- April 19, 2024
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After a meeting that stretched from 5:00 p.m. to 10 p.m. and included about 100 minutes of public comment, the Flagler County Commission voted 5-0 to pass a Sea Ray land use amendment proposal along to state agencies for review, one step in a process that could lead to a land use change that would let the corporation build a new employee parking lot and add office space to its property east of Colbert Lane.
The conflict has divided residents of the areas near the Sea Ray plant — who feared the parking lot proposal was a cover for a planned expansion that would affect their quality of life — from other county residents who worried that denying Sea Ray might cause the company to move, costing the county jobs.
At the March 16 County Commission hearing at the Government Services Building, the audience packed the main room and overflow sections on the second and third floors. About 400-450 people attended, Flagler County Emergency Management Director Kevin Guthrie said, although that number dwindled during the lengthy meeting.
Sea Ray said it wants a land use change — it was not requesting a zoning change — from low-intensity residential land use to high intensity commercial land use in order to build a parking lot, and perhaps an office building, on two parcels of land it plans to buy south of the plant.
The plant’s employee parking lots, on land now zoned industrial, are taken up by boat molds, and wary residents of nearby streets fear that if the plant builds new lots on the yet-to-be acquired land, it will shift parking off its industrial land onto the commercial land in order to free up more industrial space for increased production that would cause toxic emissions and noise, lowering neighbors' property values. They cited a Department of Environmental Protection permit the corporation received in 2013 to double the plant's emissions, largely styrene, as evidence that the parking lot proposal was a "smokescreen" for plans to increase production.
Sea Ray representatives said the plant isn’t trying to ramp up production, and that the proposal before the commission March 16 would limit it to a parking lot, a finished boat staging area and up to 40,000 square feet of office space.
“Please understand, under the statute, under your land use, under that facts before you, this is about a parking lot,” said attorney Sid Ansbacher, representing Sea Ray in a presentation to the commission at the hearing. “This is about an office to the far west, and it is about vehicles that are there now, moving them downward — and this is in no way shape or form about industry.”
Sea Ray Vice President Dan Goddard said the parking situation was becoming unsafe for employees as the plant has increased the number of different boat models it produces from four to 17, each of which requires its own molds, which eat up parking space and force employees to park alongside the plant’s entrance road.
“These things are huge. They’re monsters,” Goddard said. “We’re cramped … to the point where I feel I am providing an unsafe environment for my team here.”
The plant employs about 650 people, he said.
“The economic impact — just in the wages alone, Sea Ray brings $30 million into this community. And that is just wages, wages alone,” he said.
The Sea Ray proposal got pushback as soon as residents living on and near Lambert Avenue, which borders the plant — including Flagler Beach Planning and Architectural Review board member Don Deal and Flagler Beach Planning and Architectural Review Board Vice Chair Roseanne Stocker — heard of it.
Lambert residents spoke in public comment when Sea Ray presented its proposal to the Flagler County Planning board — which voted 7-0 to reject it, contravening the advice of County Planner Adam Mengel — and then again in a Flagler Beach City Commission meeting, when Commissioner Jane Mealy, who lives near the plant, proposed a motion to encourage the county not to adopt the Sea Ray proposal.
The Flagler Beach City Commission approved Mealy’s motion 4-1, with Commissioner Joy McGrew dissenting, an action Mengel assailed as presumptuous at the end of his presentation March 16. “That is exceptional in my career,” he said. “I have not seen that, and to have that happen I believe it’s regrettable on the part of another jurisdiction that is a partner with us.”
Flagler Beach City Commission Chairwoman Kim Carney, speaking during the March 16 meeting’s public comment period, said Flagler Beach had repeatedly asked the county to meet about the Sea Ray proposal, and been put off.
“A city with over 5,000 residents that shares a boundary with the parcels in questions and that should have had a voice … has been left out of this conversation completely,” she said.
Mealy spoke as well, noting that although the county’s Economic Development Council has supported the Sea Ray proposal, marine manufacturing is not one of the county’s targeted industries, and could harm the local environment. “Flagler Beach was recently voted to be one of the coolest small towns and one of the sexiest beaches,” she said. “If you don’t deny this application, we will lose these distinctions.”
Stocker and other Lambert Avenue residents also spoke again at the March 16 hearing.
“Clean air and jobs are not mutually exclusive,” Stocker said. “It’s very important to recognize that Sea Ray does have options. Sea Ray can go west to the Lehigh Cement property.” That parcel is under contract by Grand Haven Realty President Jim Cullis, who has announced his interest in buying it for a marina resort. Stocker said Sea Ray could have bought that land, which is further away from local homes than the land it is seeking a land use change for. “Why should we have to pay the price for Sea Ray not going west when they had the chance?" she said.
She reminded commissioners that the county's planning board members said the Sea Ray proposal violated the county’s comprehensive plan by putting high intensity commercial so close to residential land.
“These are very competent planners, and your own Planning Board’s unanimous decision that you should vote to deny this tonight,” she said.
But the critics, many of them Lambert Avenue residents, were outnumbered by Sea Ray supporters, including dozens of employees, and local business figures who warned commissioners against sending a message that the county isn’t business-friendly.
Even Flagler County Economic Development Director Helga van Eckert spoke in favor of Sea Ray, telling the board that the Sea Ray plant’s average wages were $47,000 per year — much higher than a county average of $34,000 — and that the plant’s presence creates more than 150 additional jobs in the community in addition to the actual jobs at the plant. Denying the application, she said, could also deter other companies from moving to the county. “Sea ray has a significant impact not just on our economy, but on the impression that we give to industries outside our community,” she said. “We need to support this application.”
Commissioners’ questions and comments about the proposal were largely friendly to Sea Ray.
Commissioner George Hanns noted that the proposal, if the board voted to pass it along to state agencies, would still return to the County Commission for final approval. “When it comes back, I assure you every member of this board will be asking the same questions,” he said. “We’re going to have several more times, and when it goes for transmittal, if it goes, it comes back and we address it.”
Commissioner Frank Meeker said complaints about odor seemed like a referendum or Sea Ray. “If this request was denied, does anybody reasonably believe that the odor issue that was brought up today would go away?” he said. As to Stocker’s suggestion that Sea Ray should have bought land to the west instead of beside Lambert Avenue, Meeker said, “I don’t’ see how buying an alternate piece of property does anything on this odor issue, and if that’s the case I don’t’ see what all the angst is about.”
Commissioner Nate McLaughlin, explainig his decisin to vote in favor of the proposal, called Sea Ray an "incredible" partner for the county.
“For 30-plus years, Sea Ray has been an incredible corporate citizen of Flagler County,” McLauglhin said. “They have looked to their environmental responsibilities, they have a stellar reputation. I’m not aware of any serious breach of that. … They’ve been an environmental steward here in Flagler County. They’ve been an incredible employer here…I could probably do this vote more than enthusiastically. It’s incredible for Flagler County to have such a strong partner in our community, very conscientious in all that they do.”
