ST. JOHNS COUNTY, Fla. — A lot can change in a day.
A lot did at beaches from Ponte Vedra all the way south beyond Matanzas Inlet, as St. Johns County closed beaches effective Sunday. All that remained at the beaches where throngs had packed just 24 hours earlier, were seabirds, surf and a few law enforcement officers assigned to keep people away.
“It’s a little eerie,” St. Augustine Beach Police Chief Robert Hardwick told First Coast News by phone Sunday as he patrolled the beachfront in his jurisdiction. “I’m sitting here on A1A Beach Boulevard … and normally it’s just bumper-to-bumper traffic on a beautiful Sunday … and right now there’s literally hardly any cars or traffic.”
Chief Hardwick said that so far, his officers had only had to gently admonish some early joggers who might not have been aware of the closures that became effective at the end of Saturday.
“There has not been one arrest in St. Johns County,” he said, and that is the last thing that [St. Augustine Police] Chief Fox and [St. Johns County] Sheriff Shoar and I want to do.”
Among its immediate neighboring coastal counties – Duval and Flagler – St. Johns County had resisted closing beaches outright the longest amid the coronavirus crisis and social distancing concerns.
“Most of the responses that we’ve received have been positive,” county administrator Hunter Conrad reflected. “They understood that we were doing our best to keep the beaches open to the residents so people could get out, could experience the sun and the sand, have somewhere to go, basically for their own mental health. They appreciated that we tried. They also recognized that people just quite simply weren’t following traffic laws, weren’t following the CDC guidelines.”
A casual survey of various people engaged in other activities found unanimous acceptance.
“It makes sense,” a group of young men playing basketball on the courts at Francis Field in St. Augustine said late Sunday afternoon. “[The beach] was just packed yesterday.” The hoops players quickly assured that they’d have been at the beach if not for the shutdown.
“I understand what’s going on,” said a teenage girl watching boaters launch at the Palm Valley ramp earlier in the day. “But it’d be fun to be at the beach, it’s nice outside,” her friend added.
That ramp and the one at Vilano Landing in St. Augustine were doing brisk business. One boater believed it was busier because of displaced beachgoers.
“We’ve never seen something like this,” he said while pulling his boat to the dock. One of the many others waiting in the long line to launch agreed. “We went [boating] yesterday and it wasn’t as bad, but today it’s been crazy,” he said, adding that he would prefer to be in the water – i.e. at the beach – than on the water in a boat.
Both Hardwick and Conrad reminded that there are other recreational opportunities for residents.
“If somebody wants to go out and walk their dog or kick a soccer ball, any of the county parks are open,” Conrad said with the only caveat that reservations for large groups at public park space are not being allowed. Similarly, he said the St. Johns County public golf course remains open for routine tee times but isn’t allowing tournament play.
“Here in St. Johns County, all of our parks and our greenspace are still open,” Hardwick echoed, “so, with that being said, of course, can they congregate at those areas? Yes,” he said. “But we have not had a problem yet.”
And, they hope not to. Both Conrad and Hardwick said they had seen an influx of outsiders flocking to the St. Johns County shoreline specifically because the local beaches were the only open ones for many miles.
“There were lots of complaints that we’d heard from the northern part of the community,” Conrad said, “that people were coming from out of town and out of county.”
Although St. Johns County is a particularly attractive and welcoming community to tourists, he added that given the unprecedented threat presented by a worldwide pandemic, some unusual measures are in order.
“It’s a great blessing to have a lot of tourism and a good economy. Right now it’s probably not the greatest of things, for the virus,” Conrad said, giving an example of how recent painful decisions can create subtle beneficial effects. “So, we expect with these measures, that it’s going to reduce the tourism and our local community will have areas that they’ll be able to go and get out.”