Flagler School Board Supportive of Leasing Old Courthouse in Bunnell as Christian School Exits

With unanimous support from the School Board, the Flagler County school district is likely to take over the lease of the old Flagler County courthouse in Bunnell, which since August 2015 has been the home of First Baptist Academy, a Christian school. The school is moving to its own new location on Palm Coast Parkway in August, ending its lease a year early.

The county has been looking for a new tenant. The school district  has been looking to consolidate a half dozen programs under one roof. So the courthouse may be the place, at a cost of at least $212,000 a year, not including the cost of reconstructing the building according to district needs.




The Flagler County Historical Society has also proposed making at least partial use of the building, which the county stopped using two decades ago, and the court stopped using in 2007, when it moved into the $32.7 million Kim Hammond Justice Center. Before the school moved it, the Sheriff’s Office considered making it its headquarters. Then-Sheriff Don Fleming struck down the possibility. Bunnell briefly had ownership of the building, then returned it to the county, fearful of the building’s age and liabilities.

The proposal has the support of the School Board so far. If that support persists, the lease would be drafted and signed in a matter of weeks. The board heard the proposal on Tuesday. The school district would move in during the 2024-25 school year. District administrators say this is an operational decision, not a board decision, though the board would have to ratify the lease, giving it final say.

“Right now we are getting feedback from the board on your thoughts about this endeavor,” Superintendent LaShakia Moore said. She favors a lease, not a lease-purchase approach, as one board member does. But Board member Colleen Conklin noted that it is not entirely an operational decision. “The board is part of the decision making here. It’s not just operational,” she said. The Flagler County Commission would also have to ratify the lease at its end, but that’s expected to be a formality unless disagreements emerge over rental costs and boundaries of responsibilities.




The district is considering locating several program there, including its alternative school called Rise Up, the district’s iFlagler administration (the online school option), the district’s Trail program, which helps older students with disabilities develop job skills and work at actual, income-earning jobs. The building could also house some storage for the Education Foundation, the district’s non-profit arm, the Adults with Disabilities program, and the child care program run by Flagler Technical Institute, the district’s adult education division.

“It’s a great idea to bring all of those programs under one roof. I really love the idea,” Conklin said.

The courthouse building is actually two buildings joined together. The older, most visibly iconic building–the red-brick portion that faces Old Moody Boulevard, or State Road 100–was built in 1924 and consists of 13,000 square feet. The newer addition was built in 1984. It has 36,000 square feet, for a total of 49,000 square feet. School board members are interested in taking a tour.

The Baptist school paid $3,000 a month in rent when it first occupied the building and for the first two years and four months after that. Rent went up to $6,000 in the third year, with additional annual increases. If the school district takes over the lease, it will pay $7,676 a month at first, or $92,000 a year, plus utilities of $10,000 a month, or $120,000 a year, for a total overhead annual cost of $212,000. But there would also be substantial upfront costs for the district to rebuild the interior to its specifications. That figure is not known at the moment.




The recurring overhead cost is the same as that of keeping the various programs where they are (not including Adult with Disabilities, which is not in portables), and if the districts were to lease 10 new portables to replace old ones.

David Freeman, the district’s chief of operational services, says the various programs that could be housed at the courthouse are in portables, many of which are reaching their 20-year lifespans. The monthly lease cost of current portables is $6,244 per portable.

“We are looking at the expansion of rise up and needing additional classrooms this next year. So this was a consideration,” Freeman said. “We also wanted to centralize our iFlagler and bring them up under one roof because they are currently split.” Moving to the courthouse would free up 10 classrooms in different schools, though the courthouse would not be available at the start of the next school year, which begins in August–the last month of the Baptist school’s lease. So the district would move in there slowly.

The courthouse as currently configured has 30 classrooms, 12 offices, two conference rooms, an assembly room, a kitchen and a cafeteria. The district plans to analyze the building’s heating and cooling system and its plumbing. It will more closely analyze which programs could be located on what floors.




School Board member Colleen Conklin, aware of the Flagler Historical Society’s interest in the building, proposed offering an in-kind trade of space to the Historical Society, for some form of display room, in exchange for a break in the county’s rent charge. But Freeman said if the building were a school, security would be a concern. The building could not mix public and school uses.

“I wonder if the county would consider a lease purchase or potential lease purchase,” Board member Cheryl Massaro said. “I just hate improving things that would not be ours down the road. Maybe it might cost a little more, but when it was done, it was ours, as opposed to when it’s done and all of a sudden they want another use for it or we decide we can’t use it or whatever the case may be.”

But if the district were to lease the building, the county would still have to maintain the grounds, the heating and cooling system, the roof (which had been problematic some years ago), the interior elevator, the fire sprinkler system, and the facade of the building. The plumbing would be the responsibility of the district. “You need to get a good plumbing inspection,” Will Furry, who chairs the school board, said.

Conklin said the numbers Freeman presented make sense for the district. If the district were to pass up on the option, “I can promise you, I can promise you , with the world of choice that we live in right now that that will be a private school by somebody else. Some other educational entity will come in. It’s set up for a school.”

No one asked what Bunnell thought about the proposal, nor was Bunnell government aware of it. But when Bunnell City Manager Alvin Jackson learned of it this afternoon from a reporter, he was ecstatic. “I can tell you the mayor and the commission would applaud that,” Jackson said. He’d worked with the Historical Society on its hopeful; plans to make use of the building, but was not aware of the school district’s interest.




“We would like to see the building continue to be utilized and eventually where it’s restored to its historic significance,” Jackson said. “Definitely we don’t want to see the building demolished because it’s a significant landmark, not only for Bunnell, but for Flagler County, and a school is a great re-adaptive use for the courthouse, as it’s been used now. I’m excited. I’m sure the mayor and the commission are excited to hear of that opportunity. We support it, as we’ve shared with the county about the Historical Society, whatever we can do to support–we don’t have any funding, but there are some things we can do as they apply for historical preservation grants.”

From an economic development standpoint, Jackson said the courthouse is part of a cultural corridor the city is nurturing, the historic coquina City Hall nearby, the Historical Society’s Holden House across the street, and potentially the Phoenix-like return of the Flagler Playhouse. “Plus it will create additional capital investment in the area,” Jackson said.