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Article Courtesy of The Daytona
Beach News-Journal
By Jennifer Edwards-Park
Published December 27, 2015
The city of Palm Coast is charging owners of the former Matanzas Woods Golf
Course property $500 a day for code violations, leading to a tab that has grown
to more than $60,000 as of Wednesday, about 30 percent of what the owners paid
for the property.
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The owners, The Group Golf of Palm Coast LLC, this week paid
about $205,000 for the property after a judge foreclosed on it
for non-payment, said Michael D. Chiumento III of Chiumento
Selis Dwyer, the firm representing Matanzas Land, the former
owner. Matanzas Land, owned by James Cullis, bought the Golf
Group's note on the property last year, Chiumento said.
Group Golf had previously purchased the course but did not pay
the note — originally $166,750 — on time, court documents show.
But between the time Circuit Court Judge Michael Orfinger signed
a final judgment for foreclosure on Nov. 24 and the property's
scheduled auction the first week of January, the group came up
with what it originally owed plus additional interest and legal
fees.
"The law says that a borrower has the right of redemption; they
can step in and pay off that judgment and keep the property,"
Chiumento said Wednesday. "They did so this week, and so the
landowner now owns the property without a mortgage."
What the group plans to do with the
property is unknown. Group Golf and their attorney did not
respond to calls and emails seeking comment Tuesday and
Wednesday. |
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Debris near what once was the club house at Matanzas Woods Golf Course,
which was planned for Palm Coast's L section but was never completed.
People have sprayed graffiti on some portions of the structure.
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"Where they go from here, I don't know,” Chiumento said.
Meanwhile, city officials have received numerous complaints about the shaggy
course and its boarded-up and graffiti-tagged buildings.
City spokesman Jason Giraulo said the city began to bill the group in August and
on Wednesday the fees were $60,038.50, including a $400 public nuisance invoice
and a $138.50 administrative fee.
What has become overgrown fields and an occasional dump was once touted as an
Arnold Palmer golf course, said Ray Douglass, whose house abuts the course on
Liddell Street. Douglass, who also maintains a "Save Matanzas Woods Golf Course"
Facebook page, is frustrated.
"This is the third holiday season in a row I've had to deal with this," Douglass
said of the overgrown property. "We just want to restore the quality of life and
restore our property values. The quickest way to do that is with a golf course —
and that's what this is about."
Douglas has been a vocal critic both of the course's disrepair and plans to turn
the property into anything other than the golf course that was initially
promised.
"We have nothing up here," Douglass said. "The new (I-95) interchange should
help, but the restoration of the course would make the neighborhood whole again.
It is a very complex problem with a simple solution: restore the course." |
