THE HAMMOCK
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COVID CREATIONS 6 FREE • JULY 2020
VOLUME 5, NO. 1
County rejects proposed mediation with Captain’s BBQ The case may proceed to a jury trial. JONATHAN SIMMONS
COUNTY OFFICIALS:
Dune restoration ‘a dead project’ if holdouts don’t come around The county has received easements for 126 beachfront properties but needs 15 more for the $25 million project to proceed.
NEWS EDITOR
Flagler County Commissioners voted 5-0 on July 13 to reject a proposed mediation settlement with Captain’s BBQ, the restaurant at the county-owned Bings Landing park. The county government and the restaurant have been in mediation since February 2020 over the details of the restaurant’s use of the county facility, after the county in 2018 at first approved, then weeks later rejected, a lease which would have allowed Captain’s BBQ’s owners to build a larger restaurant building in another part of the park. “I’m absolutely in favor of declaring an impasse on this mediation,” County Commissioner Donald O’Brien said. “There’s a number of things here that are very concerning to me, and that I could not accept. The rent is not even close to market rate. ... I can’t accept the rent as it would be delineated going out to 2040 ... I can’t accept assignability of the lease; I can’t accept any control whatsoever of the pavilion, even for one day — it should be for first-come, first-served for the public; and I’m real uncomfortable with renewal options that take us out to 2041.” The lease would have required the county government to renovate the county-owned building in which the restaurant operates, would have given Captain’s preferential access to a nearby park pavilion on holidays, and would have extended below-market rate SEE CAPTAINS PAGE 2
JONATHAN SIMMONS NEWS EDITOR
By refusing to sign easements that would allow a $25 million dune restoration project to proceed along their beachfront property, 13 property owners are endangering the entire 2.6-mile proposed Army Corps of Engineers project, according to the Flagler County government. “If we can’t get this logjam broken in the next couple of weeks, this is essentially a dead project,” County Administrator Jerry Cameron said during a July 13 County Commission meeting. “The Corps is not going to move forward with gaps in it. I don’t know how we would deal with that; unless these folks come to the conclusion that we are in fact improving their property considerably by this effort ... I think that we’re essentially dead in the water.” The county government has spent months attempting to get individual beachfront property owners to sign easements the Army Corps of Engineers requires in order to add additional sand on all of the properties along the 2.6mile stretch of coastline that has been determined to be most at risk of future storm damage. The county had been approved for the federal project in the after-
math of damage sustained during Hurricane Matthew. Because gaps in the restored dune would lead to “breach points” that could compromise the project’s integrity, the Army Corps of Engineers will not proceed if it doesn’t receive easements for all of the properties. So far, the county has received 126 easements, but is missing easements for 15 properties owned by 13 people. Of those, 10 are represented by an attorney and want the county to pay to have the work performed on their land, County Attorney Al Hadeed told county commissioners in the July 13 meeting. The county’s deadline to obtain all of the easements was June 30. County officials met with Army Corps officials on Wednesday, July 8, to discuss options, Hadeed said. “We talked about excluding the properties that didn’t sign,” he said. “They said that that would not be possible, that it would violate the congressional directive as to the restoration of these dunes. ... We did talk about the possibility of temporary construction easements as one option to try to get around unwilling owners and perhaps resolve issues at that time, but they said that is not acceptable under their rules. Right now their standard is, looking at our beach, they need a 100% participation by owners in order to proceed with the project.” The 10 people who are holding SEE FLAGLER PAGE 2
HOLDOUTS PERSPECTIVES
Among the property owners who have refused to let the Army Corps of Engineers build a dune on their property was one man who would speak to the Palm Coast Observer only on the condition that his name not be used. The owner is represented, as are 10 others, by Clearwater-based eminent domain attorney John LeRoux. LeRoux did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The owner was frustrated that the county has said he can’t access the beach without a dune walkover and that parking is restricted on the beachside of State Road A1A. He believes he should be able to access the beach by walking directly down from the road. The property owner said he had not spoken with anyone from the county to hear the county’s side of the story. (Regardless of the Army Corps project, a walkover would be required to legally access the beach from his property.) “I’m not opposed to helping out in the project,” the owner said. “If you want it and need it, then here it is, but there’s a cost.” Another owner, Raj Desai, said he consulted with his Flagler County neighbors as well another eminent domain attorney in Jacksonville to make sure he had all the details. Desai decided to sign the paperwork to allow the dune to be built, after he was advised independently that his property would be benefitted, not harmed, by the project. Will the county get desperate enough to pay the holdouts, regardless of the legal necessity to do so? “I feel like I did the right thing, so I’m not worried about it,” Desai said. — BRIAN McMILLAN
“Unless these folks come to the conclusion that we are in fact improving their property considerably by this effort ... I think that we’re essentially dead in the water.”
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File photo by Brian McMillan