- April 25, 2024
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Flagler County officials hope to partner with the city of Palm Coast and the Florida Agricultural Museum to support development of the museum, which gets rave reviews from visitors but doesn’t attract enough of them.
“The museum board that's in there now, they're very active and very engaged,” Flagler County Special Projects Coordinator Andy Johnson said Wednesday at a County Commission workshop. “We’ve been working very diligently with them and the city of Palm Coast to come up with an agreement to give the museum a bit of a boost.”
The Florida Agricultural Museum is a taste of old Florida, complete with hayrides, Pioneer Days and cracker horses and cattle, and county commissioners hope to make it a major tourist attraction. The museum moved from Tallahassee to Palm Coast in 1997 and is listed as the No. 1 attraction in Palm Coast on the travel website Tripadvisor.com, where it has dozens of positive reviews from tourists and visiting school and community groups.
“We were lucky to get it,” Johnson said at the meeting.
The agreement the county is considering would involve de-annexing the museum grounds from the city of Palm Coast but keeping the museum connected to the city’s municipal water and wastewater systems.
“The museum’s attractions and programs are based mostly on farming activities and operations, which locally are found typically in a rural setting," County Administrator Craig Coffey wrote in a report, indicating that the setting is more suited for the county’s review and permitting process.
The museum’s board of trustees approved the basis of the interlocal agreement at a meeting on Aug. 8, and the city of Palm Coast will discuss the agreement and a contraction ordinance associated with it at its Sept. 10 meeting and vote on the ordinance on Sept. 17 and Oct. 1.
The museum has struggled in recent years, hampered by a lack of visibility and support from the state, which stopped funding it in 2008.
It’s located off in the woods at 7900 Old Kings Road near Princess Place and the Pellicer Creek Conservation Area, and there are no signs for it on the county’s major highways, even though it’s less than a mile from Interstate 95.
County Commissioner George Hanns, who fought to bring the museum to Flagler County, would like to add signs, a process that would require the Florida Department of Transportation’s approval.
The County Commission is also open to other ideas to attract visitors.
Commission Chairman Nate McLaughlin made a trip to Georgia’s Museum of Agriculture and Historic Village, formerly the Agrirama, earlier this year to see how that museum runs its exhibits and marketing.
The county hopes the museum’s tentative plans to add camping for recreational vehicles, and the possibility of expanded primitive camping at nearby Princess Place, might also draw more visitors.
“We’re very enthusiastic about continuing there and making it a bigger and better place,” Hanns said.
