Palm Coast Celebrates Its 25th Anniversary with Quilts, Cake and a ‘Living Time Capsule’

The person best qualified to lead the celebration of Palm Coast’s 25th anniversary at Central Park in Town center Saturday was never on stage, never even mentioned, though the words Mayor David Alfin spoke very likely bore her imprint, as have the words of every mayor for the past 20 years: Marsha Lidskin has been telling the city’s story since 2005, when Dick Kelton, the city’s first manager, hired her to lead the administration’s community relations division.

“A city is not determined by its boundaries or by the asphalt on its roads and the lights on its streets,” Alfin said in his speech from the stage. “Instead, it is determined by the hearts of the citizens.” Lidskin was among the few dozen people listening and applauding, one of the few people in the audience who could say she’s been there almost from the start. Andy Dance, the county commissioner, was another.




Lidskin and Lisa Gardner had organized the 10th anniversary celebration in 2009, held in December under pouring rain alongside the Starlight holiday parade, with jazz singer Linda Cole and the Flagler Palm Coast High School Jazz Band providing some of the entertainment.

“You know what? A lot of things have changed,” Lidskin said of those days, “but bottom line, I still love to be here. I can go for a walk, people smile at you, people wave at you–still.” And more people are coming for that. Sure, it’s getting spoiled in some ways. “So what. So what?” Lidskin said. “It’s in the heart. You let it change you, it’ll change you. Don’t let it change you. I find the good stuff.”

The skies were cloudless Saturday, the sun blazing, some of the speeches a bit too long for people more inclined to take their children to the busy Kids Zone or give the half dozen food trucks and the Flagler Cultural Council’s beer-and-wine tent something to serve up. Former Council member Kathy Heighter distributed special quilts to members of the armed forces and others. The Palm Coast Model Yacht Club’s regatta was in full sail on the pond. The Sheriff’s Office had arranged its mobile command center and an armored SWAT vehicle near the entrance, and a few tents and tables lined the path around the pond, mostly occupied by various divisions of the city.

At the development division’s tent Ray Tyner, the city’s planning director, was challenging visitors to a bit of city trivia: Who was Palm Coast’s first mayor? (Jim Canfield). Palm Coast’s population at incorporation? 30,000 (it is now over 100,000). ITT, the periodically malevolent multinational at the very origins of Palm Coast in 1969–when it bought the original 68,000 acres from land owners that included ITT Rayonier, Wadsworth Land Company and Lehigh Cement Company to lay out the subdivision–was barely mentioned. Alfin couldn’t resist mentioning Garfield becoming “our unexpected mascot”  in 1985, before incorporation.




“Over the past 25 years, Palm Coast has continued to flourish,” he said. “We’ve launched transformative projects like the Palm Coast Greenway, preserving environmentally sensitive lands, along with Linear Park and the St. Joe Walkway. We purchased Florida Water Services to ensure our utility and water systems could meet the needs of a growing population, and we acquired the Palm Coast Community Service Corporation to better manage our drainage infrastructure.” here were few enough people in the audience that if anyone was groaning or contesting the pitch, just slightly rosier than real, it wasn’t audible.

There were also those who felt the other effects of rapid development. “I’ve obviously seen tons of changes, good and bad,” Dance said. Dance’s family had run a business on Old Kings Road, right where Eagle Lakes is now. It was called Plantation Home and Garden Center, and did well for a dozen years. The moment the Palm Coast Parkway interchange with I-95 opened, it was the end of the business as people hopped on the highway, skipping Old Kings Road.

It wasn’t really that long ago, and the city is just 25 years old (the county marked its centennial in 2017, Flagler Beach is marking its centennial next year), but “yes, we do have a historical society,” as Kathy Reichard-Ellavsky, who leads the society, told the crowd: the society just notched a significant victory as Reichard-Ellavsky led the campaign to save Fire Station 22, the city’s oldest (on Palm Coast Parkway) from demolition. 

In that spirit, the city prepared what Communications Director Brittany Kershaw called “a living time capsule.” Instead of burying it somewhere for decades, it’ll be on display at different city venues–the Community Center, the Southern Recreation center and, for its permanent home, at the Historical Society. The four members of the City Council in attendance unveiled the glassed-in display, which was more museum-like than time-capturing.

If time capsules are intended to capture the moment when they are enshrined, this one was more of a look back: a collection of pictures showing the different councils over the years, the 25th anniversary proclamation, a tie bearing the original Palm Coast logo with the orange sun, a clip from the now-defunct Flagler-Palm Coast Times (why not something from the more current Observer?) a campaign button for incorporation (“Vote YES City of Palm Coast”), a Jim canfield campaign button, and of course nothing to memorialize the sounds and furies of more recent City Council meetings. Silence and imagination will have to compensate.

It was perhaps fitting. As much as the 25th anniversary marked the completion of a quarter century of urbanization and change, there was also a sense that an era was closing, not least because the new council that will be seated in a few weeks will have a single member with two year’s service, one with a few weeks’ worth, and three with no institutional history. Alfin had celebrated the past 25 years. His vision of the future is leerier, even if he didn’t show it Saturday. The changes ahead may make the last 25 years look like a prelude.

A 25th anniversary cake was the icing on that segment of the celebration.