- November 17, 2024
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One of Flagler County’s most pristine natural locales will soon host scientists and tourists as overnight guests in three yet-to-be-built cottages with amenities like air conditioning and eco-friendly dishwashers.
The Flagler County Commission at a Dec. 15 workshop gave county staff the go-ahead to move into construction on the cottages, which will built in cooperation with the Department of Environmental Protection’s Guana Tolomato Matanzas National Estuarine Research Reserve.
“This is that whole vision of that corridor there being eco-friendly tourism,” Commissioner Nate McLaughlin said. “This is going along with really the theme of what we’re doing.”
The commission approved the construction in a 4-1 vote, with Commissioner George Hanns voting against. Commissioner Revels voted for the project but said she would like to see it come back before the commission again.
“We’re talking about an agreement and permitting, and I didn’t know we had vetted all the issues with the site,” she said. “I would like to see some details come back before we’re actually digging dirt.”
The commission granted the county initial approval on the cottages last March. The GTMNERR is putting $60,000 in Florida Department of Environmental Protection grant money toward the cabins’ construction, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration is providing $346,000, and the county is providing $100,000 worth of land value, $60,000 worth of labor and $60,000 cash. Construction is slated to begin Oct. 1.
“This is a little bit cutting edge, and this is exciting stuff. This is kind of a cool thing you’ll be a leader in,” County Administrator Craig Coffey told the commission at the workshop. “We will have our crews build part of these cottages; we will have some of them contracted out.”
The cottages have already been budgeted for, he said.
The county’s agreement with the GTMNERR gives the GTMNERR 140 rental days per cottage per year, and preferred rates of $50-$60 per night in off-season and $60-$70 per night in peak season.
The three cottages would be rented out to tourists at other times, and at higher rates that have not yet been determined but would be designed to make the cottages turn a profit, Coffey said. They could be the first of more to come: there could be up to nine cottages at Princess Place and another 10 at the River-to-Sea preserve, Coffey said. Additional cottages after the first three would be county-funded and rented to tourists.
