Planning Board Refuses to Call 240-Boat Storage Facility in Hammock a “Marina” But Will Seek to Define the Word

The board, in a unanimous vote directed the county administration to draft an ordinance that would define the word “marina” and bring it back to the board for a work session within 60 days. That vote followed nearly two hours of discussion, public comment and board members’ wrangling over the request, with some members ridiculing the storage facility’s definition as a marina and wanting to reject it outright.

The approach would appear to favor Bob Million, the developer, since the definition could potentially be made to order, especially since the county administration already had drafted an amendment to an existing ordinance that would have specifically allowed Million’s development, called Hammock Harbour. On the other hand, the coming definition also means that the opposition to Hammock Harbour will now mobilize to ensure that the drafting of the ordinance goes its way rather than Million’s. Either way, it’s the same battle but on a different, broader front that could draw in a much larger set of interests and individuals with an eye on the Intracoastal and with goals that won’t necessarily match up with the HCA’s.

Tonight’s decision, however, was precisely the outcome that Dennis Bayer, the attorney who represents the Hammock Community Association–the heart of the opposition to Hammock Harbour–had proposed early in the meeting.

“All along I’ve been telling staff, I’ve been telling Mr. Million’s prior attorneys, why don’t we just develop an ordinance,” Bayer said. “Why don’t we come up with a marina ordinance. You have no standards if you make this decision tonight. They don’t govern how many parking spaces. Your code doesn’t address marina parking and what’s required. So our position is: Let’s have some standards, let’s have some criteria instead of, we’ve been here two and a half years. Two and a half years ago if they’d come up with an ordinance we wouldn’t be here. It would be a whole different process.”




Ironically, it was Million’s documentation itself, not the county’s or the HCA’s, which had originally called the facility a warehouse. The documentation had done so in a site plan for the facility, a 57,000 square foot warehouse for boats–2,000 square feet larger than the White House, 6,000 square feet larger than the planned Sheriff’s Operations Center in Bunnell. The facility would also have a 10,000-gallon fuel-storage tank and a restaurant.

“The problem is,” Million said tonight, “that with that innocuous decision to call this a warehouse on a site plan, it came back to bite us. It allowed their attorney to come to the court and say, Gee, these guys are calling it a warehouse.”

The Planning Board and the County Commission had both approved Million’s plan in 2019. But the HCA sued and won in circuit court, where a judge found that the boards had reached their decisions without substantive or competent evidence. An appeals court affirmed the lower court’s decision. That prompted Million to bypass the county’s Technical Review Committee, which reviews site plans before they go to the planning board, and go directly to the board to get a determination on what he was now calling a “marina.” If it’s a marina, he told the board tonight, it should be allowed to go forward.

“We’re in Florida, folks,” Million said. “I mean there’s water, we’re in Flagler County, there’s 18 miles of intracoastal. We have marinas. They’ve been operating. There’s not a single reference in this code in the Flagler County Land Development code to the word ‘marina.’ That’s extremely unusual.” He said it was probably an error that it lacked a definition.

“What I’m asking for this evening is basically a land use determination based on competent substantial evidence.” But the evidence he provided was entirely his interpretation of definitions and codes. He had no witnesses or experts. If the planning board had ratified his request, it could have faced yet another lawsuit and possibly lost it on the same grounds that it lost the previous one.

A board member asked Million to outline his expertise to address the code issues.“I’ve had two and a half years to think about it,” Million quipped, before the board member again asked him what his expertise was. Million said he’s been a consultant, a designer and an operator of marinas.




Kathy Viehe, who lives a short distance from the proposed facility (the redevelopment parcel is at 5658 North Oceanshore Boulevard, next to Hammock Hardware), wasn’t buying the redefinition. “You can call it a marina, you can call it boat storage but at the end of the day, this thing will be a 57,000 square foot warehouse,” she said, or four times the size of the metal building currently on the property–a building formerly used as a manufacturing plant by Newcastle boating. “When it became apparent that ‘warehouse’ wasn’t going to fly, now it’s become a marina. So, I can tell you after having met with he and the owner of the property, Jim Buckley, I never heard the word Marina before until about a month ago.”

None of the dozen-odd people who addressed the board other than Million disagreed. Bob Heruska, a fairly new resident who described himself as a boater of 40 years and a writer, said he’d lived next to one of those boating warehouses. “I can attest to how they are a total detriment to the community, from morning to night you hear backup warnings–deet, deet, deet,” he said, mimicking the alert sound. “To call these anything but a warehouse is crazy.”

Million in response called the criticism “emotional arguments.” The planning board though seemed split between those who wanted to reject Million’s request that the facility be defined as a marina and those inclined to accept it, though a majority of the board agreed that lacking definitions in the code was an obstacle. Their discussion became arcane, revolving around warehouse codes, marina codes, standard industrial classifications, land development codes, and returning once in a while to what Sean Moylan, the assistant county attorney advising the board, had presented by way of cautions.

“I would ask you, members of the board, to please whatever you decide, whether it be to approve or deny, to make findings on the record,” Moylan said. “That way it’s clear upon what you’re basing your decision should it be challenged later. If you wish for me to defend your decision, having findings will really help.”

For a while it looked as if the Hammock Community Association’s best friend on the planning board would be its previous foe, Mike Goodman, owner of Captain;s BBQ, the restaurant that was seeking to increase its footprint at Bings Landing and is now in litigation with the county, having sued over breach of contract.

“I believe, by everything that I’ve heard that this is a warehouse, a warehouse is someplace you store things, whether it be for a personal nature, or to make money,” Goodman said, making a motion to deny Million’s request. “This is both.”




But Goodman got strong opposition from mark langello, another board member, who’d have favored approving the request–or at least tabling it, though he wasn’t comfortable with that prospect, either: he’d been asking the administration to make changes in the make-up of the planning board, and had waited two or three years for that. “Our board can’t really mandate you to push this in front of anything else so we would be at the mercy of the staff and County Administrator to determine where this would come up,” Langello said, addressing Adam Mengel, the county’s planning director.

But that’s where the matter stood by the time the board agreed to table and consider the marina-defining ordinance sometime in the next two months–assuming the county administration will follow suit. Even if the board crafts that definition, it will have to go before the County Commission. And at every step–before the planning board, and two hearings at the commission–the two sides battling it out over Hammock Harbour would be voicing their opinions and lobbying voting members. That’s ahead.