- April 19, 2024
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The interior walls of the derelict Holiday Travel Park hotel building at 2251 South Old Dixie Highway are coated in graffiti, visible through bashed-in windows. Scattered remnants of furniture litter the floors. A mottled blue-green ooze partially fills the swimming pool.
The building sits across from the main entrance to Plantation Bay, whose residents have complained for years that it attracts criminals, homeless people and drug abusers.
"If we’re unable to get compliance, I would like to move forward as expediently as possible in removing this blight from the community."
— JERRY CAMERON, county administrator
At a meeting Monday, March 16, the County Commission voted unanimously to take action — "up to and including demolition" — to solve the problem.
The vacant building has drawn consistent attention from law enforcement officers: Flagler County Sheriff's Office deputies have conducted 40 security checks and responses to calls about criminal mischief or suspicious persons at the building since the start of 2020, according to FCSO records.
"A police burden of patrolling that and entering calls to that and making cases is a serious drain on the sheriff’s resources," Flagler County Administrator Jerry Cameron told commissioners during the March 16 meeting.
Cameron referred to the building as a public nuisance and a potential liability — the pool alone, he said, poses risks in two ways: as a mosquito breeding ground and as a drowning risk.
Sheriff Rick Staly thanked Cameron for taking the issue seriously.
"When things get dilapidated like this, it breeds crime," Staly said.
The county government has historically had no luck getting the building's owners to deal with it.
"This has been an enforcement problem for many, many years," Cameron said. "The health department has given their maximum penalties for activities there, and still the owner has failed to comply with the safety of the pool. ... These neighborhoods should not be subjected to having that in their midst."
If another attempt at getting the owners to comply fails, he suggested, the county could pursue a legal process that would turn the land over to the county, which could then it demolish the building and sell the land in order to recoup the costs of the demolition.
The land would likely sell for approximately $200,0000, and demolition is expected to cost less than that, Cameron said, citing a conversation with the county property appraiser.
The commission voted unanimously to instruct Cameron to deal with the issue, up to and including demolition.
A total of 97 residential lots on a 55-acre portion of Plantation Bay, on the western side of the community, got the county's go-ahead as the County Commission voted unanimously on March 16 to approve a final plat and acceptance of performance bonds for the new section of Plantation Bay.
The commission had also considered the matter at a March 2 meeting, but two commissioners were absent and the board voted 2-1 (with Commissioner Donald O'Brien dissenting) to table the matter until the whole five-member commission was present, as it was on March 16.
