The Flagler County School Board this evening will again formally reject a developer’s interest in buying the district’s old 7.2-acre Corporate One property at the southeast corner of Palm Coast Parkway and Corporate Drive, a 7-acre site that used to be one of ITT’s headquarters, in the early years of developing Palm Coast, before the board bought it for $3.5 million.
It was not one of the board’s wisest decisions. Though it was briefly the district’s own board offices, the building–squat and forbidding–became difficult to maintain or even use, and seemed more like a millstone around the district’s neck until the district opted to demolish it and leave the land vacant in 2016.
William A. White of Waw Realty Advisors contacted William Whitson, the school district’s intergovernmental planner, on behalf of Tailwinds Development, a company that specializes in building retail commercial shopping centers. Tailwinds was “very interested” in buying the land to build a “specialty retail center with a national tenant who is not currently in Flagler County,” according to a letter White wrote Whitson in mid-September.
“I always get these strange requests,” Whitson said, though he didn’t explain why the request was strange considering the acreage’s prime location, with AdventHealth Palm Coast North‘s relatively new 100-bed hospital a block further west.
Whitson told Superintendent LaShakia Moore in a memo that the inquiry was one of several received in the previous 18 months. There’d been inquiries from two developers, which Whitson did not name, and one from Palm Coast government’s utility department. But those had been “general” and “informal.”
“We did have some interest with this board, I think, with the library, a swap property or something along those lines,” Will Furry, the board’s chair, said. “Personally, I don’t see a reason why at this time we would be looking to sell that property.” Board members thought the location could be the site of a multi-story school or administrative offices. Previous boards were holding out for more money. White did not indicate how much his client was willing to pay for the property, and none of the board members even asked if anyone had inquired.
“We know that prior boards have indicated that they had no interest in selling the property,” Superintendent LaShakia Moore said, but the administration didn’t want to make assumptions that since then, board members had not changed their mind.
In August 2017, the board declined a $1.8 million offer for the land. It was from Michael Collard Properties, the Winter Park-based retail developer that remade the old Palm Harbor shopping center into Island Walk. The company was interested in turning the acreage into a shopping center. The School Board found the offer too low (one board member thought it was worth $5 million, another thought it was worth $3 million). The board was also uncertain about its own capital needs in the future.
The previous appraisals on the property at the time dated back to 2013 and 2014, when it was valued at $1.5 million. The Corporate One building was still standing then. It was demolished in 2016. The Flagler County Property Appraiser’s just market value for the property is $2.4 million, unchanged for the past four years. Since it is government-owned, the property is not generating any taxes. The nearby Kohl’s property paid $90,000 in taxes last year. Aldi, just behind the Corporate One property, paid $62,500 in taxes last year.
The district has the option to say the land isn’t needed for educational purposes and move forward with a sale, as long as it gets two appraisals and doesn’t sell the property at less than the lowest appraised value. The revenue from the sale may only be spent on paying down the debt for the property, if it’s still outstanding, or for capital projects. The district a few weeks ago signed a two-year lease to occupy the old courthouse in Bunnell, at a cost–and in an old, tired building–that bears some resemblances with the acquisition of the ITT property in 2001.
