- November 16, 2024
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Palm Coast has had bad luck with golf courses. The Palm Harbor Golf Course has lost money for six straight years. The old Matanzas Woods Golf Course is an overgrown and often-complained-about eyesore. But despite the golf travails of its larger neighbor, the city of Flagler Beach is considering getting into the golf game. In the coming weeks, the city will begin discuss whether to revive the old, overgrown nine-hole Ocean Palm Golf Club course on its south side.
The city owns most of that land — 34 acres, zoned recreational and bought for $490,000 in 2013 — but there’s a problem: the city doesn’t own a 2.94-acre parcel within the former course that may be crucial for making the land work for golf. A citizen committee convened to study the issue will make its recommendation at a City Commission meeting July 9: that the city make an offer to buy it.
That offer, the committee will advise, should be made alongside an agreement with a company that would lease and manage the course, and the value offered should be somewhere between the $75,000 value assessed by the county appraiser’s office and a $235,000 value determined by Ormond Beach-based Cooksey and Associates Real Estate Appraisers.
The recommendation will also come with a caveat: One city resident has expressed interest in running the course, and indicated that he could do it without the problematic 2.9 acres, which had been the course’s former driving range. The city could choose that option instead of spending more money and acquiring the old range, which other potential management companies said they would want.
“There needs to be something said along the lines, ‘You know, we believe that this 2.9 is important, particularly for one if not two of those letters of intent. But … there’s still that one group out there that has given us indication that this thing could still become a golf course, which fulfills the first part of our direction, without the 2.9 acres.’ I think that needs to be driven into the ground a little bit stronger,” City Manager Bruce Campbell said to Alternative Use Committee members at the July 26 meeting at which the committee formulated its recommendation.
Not all of the committee members thought the land was worth appraising in the first place. One suggested the land could be used for something other than a golf course, such as parking, which the city is seeking as it works to revise its beach parking plan.
The 2.9 acres, a rectangular lot jutting out into the course from its east side along South Central Avenue, remains in the hands of Ocean Palm Golf President Stephen Cejner.
Cejner sued the city of Flagler Beach in 2010, saying the city’s refusal to grant a Comprehensive Plan change that would have let him build homes on the property rendered the parcel “without any economic viability” and “amounted to a taking,” according to court documents.
The court found against Cejner, stating that the land did retain economic value — as a golf course — and that no taking had occurred.
But the city found that finding out exactly how much it was worth wasn’t a simple matter.
The first appraisal firm the city approached, New Smyrna Beach-based Matanzas Appraisal, wouldn’t take the assignment, Campbell said at the meeting. “These guys know the history of some of this,” he said. “Matanzas actually declined the assignment because they didn’t want to get involved in it.”
And it wasn’t a simple project for Cooksey, either. Cooksey considered the highest, best possible use for the land — residential units — and made an assessment based on that hypotehetical scenario, even though the land is not zoned residential, Campbell said.
“Even Cooksey — as well informed as he is and confident in his abilities — he struggled with this. … There’s really not much use for that property. But, he knew that he had to come up with some way to place a value on it other than it’s worth nothing. So, that’s why the hypothetical reasoning as to what’s the highest and the best use for the property, that’s why he got into all that, because he had to do something.”
He arrived at $235,000, a number Campbell said didn’t surprise him.
Committee member Michael Flank suggested Cooksey’s methodology might have led him to an unrealistically high number. “Everything that Cooksey did was based on the fact, unfortunately, that it would revert at some point to becoming residential use, which we’ve all recognized is not going to be the case. It’s not going to be designated for residential use,” he said.
For that to happen, the city would have to change the land’s classification from recreational to residential — exactly what the city refused to do in the past when Cejner requested it, leading to Cejner’s suit.
Committee member Paul Eik said that whatever the committee thought of Cooksey’s number, it needed to take it into account in its recommendation to the commission. “In the end, he put his name to the report, with a number. ... We asked for this report, we got this report, it needs to go forward from there. … It’s not something that you can just discount.”
Campbell said the city hasn’t received any new proposals since it began looking into having the property appraised. At that time, it had three letters of intent, from Indigo Lakes Golf Club, Doug Hansen PGA and Flagler Beach-based Flagler Golf Management, LLC.
Campbell said he believed Indigo would “present a good product,” but Indigo considers the 2.9 acres critical, so the city would have to buy it if it wants to work with Indigo.
“On the other hand,” Campbell said, “we’ve got a guy who lives right in Flagler Beach who’s stood in front of us twice, if not three times, and even in front of the commission and said, ‘I don’t need those 2.9 acres. I’ll have you a golf course by July 4’ — this is a few month back. So you could discount everything that Cooksey’s saying ... and say, ‘Hey, we don’t need to do anything with this 2.9 acres.’”
The city could then make an offer to Cejner that’s lower than the value of Cooksey’s appraisal, Campbell said, “knowing that if he doesn’t accept it, or we’re on two different planets, you can always fall back to Duane and let him put the course in without the 2.9 acres. … The commission needs to decide who it wants to dance with.”
The Alternative Use Committee will make its recommendation to the Flagler Beach City Commission at the upcoming City Commission meeting at 5:30 p.m. July 9 at the city hall building at 105 S. Second Street.
