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Julie Goodyear Net Worth
The Flagler County Commission was set next Monday to approve a $10 million state grant to buy a 78-acre parcel off U.S. 1 in Palm Coast for a planned fuel depot and rail head. The county administration pulled the item from the agenda after the Palm Coast City Council opted to look for a different location in response to mounting public opposition to the plan. The pause is also a reflection of deepening skepticism among elected officials about a plan that was barely vetted before it was sprung on them just weeks ago in confidential meetings.
“It was pulled at the request of the City of Palm Coast so they can perform a site analysis,” County Administrator Heidi Petito said. She had conferred with Interim City Manager Lauren Johnston after the council meeting and agreed to pulling the item, which would have started a 90-day clock the county does not want to face with all the uncertainty in Palm Coast.
“The pause is appropriate,” County Commission Chair Andy Dance said this morning. “Palm Coast needs to be sure, and sharing of information on his type of significant project is important.”
Belvedere terminals, a start-up company with no experience in the field, is proposing to build a 12.6-million gallon gasoline and diesel fuel depot and distribution center for gas stations in Flagler, Volusia and St. Johns County on a parcel at the end of Peavy Grade, next to one of the city’s water treatment plants and just south of the Sawmill Creek subdivision.
The grant is a $10 million taxpayer subsidy from the state Department of Commerce specifically earmarked for the project, which may be built either in Flagler, Volusia or Brevard counties. The Legislature passed a law in 2023 It was originally planned for a site on Hull Road in Ormond Beach. Public opposition there scuttled that approach. Belvedere then shifted to Flagler County.
The Flagler County Commission was to approve the $10 million grant since the county would be buying the land on behalf of Belvedere, and for five years would be the property owner of the site in Palm Coast. (Belvedere would pay property taxes starting from year one of operations.)
The grant is conditional. Closing on the property would have to occur within six months of the County Commission approving it, and $2 million of the $10 million would have to be handed to Belvedere within 90 days after closing for site development. The county has until June 2026 to approve the grant.
The six-month window gave Palm Coast ample time for Palm Coast to conduct its analysis for an alternative location before closing. But the county doesn’t want to be boxed into a site that Palm Coast, being the regulatory agency, could end up rejecting. The county could be left owning a large industrial parcel it doesn’t want, or having to reimburse the Commerce Department the full amount. “Any costs incurred by [Flagler County] as a result of a failed or incomplete sale shall not be reimbursed,” the agreement states.
It is not clear why Belvedere, working with the county and city administrations, picked that particular site–an island of industrial zoning amid a sprawl of residential–instead of locations further south along the railroad or in Bunnell. “I don’t know, candidly, what the push is for this property,” Council member Theresa Pontieri said. Pontieri called for the site analysis.
The decision to pull the proposal for now also reflects trepidation not just from the public, but from elected officials–and not just in Palm Coast. Dance, the county chair–and a landscape architect–has concerns.
“In my one-on-ones with the applicants, my initial concerns are ones that have been repeated by residents, and that’s the location of the wells and the water treatment plant,” Dance said. The water plant is about 3,500 feet from the project parcel in one direction. A pair of wells are equidistant in the other direction. Sawmill Creek is to the north. “How do we mitigate that risk? So those are still items that are for me still being evaluated.”
On the other hand, Dance said the public may not be grasping the realities of land use laws: the site is zoned for industrial use. It is not up for a rezoning. There are entitlements. “The residents near the railroad tracks and that industrial parcel have to know that if an industrial use is compatible with the land development code and the zoning code, by right they can develop,” he said.
The fact that the county is the land-buyer adds a wrinkle in the equation, as does the fact that the land buy depends on that state grant: taxpayer money is buying the land. In effect, the public is buying the parcel as a bridge to Belvedere’s future operations. Pontieri points to that part of the equation to underscore the importance of public involvement.
Neither the Palm Coast City Council nor the County Commission had discussed the plan in public until the council did so for the first time Tuesday, prompted by public responses to reporting about the plan. County and city officials. Along with Belvedere Terminals’ chief financial officer, disclosed the plan’s details to reporters last Thursday. Company officials had met individually with city and county elected officials in late February and early March. The plan until then had been cloaked under the state’s allowance for certain economic development projects to be temporarily exempt from sunshine-law disclosure.
“One of my concerns is, we’re going to pick this land and the county is going to buy it and own the land, and the company is going to go belly-up,” Pontieri said. (Belvedere’s CEO, Edwin Cothron, filed for bankruptcy in 1998 and 2012.) “If it does go belly up we certainly don’t want a wasteland, particularly next to residential development.”
Mayor Mike Norris has championed the project as essential to balance the city’s tax base, which relies heavily on residential development. In an interview this morning, even he was acknowledging public distaste for the facility at the U.S. 1 location.
“We only have so much industrial land so I don’t think they’re going to have an easy time finding a site unless they have a connection with Rayonier,” the Jacksonville-based timbering company that owns the majority of the land west of U.S. 1, in Flagler County. “Maybe they can try something further down in the county. I don’t know. If it’s safe in the county that’s a big bonus to the tax base, but I don’t think the citizens of Palm Coast have an appetite for it. But that’ll be between the county and Belvedere.”
