- April 23, 2024
-
-
Loading
Loading
Flagler County is asking the Hammock Dunes Community Development District to use the CDD’s plant to handle wastewater coming out of Bings Landing and Captain’s BBQ.
The issue brought County Administrator Craig Coffey to speak before the Hammock Dunes CDD’s Board of Supervisors during its regular meeting Dec. 14.
Captain’s BBQ and Bings Landing now run off a combined septic system, and the county wants to tie into the Hammock Dunes CDD’s wastewater system so that the park and restaurant — which is planning a controversial renovation that would involve the county handling its wastewater issues — would no longer run on septic.
Adding a new septic system specifically for the proposed new restaurant building could be a significant cost and the work could be a disruption at the park, and, Coffey said, the county has been pushing to convert as much of the barrier island as possible from septic to sewer for environmental reasons.
“We think it would be a smart environmental thing for you to do,” Coffey said to the board. “It would definitely solve a lot of problems.”
The county would pay for all the work, he said.
Hammock Dunes CDD board members were hesitant to commit to Coffey’s proposal before the County Commission makes a decision at its Jan. 7 meeting.
Board member Charles Swinburn said he wants to do the environmentally responsible thing, but also doesn’t want to inject the CDD into a dispute about whether there should be a new building.
CDD Manager Greg Peugh said the CDD would be able to handle the Bings and Captain’s BBQ wastewater.
“We have the capacity; that’s not a problem,” he said. “We may have to upgrade a pump station.”
County Administrator Coffey is preparing give county commissioners some information about the situation at Bings that he didn’t provide before the commission’s Nov. 19 vote to approve a relocation of Captain’s BBQ within the park.
After its initial Nov. 19 vote, the commission on Dec. 3 —after newly elected commissioner Joe Mullins was sworn in — voted to reconsider the Nov. 19 vote during a meeting on Jan. 7. Commissioners said they want more detailed information.
“We didn’t air all our dirty laundry, so now we’re going to air all our dirty laundry,” Coffey said. “We’re going to list the 10 major things wrong with the building.”
Captain’s BBQ leases its current building at Bings Landing from the county for $750 a month. It’s one of three restaurants on county property — the others are the restaurant at Bull Creek Fish Camp, and Highjackers at the Flagler County Executive Airport — that the county enticed to those locations by offering low-cost “sweetheart leases.”
The county is contractually responsible for maintaining the building. The problem, according to Coffey, is that the building has serious structural damage. Repairing it would be expensive to the county and might become a perpetual project, while shutting the restaurant down in order to construct a new building in the same spot would mean putting Captain’s BBQ out of business during construction, Coffey said.
But there was a potential solution: The restaurant agreed to pay up to $1 million to build a new restaurant building in a new location nearer the center of the park, so that the restaurant could stay open in its current location during the construction process. The county would own the new building, demolish the old one, and t be responsible for the cost of adding parking for the new building and handling septic and sewer issues. The restaurant would also pay $1,000 a month to the county instead of the current $750.
If the county were to shut down Captain’s BBQ for months by closing the current restaurant building to build a new one in the same spot, Coffey said, the county would be legally responsible for the financial impact on Captain’s of that lost business during the months of closure — and possibly longer, something he hadn’t explained to commissioners before the Nov. 19 vote.
“I have to potentially pay them for the entirety of the lease … for business damages,” Coffey said, because of case law that seems to indicate that the county, as owner of the property, should be responsible for the longterm costs of the restaurant losing and having to rehire its staff, and losing business and the chance to build its brand, during a lengthy closure.
There are 13 years left on the current lease, and that could cost the county millions of dollars, Coffey said.
