After knocking $100,000 off the asking price due to some problematic maintenance issues on the property, the Flagler County Commission agreed to buy an eight-parcel, 27.5 acre property, including a homestead, near Dead Lake for $1.145 million, using the county’s tax-supported Environmentally Sensitive Land fund. The property will be converted into an extension of the Bull Creek Campground.
The commission was on the verge of buying the property at the beginning of the month. County Administrator Heidi Petito asked for a delay. She had only then received a key inspection report that raised concerns, especially with the conditions of the 1,800-square-foot house on the property. The son of owner Marjorie McCraney lives there.
“They’re minor in their nature, but they have some significance because they’re maintenance related,” Growth Director Adam Mengel told the commission about the findings in the inspection report. For example, the report noted some cracks in the stucco, a non-functioning pool heater, broken latches, the proximity of vegetation to the house (“a conducive condition for wood-destroying organisms”), missing flashing that could eventually cause leaks, “failing” paint on much of the house’s exterior, siding and trim issues, exposed wires, and so on.
Whether the county chooses to keep the house is in doubt, however. “Of greater interest is the cost associated with converting the existing single-family dwelling into a commercial-type use,” a memo to commissioners states. “This conversion would require a design of the improvements that would meet the change of occupancy requirements of the Florida Building Code. Like other existing buildings that the County has acquired in the past, the conversion can ultimately be more costly than a tear-down and construction of a new building that is initially designed and constructed to meet the County’s requirements.”
That suggests the house may be demolished rather than repaired, especially since the county does not need such amenities as a pool or a screened in porch. The last thing the county wants is to add to its history of ill-fated buys of buildings in poor repair, several of which ended up embarrassing the county–and costing it millions–since the purchase of the old Memorial Hospital in Bunnell, when the county planned to turn it into a Sheriff’s Operations Center. (See: “Gun-Shy County Delays Buying ‘Sensitive Lands’ Acres That Could Allow Expansion of Bull Creek Campground.”)
Mengel and Petito met with McCraney subsequent to a series of conversations, negotiating the price down by $100,000. McCraney signed the agreement, but asked for a closing date that may extend past 60 days. The property had made it to the top of the county’s Land Acquisition Committee’s priority list. The committee reviews all potential purchases under the ESL program, and makes its recommendations to the commission. The administration recommended that the commission approve the purchase, which it did in a unanimous vote Monday.
The purchase will support the Dead Lake Campground to the the south and west of the property, generating new revenue for the county by doubling the size of the campsites. The land has “some environmental sensitivity,” Mengel said, with some wetlands on its western edge, and some historic significance “because it had been generally part of the the Old Saint Johns Park plat that had the old hotel that was associated with Dead Lake.” That had been ferries’ travel route down the St. Johns River from Crescent Lake.
There are platted streets on the property, at least on paper (there are no actual streets there), between some of the eight parcels. The county will “vacate” those rights of way for its uses.
Flagler County received a $10 million appropriation from the Legislature in the last session for the purchase of environmentally sensitive land that buy acreage along a wildlife corridor to the west of the county, be spent on stormwater conservation projects and anything on the county’s wish list of environmentally sensitive land acquisitions. But technically, it’s a separate pot from the county’s Environmentally Sensitive Land program, which is based on a voter-approved referendum that dedicated a modest property tax supplement to that coffer. The ESL tax was expected to generate $1.7 million last year, in a fund that totaled over $10.7 million before the McCraney property purchase.
Billy says
Bad investment! What a bunch of idiots running this city.