Fact-Check: How Flagler County Misuses Numbers in Pitch of $110 Million Sports Complex

Note: this is the second of two articles today on Flagler County’s continued interest in a $110 million sports complex in Palm Coast’s west side. See the first article, an overview, here: “More Skepticism and Vagueness than Hard Data to Support Mammoth $110 Million Sports Complex in Palm Coast.”

In a pitch to the Flagler County Commission on Monday, the county’s tourism bureau and its consultant backed up an analysis of a proposed $110 million sports complex with numbers that, while accurate in themselves, were entirely without context and, on close inspection, had little to do with Palm Coast, and in some regards contradicted the county’s rosy claims. 

Synergy Sports, a relatively new company, is proposing to build a 100,000 square foot indoor, multi-purpose sports facility surrounded by 20 outdoor fields and 3,000 parking spots in what is referred to as Palm Coast’s “westward expansion,” west of U.S. 1. 

Its pitch to Palm Coast ended in defeat at the ballot box last November when voters rejected an amendment to the city charter that would have eliminated a ban on borrowing–a ban that, for now, prevents Palm Coast from entering into so-called private-public partnerships (or P3s) with companies like Synergy to build complexes. 

As has been the case with two previous presentations to local governments about a proposed $110 million sports complex for Palm Coast’s west side, the numbers are often tendentious, exaggerated or out of context. 

Synergy claims the facility could generate up to 400,000 “unique visitors” and up to 125,000 hotel bookings. In all of last year, Flagler County drew a total of 100,000 visitors, most of whom went to the beach. 

Presentations seek to cite some data. The data itself may be reliable. The way the data is presented is not. That was the case on Monday, when County Tourism Director Amy Lukasik and a county-hired consultant, Dan Fenton,  managing director for tourism development with Jones Lang Lasalle, presented their latest analysis to the county. 

Take one example the JLL presentation pitched to the commissioners: the “average family spend over $1,000 per child’s primary sport in 2024.” 

In the context of Monday’s discussion, and without further explanations about that number, listeners would have been excused if they thought that’s the sort of spending a family could bring to Flagler County’s sports complex. It is nothing of the sort. 

The source for the figure is given as “Aspen Institute.” In 2024, two academics conducted a parenting survey for the Aspen Institute. It involved 1,848 surveyed parents, only 105 of them, or 5.7 percent, in Florida–not the best way to gauge sports spending locally or regionally.

Only 17.3 percent of parents surveyed said their children participated in club league sports involving travel–the sort of sports the Palm Coast facility would attract. 

Fifty-three sports were listed as those children participated in, only a handful of which would be part of the Palm Coast sports complex: water polo, swimming, judo, ice jhokey, equestrian, dance, curling, bobsled, boxing, figure skating, golf, shooting, skiing, speedskating, and many more? Not at that sports complex. Yet the numbers presented included parents whose children were involved in all of these sports and many more. 

As for that $1,000 figure parents say they spend on their children’s sports annually: aside from reflecting average spending on all 53 sports, the $1,015 figure is broken down into types of spending, which includes team registration, equipment and uniforms, lessons, athletic schools, and other expenses. Travel and lodging is also included. But that amounts to an average of $278 per child, per year, or less than the average cost of a single night in a vacation rental in Flagler County, and barely more than the cost of an average night in a local hotel or motel. 

Still: that travel cost is the single most costly feature in youth sports, according to the survey. 

Average costs per child are different for major sports: “Of the four major sports, parents spend more money on soccer ($1,188 average cost) and basketball ($1,002) than baseball ($714) and tackle football ($581). Soccer, basketball and baseball all have pay-to-play models that impact access to sports. Tackle football is an outlier given that it’s not a club model.” 

The figures are sum totals for all expenses, and again are far lower than local projections of “room nights” and local spending, which zooms into the thousands per family for a single tournament. The local figures, like those projected by Synergy, are simply not supported by evidence. 

The presentation stated that youth sports generate around $40 billion in annual revenue. The figure is accurate. But it lacks context. It is again based on the Aspen Institute survey, and it includes all youths, from toddlers to just before college, with the average child spending less than three years playing sports and quitting by age 11. 

What the non-existent fine print presented to the County Commission did not show is that the Aspen Institute survey’s purpose was to show that sports participation is driven largely by family income, and that to equalize the proverbial playing field, more public money is needed to make sports accessible to all youths. 

“Half of survey respondents who played youth sports or who have children who have played said they have struggled to afford the costs to participate,” the survey found. “The issue impacts a broad swath of Americans of all backgrounds, including 66% who are Latino/a, 62% of 35-49-year-olds, 58% of those with high school educations, 57% of lower-income adults, and 56% of both Republicans and those who rent their homes. More than 4 in 5 Americans say sports should be more accessible to those in underserved communities, as well as for athletes with physical disabilities.

For all that, there was also misinformation from the public at Monday’s meeting, as when a Hammock resident was unfairly critical of JLL, the county’s consultant, simply for counting the World Economic Forum among its partners.

“I’m concerned about if we were to go forward, who are the investors?” the Hammock resident said, citing Visit Florida Brian Griffin’s refusal of an invitation from the World Economic Forum’s upcoming urban transportation forum.

“The World Economic Forum’s values and stated objectives do not align with the state of Florida,” the resident quoted Griffin as saying, “including the World Economic Forum’s efforts to transform society through top-down government regulations and Institute dangerous programs like digital IDs and central bank digital currencies.”

That is inaccurate. The forum has no such authority. It is a non-partisan ideas forum, in many ways much like Flagler Tiger Bay, but on a global scale, believing in “the power of human ingenuity, entrepreneurship, innovation and cooperation,” as its mission statement reads, recognizing “the need for a forum fostering rigorous and respectful dialogue between and among leaders with different beliefs and viewpoints, where diversity of thought is respected and all voices can be heard.”

The forum is not investing in JLL, or in Palm Coast, as it has no money to invest, though people who participate in some of its activities, who represent innumerable companies around the world, do. 

Remarkably, Commissioner Leann Pennington, who had been the most skeptical of the commissioners on Synergy’s pitch, and made the most insightful observations, suddenly sounded like a conspiracist as she said, “ I will not participate in WEF projects. I will not build walkable cities… I will not participate in UN agendas.” 

There are no such agendas in play locally, though Palm Coast’s plan for its west side, like Veranda Bay in Flagler Beach, like the Reserve at Haw Creek in Bunnell, like many relatively new developments across Florida, have all embraced at least aspects of the concept of walkable cities, which pre-date by a few centuries both the UN and the World Economic Forum, America’s car culture notwithstantding.