- April 24, 2024
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After months of appeals, the Florida Cabinet sided with Flagler County in its decision not to allow a 561-unit tower proposed by developer Ginn LA on the golf course at Ocean Hammock.
Ginn LA representatives made the case before the Cabinet that the $50 million project would bring jobs. But, according to Ocean Hammock attorney Michael Chiumento III, the state agreed with the county that the tower was not legal because it violated a requirement that the development be “golf-course related.”
He said, “561 units is not golf course related.”
However, Ginn LA could still appeal further and/or propose other, more moderate development plans that could fit the ruling.
Chiumento added that Flagler County staff did a good job of representing the interests of residents.
County Commissioner Milissa Holland represented the county before the Cabinet (Gov. Rick Scott, Attorney General Pam Bondi, Chief Financial Officer Jeff Atwater and Commissioner Adam Putnam).
“Flagler County understands and embraces the need for growth management,” she said. The 1984 plans the county agreed to with the developer, she said, protected the residents from unbridled growth.
“Lost in the shuffle of all the paper work and the lawyering is the fact that the only reason this oceanfront resort presently exists is because they county gave 33 acres of its publicly owned beachfront park to Mr. Ginn to develop this Hammock Beach Resort,” Holland said. “This was based on his promise to set the condos back from the beach.”
(In exchange for the 33 beachfront acres, Ginn gave the county about 300 acres elsewhere in the county, Chiumento noted.)
Holland continued: “As the last remaining undeveloped Atlantic Ocean frontage parcel of its size and characteristics, it represents both a great opportunity and a responsibility to get it right.”
The state agreed that Ginn should not be allowed to change the terms of the deal. Therefore, the residents of the Ocean Towers will not have a separate building blocking their view in the future — not on the 12-acre site known as Cluster 35. And, according to Chiumento, that was the key result of the hearing: The state said Ginn LA had no right to create Cluster 35 for development.
Chiumento speculated that it is likely that Flagler residents have not heard the last of Ginn LA.
