- April 26, 2024
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As Palm Coast continues to grow, city officials on Tuesday updated the parks and recreation project list. The highlights: parks, community centers and aquatics centers.
About a month ago, a consultant provided the City Council with a presentation on updating the numbers and methodology associated with citywide parks and recreation impact fees. Each single-family home built within the city requires the homeowner to pay about $1,344 in parks and recreation impact fees. In turn, that money goes to the city to build recreation-related amenities, such as parks and sidewalks.
“(The current process) is flawed right now,” City Manager Jim Landon said Tuesday.
The city’s parks and recreation master plan was adopted in 2008, and it has a long list of potential improvements for the future. “A lot of them wont’ happen if we don’t grow, though,” Landon said.
Under the updated list, the city will fund about $13.85 million on parks and recreation amenities during the next five fiscal years. Then, over the next six to 10 years, the city will fund another $7.55 million.
Looking out beyond 10 years, Palm Coast will fund more than $111 million, with a total funding requirement of more than $132 million.
Some of the items on the new parks and recreation list for beyond 10 years include three community centers, at a total price tag of about $12.75 million. The community centers would be about 15,000 square feet and could include a splash area for an additional $500,000. The community centers would be in the vicinity of three corridors: State Road 100, Palm Coast Parkway and Matanzas Woods Parkway.
City Councilman Jason DeLorenzo asked Tuesday if community centers were places residents still use.
“Is that still a common place for people to go?” DeLorenzo said.
Luanne Santangelo, director of parks and recreation for the city, said community centers are still popular.
“Multipurpose centers are really what the trend is, and they continue to build them in communities,” she said. So that has not gone away.”
The city also included a $11.325 million aquatics facility. The city also proposes building neighborhood parks in Matanzas Woods, Pine Lakes and Quail Hollow. All of those parks would be between five to 10 acres.
The city will forward its updated parks and recreation project list to the impact fees consultant, who will then provide the City Council with a presentation on impact fees methodology and calculation. At a later meeting, the City Council will then vote to amend its parks and recreation impact fees ordinance.
