Flagler Beach Gets $745,000 TDC Grant for Boardwalk Rebuild That May Never Happen, Besting County and Palm Coast

After three bracing presentations by three local governments but tortuous debate by Flagler County’s Tourist Development Council members, the council on Wednesday approved a $745,000 grant for Flagler Beach to rebuild its boardwalk near the pier even though the city has none of the remaining $3 million to build it.

Palm Coast and Flagler County were at the losing end of the three-way pitch for the sizeable grant, which the tourism board offers only every two years. Palm Coast sought a $625,000 grant to add field lights at the Indian Trails Sports Complex. Flagler County government sought $745,000 to remodel Island House at Princess Place Preserve into an events venue to draw on corporate retreats and weddings. Wednesday’s vote was only a recommendation.




The 4-2 vote has to be ratified by the County Commission, which has the authority to reject the recommendation, change course or, like an appellate court, remand the proposal to the TDC for a second look along the commission’s guidelines. When the commission approved the last such grant two years ago, a $739,000 award to Palm Coast to help build the Southern Recreation Center, Palm Coast was the lone contender after Flagler Beach had flubbed its chance to make a pitch for the boardwalk.

“Every great city has a public space, their own gathering public space, and I know that’s been a concern with the hotel having eaten up the other remaining green space that was downtown,” Andy Dance, the TDC chair who also chairs the County Commission, said. He was referring to the Margaritaville Hotel now rising in the center of town, in place of what used to be not so much of a gathering space, or even a green space, but a private, vacant lot that, before the pandemic, had been home to a farmer’s market. It was also occasionally used as parking space during major events. But otherwise, it was off limits: it was not public space. “This isn’t green, but it’s gathering space. And and that’s important for the city,” Dance said of the boardwalk.

TDC member Felicia Cook of Marineland Leisure said the focus should be on the project with the most immediate impact to bring “heads in beds,” the commonly used, if somewhat morbid, metaphor describing hotel bookings.
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The boardwalk project involves rebuilding 4,200 square feet of decking fronting the ocean and renovating the service building beneath the pier’s A-frame. It would include “expanded restrooms, commercial space, a radio station, wall space dedicated to educational and cultural displays, and space for informational kiosks.” The larger $3.1 million project would eventually rebuild and extend the boardwalk north and south of the pier. (It is notable that the majority of people who use the boardwalk are from Palm Coast, according to data collected by the tourism bureau.)

One of the city’s objectives, according to its application, is to “recruit and retain a marketing professional to aggressively promote the new and expanded facility and the community, in general.” That would mean an additional, recurring cost to Flagler Beach’s budget that is not included in the capital cost, and that has also not been discussed by the City Commission, though the application also projects that the boardwalk and the pier would generate revenue through parking fees and advertising. The City Commission is seriously considering adding paid parking in the city. That now appears to be a matter of when, not if, with a potential for substantial new revenue and minimal overhead.

Nothing says Flagler Beach is ready to build. “I can’t speak to direction from the board saying what would happen or what wouldn’t happen,” Flagler Beach City Commissioner Eric Cooley, a member of the TDC board, said. The city was interested in the project to piggyback on permitting for the pier. “For anybody that’s done coastal construction, the benchmark to try to get permitting for the beach is extremely high. And if I was to only speculate, in my own opinion that if that window closed, there would not be an appetite financially, just going through the process, to try to get new permits. You’re talking a decade to try to pull something like that off.”

That’s just permitting. Then there’s the money issue. “There hasn’t been any discussion as far as if the grant didn’t happen if it would move forward at all,” Cooley said, referring to city commission discussions. “I would be speculating by saying that it would or wouldn’t. But there’s been no determination made. This whole concept began as a tourism grant concept, if that makes sense. But there’s been no commitments made if the grant didn’t happen, it would still move forward. That’s never been discussed.”




“Are you saying the city hasn’t voted on it yet? So we’d be giving grant money to something that may not happen?” Cook asked.

“The city voted on applying for the grant for the project,” Cooley said. “The city did not vote on if the grant doesn’t happen moving forward. That’s a that’s a totally different scenario.”

“So where is the city going to go for the rest of the of the funding?” another board member asked.

Flagler Beach City Manager Dale Martin answered: “The city would be challenged to come up with the rest of the funding in the immediacy,” he said, putting the total cost at $3.7 million to $3.8 million. But without the TDC grant, “it probably renders the project fiscally unsustainable from the perspective of city staff. Again, I have not had that conversation with the City Commission.”

Nevertheless, the boardwalk–certainly the most visible, most used and most iconic of all three venues by far–won out.

Flagler Beach has a two-year window to make the project happen. The money would be awarded only if the city starts construction. Otherwise, it remains, or reverts back, to the TDC’s capital project fund. The money originates from revenue from the 5 percent sales surtax on short-term rental, hotel and motel bookings. It is paid overwhelmingly by visitors, and involves no local property tax money.

The TDC board is made up of nine people, all designated by state law, which requires that the board be a mix of elected officials and private sector representatives of tourism-related businesses–namely, businesses that would be first in line to profit from TDC actions. It is an odd form of legalized conflicts of interest. The board (and the law) attempts to get around the conflict by defining it very narrowly. A member of the board must abstain from a vote “on matters that would inure to their special gain or loss,” as Assistant County Attorney Sean Moylan put it. The gain or loss must be demonstrable. But the member of the board may participate in all discussions, even if he or she is not voting. On Wednesday, all three elected officials abstained from votes, since each represented a government applying for the grant–Dance, Palm Coast City Council ember Nick Klufas, and Flagler Beach Commissioner Eric Cooley.




There is no question that other members’ businesses–the Hammock Beach Resort, the Hilton Garden Inn, Hampton Inn and Suites–would benefit from some of the grant projects: Palm Coast explicitly outlined the number of expected visitors who would be renting rooms at local hotels, if its project was approved. Yet the TDC members representing those businesses voted, some of them brazenly about the projects’ direct benefits to their “bottom line,” a pair of words they had no scruples using in their analysis of the grants.

“I believe the beach walk is the go-to,” Daniel Mundrean of Hilton Garden Inn said. “It is going to create just a means of coming to to our beach, feeling our beaches, going to the restaurants, coming to the hotel, giving a different feel to to the pier area.”

“To the hoteliers, do you think it’s the beach that brings your people in?” Cook asked.

“It’s a 50-50 split for me. I’m a Hilton brand, so I do corporate, I do a lot of local, and it also is the beach,” Mundrean said.

To Lisa Robinson of Hampton Inn and Suites, “the beach is an added asset. Is this the 35 miles off the highway, like it’s supposed to be with the Hampton sign? That’s all that does it for me.” But for her, Robinson said, the field lights at Indian Trails Sports Complex is “what put money to the bottom line, was for this area being known for the children’s sports.” The beach would fall second.

“With the beach renourishment, with the pier, for me, this really feels like an icing on the cake for us if we can get through this and help fund this project,” Oceanside Beach Bar & Grill co-owner John Lulgjuraj, one of the members of the TDC board, said of the boardwalk project. (The restaurant is south of the boardwalk.) “And then we have the Eco Tourism Center. I mean, my God, I really feel like in the next three years, we’re going to go from where we were functioning, we were pretty efficient, to–Wow.”




The Island House at the Preserve project was to take advantage of the more than 60,000 visitors a year with corporate retreats and weddings, and set up the second phase of the project, with the construction of seven additional cottages, in addition to the few already there, for rent to visitors–most of whom happen to be local.

“It’s lovely for our local businesses but personally I do not see international people, my destination weddings that I book, coming here,” Pam Walker, a member of the TDC board, said. “I just don’t see it drawing tourism here. I’m sorry. And plus I think the fact that it gives competition, with your cabins and your cottages, it gives competition to our local hotels, and I find that a problem.”

both the Palm Coast project for Indian Trails Sports Complex and the county’s project at Princess Place are expected to go forward regardless, officials said. That left the boardwalk standing.

“I love the fact that we had two pretty out of the box thinking projects that are rehabilitating or rethinking two iconic areas,” Dance said, “one, Princess Place and the Island House, and the other, a more vast public space at the at the beach. And hopefully, those still get legs because they’re good ideas, both of them.” Stephen Baker, Mundrean, Cook and Lulgjuraj voted in favor of the Flagler Beach Grant. Robinson and Walker voted against.