Flagler Beach Will Consider Selling Ocean Palm Golf Club to Leaseholder, With Conditional Milestones

The Flagler Beach City Commission on Thursday gave the leaseholder of the city-owned Ocean Palm Golf Club a month to submit a proposal to buy the 37-acre property, paired with a capital improvement plan. The leaseholder has been in such discussions with the city administration since taking a year and a half ago. 

If there is to be a sale, commissioners said, it would be conditional on Jeff Ryan, the leaseholder, meeting a series of milestones to prove that he is capable of securing the money necessary to do the work, and to do the work to the high standard he is promising. Those milestones will have to be negotiated. 

The commission at no point discussed the legality of such an arrangement without opening up the process to other bidders with the same conditions.

Meanwhile, the commission agreed to alter the lease and allow Ryan to close the golf course for the month. That closure will be renewable, month to month, as the commission reevaluates what Ryan will have accomplished monthly. There was no word on the city suspending expected rent payments during the closure. 

The 4-1 vote allowing the closure and requiring Ryan to submit the plan followed an 80-minute discussion that was often confusing, because Ryan’s original request was for a seven-month closure to enable him to accomplish substantial renovations. But he also said that he would not–could not–do those renovations without the assurance that he would own the property.  

“At the end of the day, what I’m trying to do is develop something great for everyone within the community, which is a golf course that can live on into the future,” Ryan said. “What’s there now is quite dated–not just the turf grass.” He was not saying anything the previous lease-holder hadn’t told the city many times through that checkered relationship, which also had its share of closures and promises of complete overhauls. But no talk of a sale. 

Ryan said he had “both public and private funding options.” By public options, which he favors, he meant Small Business Administration loans. “There’s certainly some prep work that needs to go into it, but for me to protect myself in the long term, there would need to be a separation from the city,” Ryan said. That meant he had to own the property to do all that work. 

After plenty of discussion, Mayor Patti King raised the salient question: “My only concern in this whole thing, which I don’t think we’re addressing, is: only if he buys it,” she said. “That’s a caveat that we’re not speaking to at the moment. So kind of putting the cart before the horse here with not having that discussion first, in my opinion.”

That prompted a shift in the discussion to the specifics of a purchase, which was not on the agenda–or at least a discussion about a future discussion of a purchase. City Attorney Drew Smith suggested that commissioners clarify their approach to that end, because “what you’re hearing from the podium,” Smith said, referring to Ryan, “is if you shut it down and sell it to me, I’ll go out and make those repairs.”

“That’s the conversation we have to have up here,” Commission Chair James Sherman said. “Mr. Ryan wants to invest some money into this golf course. However, he’s got to protect that investment. So I don’t know where we go from there.” 

So Smith mapped it out: Put the ball in Ryan’s court. He can submit a plan on what sort of purchase he would favor. The commission would then negotiate it.

Commissioner Scott Spradley, an attorney, fleshed out the approach: If Ryan were to buy the property, there would first have to be “a list of milestones, that not only must this course be maintained going forward,” Spradley said, “but that there must be a number of subjective and objective milestones that must occur towards the rebuilding of it and everything that goes about it.” Those would be incentives for Ryan, and it would prevent him from having a lease-purchase without accomplishments. 

In an interview later, Spradley stressed: “We have to see the plans, we need to see financial commitments,” and “reasonable expectations that that’s going to happen. So the milestones will be negotiated, and the negotiations won’t be started until he gives us his plan.” 

Ryan did outline several goals, starting with the rebuilding of the greens into a 12-hole golf course. 

Right now, “it’s a bunch of dirt pushed up onto a hill to make a green,” Ryan said. “USGA spec green goes 12 to 18 inches down. We create a base layer, we create drainage, we bring that topsoil in a mixture, and then put the turf grass on it. You don’t paint a house before you tear it down. And anything that would have gone on out there now would not have been fiscally responsible.” 

The clubhouse is also in disrepair, without a functional air conditioning system. He wants to build a new clubhouse and restaurant. 

“It’s nowhere near 30,000 square feet. I don’t know where and how that came from,” he said. Ryan was being disingenuous. The figure, reported in previous articles, came from the conceptual site plan he submitted to the city. It was 30,000 square feet. He has since walked back the size to 19,400 square feet–a 15,000 square foot first floor and a 4,400 square foot mezzanine. It remains a very large building compared to the tiny clubhouse there now. (Ryan did not return a text and a call asking about the building.) 

He said the new building would “certainly have some extra space” and whatever else would be needed “to be in the modern era of golf and to service the community with a nice restaurant.” There would be no loud parties. He said the activities would be more along the lines of “Sunday brunch, bridge clubs and couples golf than anything else.” In the end, he wants to renovate the grounds “to something beautiful.” 

That means a “complete overhaul,” moving “hundreds of thousands of yards’ worth of dirt to start,” and a redesigned golf course with new equipment, new holes, new irrigation system. The building and the golf course will take seven months to repair, Ryan said, with drought-tolerant seashore paspalum grass on top of a specifically blended four-inch layer of soil. 

The public had a range of reactions, with unanimity on one point: everyone wants a better-looking, better run golf course. But most residents are opposed to a sale. Some oppose even a 15,000 square foot building, others don’t. Many think the city has not been transparent about it all. 

“There’s all kinds of things that come up in the city that get worked and developed by staff,” Commissioner Eric Cooley said. “Until it comes to a public meeting and on an agenda and it gets worked by the Commission, that is at the only point that a plan would take place.” He added: “When the city plans to sell the golf course, if that was to happen, it would happen in a meeting decided in the open, exactly as we’re doing now, and only at that point is it an actual plan.”

A year and a half ago–466 days, Ryan specified–the city transferred the lease to Ryan. At that point, City Manager Dale Martin said, “there was contemplation like: would the city be interested in selling the golf course. No additional action was taken. But there was conversation that, in the past, the city would not necessarily pursue that course of action.” 

But when Ryan said the golf course is not viable without a huge overhaul under his ownership, he drew a skeptical response from R.J. Santore, a local resident and a fixture at commission meetings for the past year or so. “I do find it interesting that he stated that it’s not fiscally responsible to do the work. It’s not an operational golf course,” Santore said. “I just don’t know why he would enter into the lease. I’m sure he had the opportunity to test the soil beforehand. And if we’re really coming to a head with the city and him doing something, do we need to renegotiate the lease, get terms he would agree to, breaking it, possibly, and letting it someone else come in, putting it out for bid, and if we have to put more money into it, bring it to the people to see what we think about it.”

Mark Emhoff said he represents other residents (though he said he spoke for people who want to remain anonymous). He supports the improvements, but not the sale. “We think you are making a massive mistake selling it,” he said. “It’s like a Central Park we own. It’s beautiful,” and “the last place in Flagler Beach where there’s peace and quiet.”

But 30,000 square feet or 15,000 square feet drew opposition. “That’s way too big,” one resident of Ocean Palm Drive said, as would be a large parking lot. “This area belongs to Flagler Beach. This area belongs to the people who have been paying taxes for years. Why would we let that go?” she asked. “ And who can promise if it doesn’t work out that he doesn’t sell it in five years, and then they build whatever they want to build.” Others voiced the same concerns. 

Chris Conklin, however–he cited three properties he owns on Ocean Palm–supported Ryan. “They’re going to make it a benefit for everybody in the area, I give them courage and strength to get through what they’re trying to do,” he said. “And yes, if he needs to build a larger building to bring in the money, because a golf course is not making money.” But he also called Ryan “crazy” and “nuts” for trying to do what he’s trying to do. 

Several additional residents lent their support to Ryan, not always accurately. Everyone wants an improved golf course as opposed to “something that’s embarrassing,”  one Palm Circle resident said, saying that a 15,000 or 30,000 square foot building would not be “that big.” He claimed that the existing clubhouse is 8,000 square feet–it is not–and that two or three additional floors would make it 24,000 square feet, and wouldn’t be a “monstrosity.” 

In fact, the existing clubhouse is 1,560 square feet, according to the Flagler County Property Appraiser’s documentation. 

To calm residents’ worries that Ryan could sell the golf course to a developer in the future, 

Commissioner Rick Belhumeur said the golf course could never become something other than a golf course because a sale would be accompanied by a deed restriction. But as the city attorney said at the end of the meeting, a deed restriction is not perpetual: a subsequent commission could repeal it. 

“This golf course has been hemorrhaging money since the day we bought it,” Belhumeur said. “Think back what it looked like before we bought it, and the reason that we bought it. We bought it because it was unkept.” He added: “Everybody down there would love to see a nice, brand new, high-quality golf course, which is being promised. And I don’t doubt this gentleman can do it.”

Commissioner John Cunningham dissented in the 4-1 vote. 

Golf Course Architectural Drawings