Marineland’s Last Remaining Taxpayer Readies to Sell Land Holdings, Putting Town’s Future in Doubt

Jim Jacoby, the only private landholder paying property taxes in Marineland, has reached a tentative agreement to sell all but one of his parcels to Flagler County, the University of Florida and the Department of Environmental Protection. The parties have been working on a deal since mid-2025.

If and when the land acquisitions go through, Marineland would lose all property tax revenue and may no longer function as a town. It may have to be absorbed under the county’s governance. 

“I’ve conferred with JDI Marineland,” John W. Wallace, an attorney with Smith Hulsey & Busey, the Jacksonville law firm that represents Jacoby’s company, wrote Sarah Spector, the assistant county attorney, on May 5, “and they accept the County’s offer, with the caveat that Seller’s obligation to close on the sale with the County will be contingent on the State of Florida closing on the 24.7 acres at the price stated in their offer, which we already accepted.”

Jacoby, an Atlanta-based developer, owns JDI Marineland. JDI owns five parcels in Marineland. Jacoby owns a sixth property under a different name. Together, the six parcels total 37 acres, and paid Marineland $79,333 in property taxes last year. Marineland Dolphin Adventure paid $43,762. 

The town appeared to have lost the property tax revenue from Dolphin Adventure when 1 Apex Corporation acquired it out of bankruptcy late last year. Apex donated the property to the nonprofit now running the attraction. That may have shrunk the town’s property tax revenue by a third, leaving Jacoby’s properties to account for the balance, although it isn’t clear if Apex itself is a nonprofit, and whether it may continue to pay property taxes even if the attraction is a nonprofit. 

Marineland is operating this year on a general fund budget of $192,252, of which $132,000, or 69 percent, depends on property taxes. The town also receives state grants, utility franchise fees, rental and interest income, and communications tax revenue. 

Without revenue from five of the six Jacoby properties, Marineland will not have the money to function effectively as a town. Absent a new source of revenue, it would likely have to consider dissolution either by an act of the Legislature or by a referendum of the town’s registered voters. The town has three registered voters. All three sit on the Town Commission–Mayor Buddy Pinder and Commissioners Jessica Finch and Dewey Dew. A majority of two could lead to dissolution. 

The town has been struggling financially and administratively, as a memo from its attorneys underscored last month. (See: “Marineland’s New Attorneys Sound Alarm Over Lax Policies, Missing Audits, Lost Records and Potential Litigation.”) The town is currently $21,000 over budget. Town commissioners are directing the attorneys to negotiate with the town marina’s lease holders to agree to new lease terms that would pay the town more than the annual $18,000 the marina has been paying for many years. 

The breakdown of Jacoby’s properties and what they paid in 2025 taxes is as follows: 

• A 5,217-square-foot parcel containing a sewer plant paid $785 in total property taxes last year, $250.25 to Marineland. 
• A 15.6-acre property paid Marineland $31,249. 
• An adjoining 4.3-acre property paid the town $6,602. 
• The 13.1-acre property that wraps around the Marina, including the land on which the Marina’s buildings are located, paid Marineland $28,185. 
• The only seafront property JDI owns is a 1.8-acre parcel sandwiched between the Dolphin Adventure and the River-to-Sea Preserve. That property paid the town $9,484. That parcel is not part of the land deal with the three governments. 
• Jacoby also owns a 2.1-acre parcel under the corporate name of Marineland Research Resort, which paid the town $3,028. 

There is one additional parcel privately held in Marineland, a quarter-acre property across the street from the Dolphin Adventure owned by the Marineland Research Center. The president and director of the center is Eduardo Albor, a former CEO of the Mexico-based Dolphin Company that used to own the Dolphin Adventure. Albor was arrested in Cancun, Mexico, in mid-February on accusations of “misleading a Mexican court to undermine corporate governance changes undertaken by advisers last year while the company was in bankruptcy,” according to a Panhandle news station. The property’s taxes are in arrears going back to 2024.

Flagler County’s share of the land deal would be a 5-acre parcel. The sale price is $3.59 million. Since the land is part of the state’s wildlife corridor, state grants would cover the cost rather than money from the county’s Environmentally Sensitive Land fund. UF and DEP would buy the rest of the land. 

The county’s Land Acquisition Committee, which ranks environmentally attractive lands for acquisition and recommends purchasing them to the County Commission, discussed the Marineland acquisition–including an executed letter of intent–at its May 11 meeting.

Erick Revuelta, the county’s land manager, summarized the coming land deal to the County Commission on Monday.  “We’ve made an offer, the offer has been tentatively accepted,” he told commissioners. “There’s a lot of contingencies in it. We’re still kind of working through what happens with the wastewater treatment plant and trying to get all those pieces together to figure out where that can go.”  

The University of Florida is making the land acquisition contingent on Flagler County taking over the sewer plant that Jacoby has been operating in Marineland. The sewer plant needs work. 

“Our concern with that is, we don’t have a utility, so we are not in a position to operate the utility,” Spector said, and the Florida Governmental Utility Authority, which operates utilities such as Plantation Bay’s, has declined to take over Marineland’s. That has put a twist in the negotiations, but not the kind of twist that will stop the transaction. “We are working through it,” Spector said. 

Eventually the sewer plant will be made obsolete as Palm Coast extends its sewer line to Marineland. The city just bid out a request for proposals for that contract to build over 17,569 feet of new 12” to 14” sewer force main along State Road A1A from Mala Compra Road to Marineland. It received 15 bids. The fact that it is only a matter of time before the sewer line is extended is playing into the negotiations.