Marineland Will Lose a Third of Its Property Tax Revenue When Dolphin Attraction Is Purchased by Non-Profit

The Marineland Town Commission is relieved that the town’s defining landmark and business–Marineland Dolphin Adventure–will be pulled out of bankruptcy and sold to a new owner. But when the facility transfers to what will be a non-profit, it will stop paying property taxes, costing struggling Marineland a third of its property tax revenue.

That has town officials nervous.

Town Attorney Dennis Bayer at a Marineland Town Commission meeting last Thursday suggested inviting Jack Kassewitz, the dolphin expert who will run the attraction with former General Manager Felicia Cook, “to come and just kind of meet and greet and tell us what their vision is.”

The town needs to discuss other issues with the attraction, which is behind on its taxes. “They’re going to be a nonprofit,” Bayer said, “which may have a significant impact on us going forward, as far as our ad valorem tax revenues, not for this budget year, for next budget year.”

Last October Marineland approved an annual budget of $258,000. Just over half of that is property tax revenue–$132,000. The dolphin attraction is responsible for a third of that revenue. For the past four years, the attraction’s tax bill from the town has been $43,762, enough to cover almost 70 percent of the town’s payroll in 2025.

The attraction has paid the bill in full in one payments only once, in 2020. It has since paid in quarterly installments. It still owes most of its 2024 payments. It has not paid its 2025 bill.

Marineland has been here before. The Georgia Aquarium sold the dolphin facility to Marineland Leisure in 2019 for $3 million. It had been a non-profit for the nine years that Georgia Aquarium owned it, generating no taxes for the town or the county. The 2019 sale returned it to the tax rolls, generating $255,000 in property tax–or ad valorem–revenue for the town since.

The only other property tax payer in town is JDI, the company owned by Atlanta-based developer Jim Jacoby. He is in discussions with the county and others about selling most of his assets. If a consortium of county and state agencies were to buy most of JDI’s lands, placing them in conservation, the town would essentially lose all property tax revenue and with it the means of remaining a town. It would have to be dissolved and reincorporated into the county.

The transformation of Marineland Dolphin Adventure into a non-profit did not sink in with the town commissioners last Thursday, though Mark Simpson, the town’s financial consultant, said that with just the back taxes owed, “If we didn’t get the attraction’s ad valorem tax, I’d be pulling my hair out.”

A federal bankruptcy judge in Delaware on Nov. 12 approved a $7.135 million sale of Marineland Dolphin Adventure, $6.5 million of it in cash, to Apex Association LLC, owned by Green Cove Springs-based Barbara and Jon Rubel. The sale is set to close on Dec. 5. The purchase agreement leaves the responsibility of taxes through Dec. 5 to the previous owner.

According to its monthly financial report ending Oct. 31’, Marineland took $129,437 but had expenses of $219,009 and a net loss of $186,350. Its assets are valued at $8.4 million, its liabilities at $4.2 million, not including stockholder equity.

The purchase agreement requires the new employer to keep existing employees employed with, “at a minimum, base salary or wage levels that are, in the aggregate, no less favorable than such base salary or wage levels as in effect prior to the Closing Date,” it reads.

Mayor Buddy Pinder briefly and happily addressed the sale at the beginning of last week’s commission meeting, as did Commissioner Dewey Dew at the end of the meeting. “I’m very happy that it sounds like the attraction is going to be saved and looking forward to this new chapter in Marineland,” he said, “and continuing to see where the attraction continues to grow and build the community, and I’m excited for new ideas to come to the table.”

Part of the sale agreement called for the sale of two dolphins for $500,000 to Theater of the Sea, a Marineland-like attraction in Islamorada. The dolphins being sold are 12-year-old Capri, born on May 16, 2013, and 9-year-old Soleil, born on Dec. 8, 2016, according to court filings.