts community events to raise awareness and much-needed support for our charitable partners including Sacred Heart Hospital, Alaqua Animal Refuge, Shelter House and Habitat for Humanity.”
One of Rosemary Beach Foundation’s initial programs is Girls Getaway. Held over Super Bowl Weekend, this event has become a tradition for many ladies who attend each year for four days of fun and celebration.
Rosemary Beach’s parks are ideal venues for the Foundation’s highlyanticipated Cornhole Tournament and Rosemary Beach Unleashed pet-friendly festival, which features a Westminster-style dog show.
“The Foundation brings the Walton County community together in the spirit of giving,” DeMars said. Now in its 14-year history, Rosemary Beach Foundation has donated more than $875,000 to local organizations, schools, hurricane recovery and COVID relief efforts.
Rosemary Beach is also the birthplace to two schools and two churches. South Walton
Montessori Academy, established in 2004, is now in Point Washington. The Ohana Institute started here in 2011 and is now in 30Avenue. The Town Hall hosts church services for Chapel by the Beach, and the Apostles by the Sea. FAMILY We are focused on providing an environment where all families feel safe and included. We are supportive of events and activities that provide a means for families to strengthen their bonds. Elaine Ashman, head of the
Merchants
Association and organizer of many town events, notes that the town is a family friendly vacation community for owners and guests. “All events target families with young children,” she said. “A lot of families will come year after year.” As the town looks forward to the next 25 years, Ashman said that Rosemary Beach will continue the popular events every year, including concerts, kids theater and movies on the green, while also looking at new and unique family programming. Lettye Burgtorf, a Rosemary Beach homeowner for 20 years, moved here from Atlanta when few houses were built. “We had maybe five families here,” she said. “We had bocce tournaments because there was nothing else to do, a Halloween gathering on our driveway, maybe 20 gathered around the Christmas tree. One Christmas, I gathered large boxes, and we made a candy house to set in the Town Center. A big wind
came and blew them all over town.” Burgtorf homeschooled her two children, then eight children, then 20. As the need for a school grew, Burgtorf started the Ohana Institute in 2010, “The families asked me to start a real school and have real classes. I said I’d try it and see what happens,” she recalls. “At first we had 30 kids, then 50, and now 187.” Ohana is a nonprofit private K-12, with students attending from New York, Houston, Kansas City and Nashville, many due to the COVID pandemic, which forced families to find alternative learning environments. “Some families are staying permanently,” Burgtorf said. “We’ve got
some Lake Charles families, who have dealt with multiple hurricanes, stay then leave.” In only one year, Ohana earned its full accreditation. “The accreditation team said to me, ‘We came here to teach you. But you taught us because you put good parenting skills into play.” The school’s student/teacher ratio is five to one.
In addition to learning the basic curriculum,
Ohana students are contributing to the betterment of their community.
The Rosemary Beach Sculpture Exhibition Committee
invited them to create a sculpture to raise awareness of the environmental threat posed by plastics. After collecting thousands of pieces of plastic from along the beach, in the Gulf water and elsewhere, the students constructed a sculpture in the shape of a lionfish, an invasive species in U.S. waters. Aptly named Invasive, the sculpture is currently on view across from St. Augustine Park on Bridgetowne Avenue. A QR code provides a link to additional information about the project.
Geri Golding and David Higgs opened Gigi’s Fabulous Kids’ Fashions and Toys in 2003. In the early days, kids would hang out at Gigi’s, sometimes happily being put to work by Golding. “They’d sell lemonade or handmade jewelry, raising money for the animal shelter,” Golding said. “Some would offer to dress up and walk along Main Street handing out business cards. One little boy would come with his grandmother. Years later, she stopped by to say he was taking his SAT test using his Gigi’s pencil he got when he was little.” Today, those kids are adults who bring their own kids to the shop, sharing special memories of their childhood in town. As new generations return, Golding says, “Rosemary Beach will always be a family-oriented town,” she added. “That’s what people love about Rosemary.”
Two-term president for the
Rosemary Beach Property
Owners Association Fred Krutz and his wife Cherry bought a home in Rosemary Beach in 1999, spending many a weekend with their three sons here. Now the third generation, which includes eight grandkids, ensures the family will enjoy life in Rosemary Beach for years to come. “We’ve come a long way in the last 25 years,” he said. “With seven restaurants, 40 merchants, a beautiful beach. It’s a familyoriented town, a great community.”
Krutz sees a bright future for Rosemary Beach. “There are a lot of good people who are committed to making the future better than it is now,” he added. “And I’ve got to say it’s pretty darn good now.”
QUALITY Quality is the hallmark of Rosemary Beach. It permeates every facet of our Town—the beach, the architecture, the Town Center, the grounds, events and town services.
David Bailey, town manager since 2014, came to Rosemary Beach by way of Seaside, where he was town manager for five years. He said that the percentage of mosttime residents who are here is 10 percent. “We are just a lot or two shy of built-out,” he continued, “which is a mark of a successful place.” The biggest challenge of maintaining the quality of the town, which is now used so intensely year-round, according to Bailey, is in repairing and upgrading while taking a few shortcuts. Repaving streets, for example. “Stormwater is also a challenge,” he said. “As a new house is built, you have more stormwater to deal with. Fortunately, we have a Board that understands that. We take the time to spend the money and do it right.”
Bailey said that the meticulous design details of the town are what makes the town look old even though it’s not. “One of the things that the Board and staff are highly “This town was intended to be here for a long time. So the 25th anniversary is one significant anniversary of many to come. That’s the reason quality has to be one of the guiding principles.”
conscious of is the fact that we are stewards,” Bailey said. “This town was intended to be here for a long time. So the 25th anniversary is one significant anniversary of many to come. That’s the reason quality has to be one of the guiding principles.”
Frank Greene, an expert in affordable housing planning and development, urban redevelopment and form-based codes and design review, has been town architect for Rosemary Beach since 2005, as well as principal architect of Greene Design since 2009. What makes Rosemary Beach special, according to Greene, is its code. “The code is excellent,” he says, crediting the DPZ firm. “The architectural direction early on was well thought out. It fits the climate perfectly. A series of town architects from the beginning established the direction of Rosemary Beach very well. My job has been to maintain that vision.” On continuing to maintain the town’s stellar quality going forward, Greene said that the future direction of its architecture and infrastructure relies on “Making sure we insist on keeping the original vision and keeping the quality of design consistent. Rosemary Beach is one of several DPZ communities along 30A. Each is different. I don’t think I’ve run into anyone who doesn’t like Rosemary Beach. It’s the one everyone can agree on.”
ENVIRONMENT Founded on the principle of preserving and protecting our natural sea and landscape, we are committed to simultaneously integrating architectural integrity and civic planning.
As the town’s landscaper since its earliest days, Rip Thompson has nurtured its beloved greenery, encouraging native landscaping to grow into a dense canopy. Photos hung on his office wall of young Rosemary Beach compared to today illustrate the evolution of the landscaping over its 25 years. For Thompson, what makes Rosemary Beach so special is its careful consideration of the environment. “The trees and foliage are all native,” he said. “Over the years, as the trees matured, it’s gone from full sun to fully shaded. So our plant material, including turf, has changed to a more shade tolerant turf.” Maintaining the level of quality going forward includes continuous upgrades and townscape enhancements, Thompson added. “We’ll keep making change as the environment changes. We’ve already started doing 25-year upgrades to town.”
Peyton Gildea, a 14-year-old from Houston, Texas, who spent six months living in Rosemary Beach, where her family has a second home, has made it her mission to help clean up the Gulf. “I saw a lot of trash in the water,” said the SCUBA certified diver. “It
really made me upset.” While coordinating with Dive 30A owner Walt Hartley to enlist fellow divers, Gildea collected debris, logged it and properly disposed of it.
Her brother, Evan, who is nine, fills a trash bag with beach debris, logging 120 hours of cleanup this summer. “I always thought of Rosemary Beach as a second home,” she said. “I like the environment here because it’s a nice place to relax and be myself.”
Gildea plans to organize more dives in the future. “I tell them that this is going to be your beach one day,” her mother Angie said. “It’s fun to watch them be passionate about it because it’s the beach we love.”
Full-time resident Marsha Aldridge King first visited Rosemary Beach on Thanksgiving weekend in 1996 and knew instinctively that this is where she wanted to build her vacation home and eventually the home to which she dreamed of retiring. Construction on her house was completed in 1999, and following her retirement in 2014, she made Rosemary Beach her permanent home. King says everything about the way the town was built is about the protection of natural elements. “Rosemary Beach, as a New Urbanist town, is all about creating sustainable human scale places where people can live healthy, happy lives,” she added. “With every home built within walking distance to the town center, we reduce carbon emissions from cars. The homes are designed to blend into the landscape. Walkovers protect the dune system. Our butterfly garden emphasizes the native landscape and encourages our pollinators. And consider our tree canopies. Trees are the lungs of the earth. They absorb carbon dioxide, help to control the temperature, provide a habitat for wildlife, and help to prevent soil erosion and runoff that pollutes our Gulf and waterways. Our parks and green spaces aid in similar fashion.”
King works with Tom Kramer, the longest tenured homeowner in Rosemary who is also project director for the Rosemary
Beach Sculpture Exhibition
Committee, which puts on a biennial juried art show of contemporary outdoor sculptures in town. The 2021-2022 theme is Caring About Tomorrow: Exploring Environmental Interdependence
Through Public Art. Kramer said this is the first year the exhibition has had any theme, which the committee hopes will encourage entries that reflect on our state of environmental interdependence and how concerted actions we take today can ensure a healthier population and planet for tomorrow. visitors alike to view the world and their own heritage in perhaps new and inspiring ways as they engage with the personal artistic expression of each sculptor, according to the committee’s website (rosemarybeachsculpture. com.) “We know how a walk in nature can lift our mood. And evidence continues to mount about the role that art plays in healing our bodies and minds,” King said. “We think this is a perfect theme for us this year.”
The exhibition is free and available to anyone who walks through town. “And, pandemic allowing, we are also having events,” King continued, “and curriculum development for K-12, collegiate, and adult education classes, leisure group tours, and children’s activity tours are more structured ways for the public to engage with the exhibition. So, we are providing an opportunity for people to experience the combined healing nature of a walk through our environmentally-conscious town to view outstanding public art. It’s a perfect combination that adds to the positive aspects of a visit to the beach.”
As for the upcoming exhibits, Kramer sees two possible visions: “One is to do what we’ve been doing, adding more sculptures and focusing on Rosemary Beach with the objective being to increase the quality of ambience throughout town and complement the architecture, open spaces and parks we have,” he said. “We have tried to put sculptures throughout Rosemary Beach in different locations, like the neighborhood parks on the northside. Most people never see them.” The second possibility Kramer notes is an expansion of the exhibit that includes other neighborhoods along 30A or throughout South Walton. “When I look back at the first year and compare it to the second, it got better,” he added. “We hope to increase that quality as we go further in time.”
King is also a volunteer with
South Walton Turtle Watch
(SWTW). “Rosemary Beach is very supportive and enthusiastic about sea turtles, and rightly so because sea turtles are a big part of keeping our oceans healthy,” she said. “SWTW is vitally important to protecting the species of sea turtles that nest here and thus also to our Gulf, and in turn, to our beach and to us and our health. Sea turtles graze on sea grasses, bring essential nutrients to the beach when they nest, help keep coral reefs healthy,
and provide support for other marine life.”
King reports that this season, SWTW identified five sea turtle nests in Rosemary Beach, more than ever reported. “We’re very excited about that,” she said. “The efforts we take are not only for nesting mother sea turtles but also hatchlings.” Beachgoers can help by keeping the beaches clean, dark and flat. “Don’t leave anything on the beach. Don’t use cell phone lights, flashlights or other bright lights at night. And fill in holes and flatten sandcastles so as not to obstruct their pathway to and from the Gulf.”
Sea turtles and marine mammals can become entangled in fishing gear, stranded, diseased or otherwise debilitated. If you encounter a sea turtle or marine mammal in distress, Lauren Albrittain, stranding coordinator with Gulf World Marine Institute, advises that you should not attempt to interact with it or push an animal back into the water. Instead, stay on the scene and call *FWC or #FWC on a cell phone, or 1-888-404-FWCC, the wildlife hotline, from anywhere in Florida. GWMI is the only longterm marine mammal rehabilitation and the largest sea turtle rehabilitation facility in Northern Florida. The local response station at GWMI’s experienced team of rescuers administers short- and long-term rehabilitative care to animals as part of its collaborative relationship with partner institutions.
As part of the wildlife conservation in Walton County, Audubon Florida leads protection efforts of shorebirds and seabirds. Caroline Stahala, Western Panhandle shore bird program manager, is part of Audubon’s effort to educate the public on local bird life. “We want to develop that conservation mind set for residents and share that awareness because you can’t protect what you don’t know about,” she said. Bird lovers can keep an eye out for Least Terns, which nest on the beach during breeding season. Populations are endangered in many areas because of human impacts on nesting areas, especially competition for use of beaches, according to Audubon. “We recommend keeping an eye out for the listed species to see if we can bring some back, and also attract them to Rosemary’s beaches,” Stahala said.
As for the future of Rosemary Beach, “The town’s focus on the four values of community, family, quality and environment really come together to create a timeless place that offers so much to the multiple generations of families that live and visit here,” Bailey said. “Hopefully it will continue to do so for many future generations to come.”
