- May 12, 2024
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Palm Coast is preparing to take the Palm Harbor Golf Club and tennis center out of the hands of private contractor Kemper Sports, and instead manage the properties itself with the aid of a consulting company and independent contractors to handle individual services like maintenance.
"If we're going to have all of the risk then we're going to have a little bit more control."
— Palm Coast City Manager Jim Landon
“Long saga with the golf and tennis in Palm Coast, and today we are hoping to change the conversation and go in a whole new direction,” City Manager Jim Landon said at a City Council workshop March 28. “What do they say? ‘The definition of insanity is when you keep doing the same thing over and over again.’”
The properties under Kemper have lost money annually — in the case of the golf course, about $300,000 or more per year in recent years, and in the case of the tennis center, $80,000-$100,000 per year — with the city subsidizing the losses.
The city sought repeatedly to push Kemper to work to make the properties break even. That hasn’t happened.
The city has already transitioned to a month-to-month contract with Kemper because it couldn’t come to an agreement with Kemper on terms for a longterm contract, Landon said.
Under the current arrangement, Landon said, Kemper has “very little skin in the game,” because it makes money regardless of how the properties perform, with the city absorbing the losses.
“If we’re going to have all of the risk, then we’re going to have a little bit more control,” he said.
The city’s proposed process would give the city that control while still allowing it to make use of specialists’ expertise, Landon said.
City Councilman Steven Nobile said he wants to make sure the city is cautious with its spending on the course, and that the city doesn’t “throw money at it.”
“I’d like it to be able to sustain itself,” he said. “Because it’s going to need — we did the bunkers — it’s going to need other stuff.”
The city opened the tennis center under city management in 2007, then opened the golf course in 2009 under Kemper's management. Kemper began managing the tennis center in 2011. In 2014, when Kemper's contract was due to expire, residents who used the golf course and tennis center rallied to support Kemper, and the city selected it again.
Mayor Milissa Holland said she could envision the city bringing a successful restaurant onto the golf property that could help make it an attraction.
“That, to me, has been a successful process in other governments,” Holland said, mentioning the county’s partnerships with Captain’s BBQ at Bings Landing and the restaurant at the Bull Creek Fish Camp.
Landon cautioned against expecting big returns from the golf property.
“Golf itself is tough business right now,” Landon said.
But, he said, the city could still make the property into an a well-run amenity, “Something that this community can be proud of and use, and say, ‘Wow, look at what Palm Coast has.’”
