Closed for many years, the White Eagle Lounge on U.S. 1, which had a storied history as one of Flagler County’s oldest bars and was a biker favorite, will soon give way to gas station and convenience store.
The county’s Planning Board recommended the required land use changes last week and the County Commission approved the elimination of a nearly century-old plat. The deteriorated White Eagle building itself will be demolished.
“The final farewell to the White Eagle,” County Commissioner Andy Dance said.
“Yep. I know,” Commissioner Kim Carney said wistfully.
The White Eagle at the roundabout intersection of South US Highway 1, South Old Dixie Highway, and County Road 325 was the subject of litigation in 2019, the month the Covid pandemic struck. The suit was dismissed in 2021.
By then the bar had closed for good following its sale in 2020. Property owners Kim Tam and Jim Benninghove sold the property, which includes about 20 lots split between five parcels, to Roy Hinman of St. Augustine for $550,000, according to Property Appraiser records.
In grimmer days before the roundabout, the intersection was the scene of numerous fatal crashes. There has been only one fatal crash there since the roundabout was completed in 2020.
On Monday, the County Commission approved the vacating of the old plat covering the 3.56-acre property, which consisted of the 20 lots on either side of Trojan Avenue and the 50-foot Trojan Avenue right-of-way itself. It had originally been platted around 1929 “but never actually utilized in its intended purpose,” Simone Kenny, the county’s principal planner, said.
That clears the way for the expected approval of a rezoning, which the Planning Board recommended last week. Kimley-Horn and Associates applied for the rezoning on behalf of Hinman’s company, which is the land holder, 5530 US HWY 1.
Part of the land is currently designated as low density residential, a small sliver of it is designated as conservation, and the rest as high intensity commercial. The applicant is seeking to convert all 3.56 acres to high-intensity commercial, for a maximum of 62,029 square feet of allowable commercial space.
Kenny showed a conceptual rendering of the future property. “The proposed use would be for a gas station-convenience store,” she said, with entrances and exits on U.S. 1, just north of the roundabout’s northbound lanes, and off County Road 325. The county road will be improved. The back of the property would be filled with a retention pond. The property has no water and sewer connections, so it will be fed by a well and will have its own septic system. How operating a facility of that scale entirely on a well and a localized septic system presents potential environmental and regulatory challenges that Planning Board members did not challenge, and the planning division did not address.
The only public comment the proposal drew at the Planning Board was from a resident neighboring the property who worried about future traffic.
The county’s planning division determined that “the existing R-1 zoning district on the northern portion of the site is not consistent with the commercial nature of this roundabout intersection, and this rezoning will allow for the highest and best use of the property. Therefore, this proposed rezoning is a logical and compatible extension of the existing commercial zoning districts that front along the roundabout and along South US Highway 1, a principal arterial roadway.”
“It will be interesting in the next step to see the traffic management plan right near the roundabout, and how they handle that,” Dance, a landscape architect, said. He cautioned against excessive lighting. “These are notorious if not handled appropriately, and I know our land development code is severely insufficient in addressing lighting and spillover lighting into adjacent lots,” he said, requesting that recessed lighting is used to minimize any spillover into small residential plots.
Kimley-Horn’s Kristen Reed said that would be done. She had left no doubt about the fate of the White Eagle Lounge. “The intent is to demolish the existing building and to fully redevelop the property,” she told the Planning Board.
“I think it’d be beneficial for everyone for that building to go away,” Mark Langello said, citing its non-conforming uses. The building may also be encroaching on a right of way.
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