Amelia Islandtwo permit offices, one island
The north end of Amelia Island is the City of Fernandina Beach. The south end is unincorporated Nassau County. Both carry a Fernandina Beach, FL 32034 mailing address, so the envelope on your kitchen counter cannot tell you which building department your roof answers to.
One islandsplit down the middle
Amelia Island is not one jurisdiction. The northern portion (roughly the top two-thirds, including downtown Fernandina Beach and the north tip at Fort Clinch) sits inside the City of Fernandina Beach, which runs its own building department and handles all of its permitting through the city’s online portal.
The southern portion of the island is unincorporated. Those parcels are permitted by the Nassau County Building Department, from its office at 96161 Nassau Place in Yulee, which takes permit applications by email rather than through a portal. Different form, different fee schedule, different inspector, same island.
We work both sides of that line every week. Establishing which side a house is on is the first thing we do, and it happens before we quote, not after somebody’s permit gets kicked back.
Your mailing addresstells you nothing here
A house on the southern half of Amelia Island has a “Fernandina Beach, FL 32034” mailing address and is not in the City of Fernandina Beach. That is not a quirk. It is how postal geography and municipal boundaries work everywhere, and on this island it bites more often than almost anywhere else in Northeast Florida. ZIP 32034 holds roughly 22,644 housing units. The city holds about 8,168.
We will not give you a road-based rule of thumb for the boundary, because there isn’t an honest one. The city limit is jagged; it does not run along a single street from ocean to marsh, and every simple version of the rule is wrong for somebody’s house. The way to settle it is per parcel.
The Nassau County Property Appraiser publishes a GIS map that shows exactly which jurisdiction a parcel sits in. If you want to check yours before you call anybody, start there.
Which sideis your house on?
The split was confirmed against two independent official sources, the U.S. Census Bureau’s geocoder and the state Department of Transportation’s city limits data, which agreed on every point tested. Here is the shape of it, without pretending to a precision the boundary does not have.
City of Fernandina Beach
The northern roughly two-thirds of the island, including downtown Fernandina Beach, the city’s own building department on Ash Street, and the north tip of the island at Fort Clinch. Permits are filed with the city, online, and inspected by the city.
Fernandina Beach pageUnincorporated Nassau County
The southern portion of the island, Summer Beach, Amelia Island Plantation, American Beach, Amelia City and on down to the state park at the south tip. These carry a Fernandina Beach mailing address and none of them is inside the city. Permits are filed with the county, by email, and inspected by the county.
Nassau County pageThe most saltof anywhere we work
Amelia Island is a barrier island with the Atlantic on one side and the Intracoastal on the other. There is no sheltered aspect and no inland side. Of everywhere we work, this is the highest salt exposure, and salt is what decides how an island roof ages.
And it does not arrive evenly. One elevation of a house here faces open ocean and takes wind-driven spray and unbroken UV; the other faces the marsh and the Intracoastal and gets humidity and a slower, quieter corrosion. The two halves of the same roof rarely reach the end of their life at the same time, which is why we walk both slopes before we price anything and why a repair on one side is a perfectly honest answer even when the other side is finished.
Nassau County also carries 7.7 miles of critically eroded beach in the state’s 2025 inventory. Coastal exposure on this island is not an abstraction. It is measured, and it is moving.
What the islandhas actually been through
Three storms in the last decade did real wind damage in Nassau County, and every one of them touched this island. The rest of the named storms people remember were flooding and surge events elsewhere. We are not going to dress those up as roof damage.
Irma, September 2017
Two EF-0 tornadoes touched down in the county in the early hours of 11 September, one of them on northern Amelia Island and one just south of Fernandina Beach. Trees came down onto homes near the city.
Matthew, October 2016
The eyewall paralleled this coast without landfall. Nassau saw widespread tree, powerline and structural damage concentrated at coastal locations, and the Fernandina Beach tide gauge hit 6.91 ft NAVD88, third highest on record there.
Helene, September 2024
The strongest inland winds of the decade in Northeast Florida. More than 31,000 Nassau customers lost power, around 58 percent of the county, and trees fell on homes and cars across Fernandina Beach and Yulee.
After any of those, the work is usually storm and leak repair rather than replacement, and where wind-driven rain has got past a window or a door, windows and doors sit under the same building licence, so it stays one contractor.
We're minutes awayon the north end
Our Nassau County office is at 910 S 8th St Suite 309, Fernandina Beach, FL 32034: on the island, not across the bridge. Advocate Roofing and Construction holds a Certified Roofing Contractor licence (CCC1335155) and a Certified Building Contractor licence (CBC1270530) with the State of Florida, which is why salt damage that turns out to be structural does not mean starting over with somebody else.
Call or text (904) 707-6546 with your address. We will tell you which building department you answer to before we tell you anything about your roof.
Amelia Islandquestions we get asked
One of two authorities, depending on where on the island you are. The northern roughly two-thirds of Amelia Island is inside the City of Fernandina Beach, which runs its own building department and takes all permitting through its own online portal. The southern portion of the island is unincorporated Nassau County, permitted by the Nassau County Building Department in Yulee, which takes applications by email rather than through a portal. Two application forms, two fee schedules, two inspectors, on one island.
No, and this is the single most useful thing to know about permitting on this island. Unincorporated parcels on the southern part of Amelia Island still carry a Fernandina Beach, FL 32034 mailing address, the postal address and the city limits are two different things. ZIP 32034 holds roughly 22,644 housing units while the city itself holds about 8,168, so a great many 32034 addresses are county-permitted. Your mail cannot tell you who permits your roof.
There is no clean landmark answer, and you should be suspicious of anyone who gives you one. The Fernandina Beach city limit is genuinely jagged. It does not follow a single road across the island, and a rule of thumb like “anything north of such-and-such street is the city” will be wrong for somebody. The reliable way to settle it is per parcel, on the Nassau County Property Appraiser's GIS map. We check it before we quote, every time.
Ask the building department with jurisdiction over your parcel, and be wary of a contractor who answers that question off a website. Opening protection is driven by whether an address sits inside the wind-borne debris region, which is defined as land within a mile of the mean high-water line where the ultimate design wind speed reaches 130 mph or more. On this island that is genuinely close to the line: Nassau County's adopted 2023 wind map draws the 130 mph contour offshore, and the county publishes no local wind speed figure of its own to settle it. The building official's determination is the answer, not ours.
Not on the basis of the published code map, no. Nassau County adopted the state's Florida Building Code 2023 wind map as-is, and that map's contours put standard homes in this county in the 120 to 130 mph ultimate design wind speed band. Northeast Florida is not in the High-Velocity Hurricane Zone either. That is Miami-Dade and Broward counties only. Upgraded products are a legitimate choice on an oceanfront house; being told the code requires a number the code does not require is not.
The metal, almost always. Amelia Island is a barrier island with Atlantic frontage on one side and the Intracoastal on the other, which makes it the most salt-exposed place we work. Fastener heads, drip edge, valley metal, vent collars and step flashing corrode years ahead of the shingles they are holding down, and pipe boots crack under combined salt and UV. That is why an island roof often fails at its edges and penetrations while the field still looks fine from the ground, and why we start an inspection at those details rather than at the middle of the slope.
City or county?We'll find out before we quote
Send us the address and what you're seeing. Free estimate, photos of everything we find, no minimum trip fee, and the right permit office from the start.
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