Signs of the times: Bobby Ginn's mansion to be auctioned


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  • | 4:00 a.m. April 9, 2014
Bobby Ginn's home at 42 Island Estates Parkway is scheduled to be auctioned in July.
Bobby Ginn's home at 42 Island Estates Parkway is scheduled to be auctioned in July.
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High-profile real estate developer Bobby Ginn’s 5,730-square-foot home and 1,532-square-foot guest house on the Intracoastal Waterway in the private community of Island Estates are scheduled to be sold at a foreclosure sale July 7, 2014. A second Ginn-owned vacant residential lot in Island Estates is in the final stages of the foreclosure process.

Ginn purchased the homesteaded double-lot property at 42 Island Estates in 2004 for $2.5 million. Subsequently, he added an 8,740-square-foot brick driveway, a boat dock and a 4,500-square-foot pool complex. Ginn’s first hiccup related to the Island Estates home was in June 2010 when a tax certificate (property tax lien) was issued for an unpaid property tax amount of $49,991.58. The certificate was soon redeemed. Subsequent property tax bills, including 2013, have been paid promptly.

Who is Bobby Ginn?

"Bobby Ginn is moving more dirt in this hemisphere than anybody," a Ginn Real Estate Sales representative bragged in early 2007. He was said to have 40,000 acres under development or in the planning stages at that time. Ginn hosted a PGA Champions Tour event at his Oceanside Hammock Beach Resort. The event's $1.2 million purse was the year's richest on that tour. It featured an outdoors Vince Gill concert simulcast on the high definition screen covering one side of the circling Ginn Blimp. The blimp was the latest arrival in a fleet of company aircraft sporting the Ginn Logo.

But when the music stopped, all the chairs were gone. Many of Ginn’s developments failed or are floundering. And there are still active lawsuits.

But Ginn has many local successes, as well. He was involved in the development of Grand Haven before its purchase by Landmar. He went on to develop the successful Hammock Beach Resort and bought the golf course that Lowe Development built there. Yacht Harbor Village and The Conservatory are showing increased construction activity, but The Gardens on John Anderson Highway never got off the ground.

The door is closing on the Palm Coast chapter of “The Ginndom.” But long after he has departed the local scene, his legacy will remain. And many locals will always refer to the Sundancer dinner yacht as “the Ginn boat.”

 

 

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