The $7.135 million sale of Marineland Dolphin Adventure closed as scheduled last Friday, taking the 87-year-old facility out of bankruptcy, turning it over to a new management team–including former General Manager Felicia Cook, who resumes that role–but also removing it from the town of Marineland’s property tax rolls, as the new ownership is running it as a nonprofit.
“Joy had returned to the staff,” said Jack Kassewitz, a dolphin expert who is part of the management team, with Cook. He described entering the facility Saturday and handing out t-shirts to the staff of some 30 people imprinted with the words, “Marineland is where miracles happen.”
“So yeah, it is a miracle we got the place,” Kassewitz said. “It’s going to take us some time, and obviously the Dolphin Company just didn’t take care of it. The staff is amazing. They were so happy when we came in on Saturday.”
The animals are in excellent shape, Kassewitz said. The work will be focused on sprucing up the facility. “All of us keep walking in the park, what can we fix here, what can we fix there. But it’s little stuff,” he said. “Felicia is going to be running it and I’ll be working on new programming, research, development, volunteers.”
The facility was sold to Barbara and Jon Rubel’s Apex Associates, a Green Cove Springs company established for the purpose. Kassewitz, who specializes in communication techniques with dolphins, and Cook, are the management team. Kassewitz and his wife Donna Kassewitz were founders and shareholders of the Dolphin Company.
The sale to the nonprofit almost did not happen. A Texas-based developer had originally been ranked as the leading bidder with a $7.1 million bid, more than double the $3.5 million bid by St Augustine-based Hutson Companies, also a developer. Kassewitz and the Rubels’ attorney successfully argued to the Delaware bankruptcy court that Apex had been prevented from placing a bid. The bidding was reopened. Apex outbid the Texas developer with a cash offer of $6.5 million and $635,000 in costs that the seller would not incur by keeping the facility as a marine-life aquarium. Apex was also pledging re-startup dollars.
The sales agreement calls for the retention of the current staff, though three individuals were not retained for being redundant, Kassewitz said. Three dolphins–a mother and two calves–were also sold to Theater of the Sea, an Islamorada-based marine mammal park similar to Marineland. The dolphins were moved a week ago.
The Georgia Aquarium had sold the facility to Marineland Leisure, a subsidiary of the Mexico-based Dolphin Company, in 2019 for $3 million, after owning it for nine years. The Dolphin Company declared bankruptcy earlier this year, prompting Cook’s resignation at the end of January.
When she was general manager, Cook regularly attended the monthly meetings of the Marineland Town Commission. Kassewitz and Cook are expected at the next commission meeting the evening of Dec. 18.
Marineland drew no tax revenue from the dolphin facility for nine years when it was under the non-profit Georgia Aquarium’s ownership. The town will have to make that adjustment again, losing a third of its general fund revenue. But its commissioners and the broader Marineland community, the University of Florida’s research facilities’ staffers and academics among them, much prefer to see dolphins in Marineland rather than condos and more development.
The facility remains open five days a week from 10 to 3, though it will need some down time for fix-ups, Kassewitz said. On Wednesday, he witnessed a visit by 40 schoolchildren, who interacted with the dolphins. “That’s one of the finest interactions I’ve ever seen done,” he said. “I was just shocked how great it was.” That’s the sort of thing Kassewitz intends to build on.
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