Turf in a Jacksonville, St. Augustine or St. Johns County historic district

Three cities, three review systems

If your address sits inside a historic district in Jacksonville, St. Augustine or unincorporated St. Johns County, a turf project can run into a review process before it ever reaches a building permit. The three governments do not share one system. Jacksonville splits review between staff and a commission. St. Augustine sends every application to one board. St. Johns County only reviews a project if the parcel itself carries a landmark designation, not because it sits in a neighborhood that is generally described as historic.

None of that is optional paperwork you can skip because turf is reversible. Read the right office's own rule before you order material, and treat the answer below as a map of who to ask, not a substitute for asking.

Jacksonville: staff sign-off, or the full Commission

The City of Jacksonville's Planning Department runs its historic districts through a Historic Preservation Section. Riverside Avondale Preservation's guide to the process describes two tracks: the Section can approve a Certificate of Appropriateness (COA) itself when the work meets its Administrative Review criteria, and the Jacksonville Historic Preservation Commission reviews the applications that do not. That guide describes the two-track structure as it applies to the Riverside Avondale Historic District, where the city's guidelines were developed when the district was designated; the source does not say which other Jacksonville districts use the same two tracks.

The guidelines that decide which track a project lands on are published as a set of documents — Historic Guidelines in two parts, an appendix and a fencing guidelines document — rather than as a single page you can search online. We have not found a version readable outside a scanned PDF, so the honest answer for a turf, pet-area or putting-green layout inside a Jacksonville historic district is to call the Historic Preservation Section before ordering material and ask which track your project falls into, and what the guidelines say about ground cover and yard materials at your address.

St. Augustine: one board reviews every certificate

St. Augustine does not split review between staff and a board the way Jacksonville does. The city's Historic Architectural Review Board (HARB) handles applications for Certificates and Opinions of Appropriateness and for Certificates of Demolition or Relocation, and it can designate landmarks. HARB also processes applications for the historic preservation property tax exemption, for both city and St. Johns County parcels.

HARB meets monthly, and an application has to clear a posted deadline to make the next meeting's agenda — the city's own page points applicants to the Planning and Building Department's online portal for both the application and the deadline schedule. Build that meeting cycle into your timeline before you commit to an installation date: a turf project waiting on a certificate cannot start on the schedule a same-city job without historic review would keep.

St. Johns County: the trigger is landmark status, not a district label

Unincorporated St. Johns County — the part of the county outside Jacksonville, St. Augustine and the other municipalities — runs its review under Article III, Part 3.01.00 of the county's Land Development Code, Cultural Resources Preservation. The code sets up a five-member Cultural Resource Review Board (CRRB), with up to two at-large alternates, appointed by the Board of County Commissioners for staggered four-year terms.

The important distinction for a turf job: the code's Certificate of Appropriateness requirement attaches to a designated St. Johns County Landmark or a contributing property inside a designated Landmark District — not to every parcel in an area that residents or a real estate listing might call historic. The code states it plainly: no demolition, alteration, relocation or new construction may take place on a designated Landmark or a contributing property in a Landmark District without a Certificate of Appropriateness from the CRRB, whether or not a building permit is required for the work, though the County Administrator can approve minor projects without a full certificate. Landmark status itself is not automatic — a property or district has to be nominated, evaluated against the county's integrity and significance criteria (age of fifty years or more, plus at least three of seven integrity factors and one of nine significance factors), and formally designated by the Board of County Commissioners after a CRRB recommendation.

So the first question for a St. Johns County property is not "is this a historic area," it is "has the county designated this specific parcel, or the district it sits in, as a Landmark." The county's Cultural Resources Inventory and the CRRB's own records are where that gets answered — ask before assuming either way.

Separately, the code also requires county staff to screen certain development permits, orders, rezonings and demolitions for effects on cultural resources the county has inventoried, even before landmark designation. That screening exists for permits generally, and whether it reaches a turf installation on a given parcel is a question for the review office, not something this guide can answer for your address.

A note on individual landmarks, not just districts

Every one of the three systems can also apply to a single property that carries individual landmark or historic designation, even outside a mapped historic district. HARB's own listed function is to designate landmarks generally, not only to review districts, and the St. Johns County code lets the CRRB recommend an individual Landmark designation on a property-by-property basis, separate from a Landmark District nomination. A house does not have to sit inside a drawn boundary on a map to be under review — if it, or a structure on the lot, has been individually designated, the same certificate requirement follows the property itself. That is one more reason to ask the review office directly rather than judge status from a district map alone: a parcel just outside a mapped district's edge can still be an individually designated landmark, and a parcel inside a district that is not a "contributing" property may not need a certificate for site work at all under the St. Johns County code's contributing-property language.

Where Florida's 2026 turf rule stops

Florida's synthetic turf law adds a separate layer that does not resolve any of the above. Since 19 May 2026, Rule 62-308.100, adopted under Fla. Stat. 125.572, bars a local government from prohibiting a compliant synthetic turf installation on a single-family lot of one acre or less. That preemption runs against a flat local ban on turf as a category. It says nothing about historic preservation review, certificates of appropriateness or architectural review boards, and none of the three governments' historic-review rules we read mention the state turf statute either.

Whether a city or county's historic-district design review can still condition or delay a compliant turf installation that section 125.572 otherwise protects is not something the statute itself settles, and we have not found a ruling or opinion that settles it either. Ask the review office directly whether they treat historic review as separate from the state's turf preemption, and get that answer before you commission a layout.

What to bring to the review office

Whichever of the three systems applies to your address, the conversation goes better with the same handful of facts ready: the property's designation status (Jacksonville local historic district, St. Augustine district or individual landmark, St. Johns County Landmark or Landmark District — or none of those), whether the area you want to turf is visible from a public street, and a sketch or photo of the existing yard. All three offices decide faster with a plan in hand than with a description over the phone.

We measure the yard, check the ground and put a custom layout together on a free visit for Jacksonville, St. Augustine and the rest of northeast Florida — for a residential lawn, a pet area or a backyard green. If your address sits in a historic district, bring us the certificate or the review office's answer and we will build the layout around it. Call 303-349-2368.