Salamander Hosts Project Update Meeting for Hammock Beach Owners and Club Members

The hullabaloo died down once Flagler County approved Salamander’s $72M (now $76M) capital expense project at the Hammock Beach Club. Progress will soon be apparent.

PALM COAST, FL – August 18, 2015 – Salamander Clubs and Resorts, which has an ownership interest in and operates the Hammock Beach Club and Resort in Palm Coast, FL hosted an overflow crowd August 12 for the quarterly update meeting for property owners and Club members.

Watchers have wondered what was happening since there has been little evidence of activity since the capital improvement project got the “green light” from the Flagler County Board of County Commissioners in February. Prem Devadas, President of Salamander Hotels & Resorts presented a project update.

Once the deadline to appeal the Flagler Board of County Commissioners (BOCC) had passed, Salamander was free to move forward. Devadas enumerated all the behind the scenes work required before visible progress could be made; architectural, engineering, design, permitting etc.

Here are some highlights of the presentation:

  • The halfway house will be renamed “Hammock House.” It will be completely rehabilitated and expanded to include several seats for indoors and outdoor dining and a full bar. This phase of the project is planned for completion before Thanksgiving.
  • Delfinos Restaurant will be redesigned to include a full bar in what is presently the raised portion in the center of the first floor. Work is planned to be completed in time for the Daytona 500 crowd.
  • Improvements will be made to the Aerobics Room and Fitness Center.
  • The main ballroom will be carpeted, painted and new wall sconces will be installed. Work is scheduled beginning in late December to be completed by February.
  • An agreement has been reached with the newly reconstituted Phase One Condominium Board under which Salamander committed $400,000 towards an upgrade and renovation of the main lobby. Work will begin in December and is planned to be completed by February.

 Lubert Adler and Salamander are seeking funding sources for the $76M project (originally planned at $72M). Both L-A and Salamander have committed to participate in the funding. Several parties have already expressed serious interest. About half of them are investors, the other half lenders. Devadas expects to have the funding in place by the end of this year.

Funding will allow the major components of the project to go forward:

  • Construction of a 198-room lodge and member/golf facility to replace the existing 20-room oceanfront lodge.
  • Renovaion of Loggerheads Restaurant.
  • Renovation of the spa budgeted for $1.2M.
  • Golf course renovation

If funding is in place by the targeted end of year, construction on the lodge should begin early next year and be completed by early 2018.

Devadas was pleased to announce that the Hammock Beach Club and Resort were in a positive cash flow position. Further, he pledged to invest all positive cash flow into additional upgrades to the facility. Several suggestions were floated, including the addition of another pool to the Club’s popular water feature.

The redevelopment of the Hammock Beach Club will be a critical factor to the economic future or Palm Coast and Flagler County, just as the original development of Hammock Dunes, Ocean Hammock and Hammock Beach were a decade ago.

3 replies
  1. George Edward Chuddy
    George Edward Chuddy says:

    How that area was elevated with Canal Sands by Lev

    Orlando Sentinel
    ‘Tis a Privilege to Live in Central Florida

    Preservers Applaud Palm Coast
    by Peggy Poor
    Sentinel Staff

    Dramatically changing the damaged image of usually damned developers, ITT-Levitt Corp., now building Palm Coast, the country’s largest housing project in Flagler County, is winning kudos instead of kicks from conservationists.

    More than that, with long-range environmental planning and careful study by staff ecologists, the mammoth venture may not only set an example for future would – be despoilers but come up with some urgently sought answers to pollution problems.
    For example, ITT-Levitt scientists are investigating why St. Johns and Flagler County shellfish harvests had to be prohibited because of contaminated waters. The hope is to reverse conditions that required the ban, if possible.
    Preliminary findings indicate sewage dumped principal culprit, according to Dr. Stanley Dea, the firm;s chief ecologist.
    New Concept
    Therefore , in order not to aggravate the situation, ITT-Levitt is making a detailed engineering analysis of sewage disposal possibilities to come up with designs new for Florida, and cheaper, Dr. Dea said.

    Because Florida’s flat terrain and high ground water level have made gravity systems costly, developers have tended to use septic tanks, . But septic systems have become a serious factor in the pollution picture.

    America’s biggest conglomerate, therefore, is exploring feasibility of pressure and vacuum systems which may be tried for the first time in the Florida venture.

    Meanwhile, in the section now under construction, 20,000 acres of a total of 100,000 acres sewage will get secondary treatment prior to storage in a polishing lagoon, providing tertiary treatment. Effluent thus purified but still nutrient rich will be used to irrigatate an 18 hole golf course.

    Sewage Studied
    This recycling, by an adaptation of nature’s own system, is a relatively new concept in sewage disposal developed at Pennsylvania State University and now in use in several California communities and in one near Tallahassee.
    Much of the pollution and “murder” or streams and lakes such as Apopka, is the result of eutrophication or over-enrichment by nutrients, which are not removed by treatment plants.
    As most plants discharge into some body of water, pollution results. If, however, the treated effluent is sprayed on vegetation, as was demonstrated at Penn State and is planned for Palm Coast, it irrigates and fertilizes crops and even raises the ground water table. The vegetation absorbs the nutrients that would eventually destroy streams, lakes, and estuaries.
    Using Willows
    Palm Coast ecologists plant to plant Florida vegetation with particularly high absorption qualities, such as willows.
    Engineers have devised a mechanical apparatus which can fit in a residential size and style building so the neighborhood view will not be spoiled by an unsightly treatment plant. A chemical has been developed that eradicates the odor, according to Dick Beidl, Palm Coast public affairs officer.
    The University of Florida’s famed coastal engineering department, whose $1 million facilities are now considered unexcelled in the United States, is advising how best to lay out the system of canals for waterfront property so that tidal action will keep them flushed clean Beidl said.
    A brief flurry of local fears that the big dredge churning inland from the Intracoastal Waterway channel to scoop out a yacht basin would increase turbidity in the estuaries has been set at rest.
    Dike Employed
    Although the dredge is operating in a man made cut not subject to provisions of the Randall Act, Itt Levitt will still ‘plug’ the opening into the Intracoastal with a dike until its earth stirring digging is completed and settled.
    ” It’s the cleanest operation I;ve seen, No Problems’ said Larry Shanks, of the Florida Game and Fresh Water Fish Commission at Vero Beach, who inspected the site last week.
    The Operation is pumping the material removed by a 1 1/4 mile pipe line that crosses the waterway and runs under highway A1A.
    With a 1700 horsepower booster pump the excavated sand is being hoisted up and down over this uneven course to fill a depression just behind the sand dunes which rim the ocean shore.
    The hole will be filled to a height of about 20 feet above sea-level, about even with the dunes; and this will be the site of a motel, probably to be operated by Sheraton, another ITT subsidiary.
    Dunes Retained
    Shanks had noting but praise also for this beachfront plan which contemplates leaving the natural dunes as a stabilizer against erosion.
    Palm Coast experts are also studying the whys and wherefores of erosion and exploring preventative treatment , according to Dea.
    Palm Coast has also handed its brain trust the choking problem of weed eradication , he said.
    At the display site where six model homes and a four-story office building with viewing tower are under construction, bulldozers wove an intricate path around trees marked for salvation, instead of knocking everything down.
    This more costly method has won approval of forestry officials, and Palm Coast expects t to pay off in long – run appeal of attractive landscaping to prospective purchasers.
    Apace Advantage
    In the master land use plan, thousands of acres will be preserved in the natural state, Dea said.
    Additionally, there will be parks and artificial ribbon lakes, Studies are being made to ascertain optimum factors for maintaining maximum sport fish populations in these.
    Palm Coast’s planning advantage, Beidl said, lies in having control of the entire 100,000 acres. To get this vast land area in focus, it can be compared with the area of all five boroughs of Greater new York City, for example, which cover only about half that territory, or with the city of Detroit which spreads over about 88,000 acres.
    Projection is for an ultimate population here of only about 750,000 as compared with New York’s 11.5 million and Detroit’s four million.
    An area comparison closer to home is Disney’s 27,000 acres.
    Strict Zoning
    The assure adherence to this careful planning, Dr. Dea said is a model zoning and building code is being formulated, which will not merely meet, but “exceed” in stringency all federal , state and local regulations, including those necessary to control air, water, solid waste, radiation, noise and vibration pollution.
    This will cover not just major regulations affecting industries which might be attracted to the area, but also folksy questions, such as when and even whether residences may have trash incinerators in their back yards.
    Even one possible future doubt raised apparently will be resolved in favor of conservation, according to Harold Burrows, an engineer on the project.
    Line Questioned
    Question arose at a recent county commissioners meeting about a bulkhead line for Longs Creek which, branching off the Matanzas River, meanders through the tract a few miles north of the first ” Five Year Plan” development now under construction.
    Some 3,000 to 9,000 acres on the creek are submerged public lands under control of the trustees of the Internal Improvement Fund.
    Burrows conceded that prior to recent legislative action, this would have been ” prime development property.”
    But under present law, ‘we will sit down with the Department of Natural Resources and do what they tell us we can.”.

    Levitt AD 2531

  2. George Edward Chuddy
    George Edward Chuddy says:

    Some of the requests to Salamander –

    Several months ago we sent alot of the ‘ Brain Trust ‘ information used by Levitt & I.T.T. for Salamander to consider and review.
    We also asked about restoring the Palm Coast ‘ Water Taxis ‘amongst other things.
    Below is one request sent regarding the implementation of the ‘ Palm Coast Symposia ‘ again: We can hope –

    Fall Issue 1974
    Page two

    First Palm Coast Symposium to Assay The Human Condition

    From the very inception of Palm Coast the cultural aspect of its future have
    been an integral part of the planning.

    Palm Coast is a planned, total community. Land use is a balance of
    residential, commercial, social and open space, with provision for
    education, arts, health care and other requisites for a good life. As a new
    town, it functions as a proving ground for new and better ways of doing
    things, to promote better urban living, to improve the quality of life in
    all areas of human existence.

    One of the areas of extreme importance with which a new town, or any town,
    must concern itself is the encouragement of cultural pursuits, the liberal
    arts, etc. because they provide a special and natural way for people to get
    in touch with themselves, to communicate with each other, and to get more
    satisfaction from being alive. Without this human growth and interaction,
    there can be no development of any town , any society.

    Toward aiding this cultural growth, and toward fulfillment of its cultural
    and social commitment to Palm Coast, we are staging the First Palm Coast
    Symposium, November 15 and 16th, 1974.

    From the outset, Dr. Young has believed that cultural growth must be an
    integral thread in the fabric of Palm Coast life. Palm Coast is a town of
    vision and as such, we conceived the plan for the Symposium at the very
    beginning of the planning process and we endeavor to make this type of
    cultural expression a continuing experience in the future.

    It is Palm Coast’s hopes that the concept of the Symposium will flourish and
    expand to become a national and perhaps international institution concerned
    with the human dimensions of contemporary problems.

    It is envisioned that future symposia at Palm Coast will bring together
    outstanding men and women from business, science, government, the arts,
    education, and the humanities and other sectors of society who will learn
    from one another through discussion and debate. And each will contribute his
    or her talents and experiences to a mutual exploration of the human
    condition, contrasting established convictions and habits with the new ideas
    of today.

    Fundamentally important is not that final solutions emerge from the
    discussions at Palm Coast but that the essence of the best thinking on these
    matters be exposed, evaluated, refined, and applied to individual lives and
    institutions.

    Dr. Young believes that great historical change is not the result of
    inexorable force only. Great changes can come about because a few people are
    able to articulate powerful ideas, thus generating new forces in human
    affairs.

    The formal sessions and the accommodations will be at the * Sheraton
    Palm Coast Inn . Attendance will be by invitation only. The topics of
    the discussions will include: Human Nature and Human Destiny; Uplifting the
    Underprivileged; Popular Culture and Elite Culture, The Universities: For
    What and Whom??

    Panelists include William Buckley, Editor of the National Review; Gloria
    Steinem, Editor of Ms. Magazine, Harold Rosenberg, art critic of New Yorker
    Magazine, Professor Leslie Fiedler, Chairman of the English Department,
    State University of New York at Buffalo; Dr. Gunnar Myrdal, noted Swedish
    social scientist; Sidney Hood, philosopher and Research Fellow at the Hoover
    Institute, Vernon E. Jordan, Executive Director of the National Urban
    League; Saul Bellow best selling author; Dr. James Watson, Nobel
    Prize-winning biologist, Arthur Schles, Jr. two – time winner of the
    Pulitzer Prize, historian and writer; Lionel Trilling, University Professor
    Emeritus, Columbia, Truman Capote, noted author, and Dr. E.T.York,
    Chancellor – Elect of the State Universities for the State of Florida.

    The moderator of the sessions will be Melvin M. Tumin, Professor of
    Sociology and Anthropology, Princeton University.

    These are the outstanding Panelists who participated in the First Palm
    Coast Symposium are shown in the Jpeg above.

    ************

    SANIBEL SYMPOSIA HELD AT PALM COAST SHERATON INN

    An International Workshop on Quantum Mechanical Methods started the Symposia on March 6, 7, 8, at the Palm Coast Sheraton Resort Inn. The workshop was followed March 9, 10, 11 by an International Symposium on Quantum Biology and Pharmacology, and honored in absentia two time nobel Prize winner Dr. Linus Pauling, who is 77. Dr. Pauling won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1954 for his molecular studies, especially in the nature of bonding atoms in molecules. He received the Nobel Peach Prize in 1962. Due to an unforeseen emergency, Dr. Pauling was unable to attend the Symposium.
    A Nobel Prize winner at the Symposium was Dr. Albert Szent-Gyorgyi, 85, who received his award in Medicine in 1937 for his studies on metabolism and the effect of Vitamins A and D.
    Another Nobel Laureate at the Symposia was Professor Manfred Eigen of West Germany, who shared his award in 1967 with two others for studies of extremely fast chemical reactions effected by disturbing equilibrium by very short energy pulsations.
    The final event at the Sheraton was an International Symposium on Atomic Molecular, Solid State Theory, Collision Phenomena and Computational Methods, which was attended by Professor P.W. Anderson, a 1977 Nobel Laureate in Physics.
    Dor Lowdin, who came to the University of Florida in 1960as an exchange professor from the University of Uppsala, Sweden, is Graduate Research Professor of Chemistry and Physics. He organized the Symposia in 1960 at the conclusion of a Winter Institute of Quantum Theory Project. The Quantum Chemistry Group. University of Upsala and the International Society of Quantum Biiology are co-organizers of the meeting. Many organization and businesses assist with financial support for the Symposia.
    The Quantum Theory Project is a joint program of the Chemistry and Physics Departments and the Graduate School of the U:niversity of Florida. It is a special research and graduate teaching project devoted to the study of matter, particularly atoms, molecules and crystals.
    Dr. Lowdin said” “Quantum theory is important as a tool in many fundamentals and applied areas of physics, chemistry and technology. He added that in contrast to the classical mechanics, quantum theory puts the human being at the center of everything.
    Since 1950 Dr. Lowdin has spent about half of the time in the United States and half in his native Sweden. A native of Uppsals, he attended school there and after three years in the Swedish Army, received his doctorate in 1948 in theoretical physics. His thesis was a theoretical study of electronic structure of alkali halides and their cohesive and elastic properties.

    **************
    This was held at the Palm Coast Sheraton INN. From: The Palm Coaster, Volume 7, Number 2 Summer 1978, p. 9.

  3. George Edward Chuddy
    George Edward Chuddy says:

    Technical Univeristy of Norway at Trondheim – Dr.

    Page 138
    L. Beach and Sand Dune Preservation

    Studies: Historical records of the tide information regarding hurricanes and northeast storms were accumulated. Historical Beach dynamics were summarized, isolating the littoral drift, which apparently is to the south during most of the year and to the north during the summer. These data indicate that at Matanzas Inlet there is considerable drift into the waterway. Accompanying this report are the records on what happened at St Augustine Beach and Crescent Beach during the Hurricane Dora, along with storm winds and swell diagrams obtained from the Corps of Engineers.
    Solutions. Minimum building elevations were set based on the data obtained. Aerial photographs taken in 1943 were compared with current photographs to determine the amount of beach erosion in this area. Dr. Per Bruun of the Technical University of Norway , at Trondheim, was retained to coordinate this data and to make recommendations for construction in beachfront areas. Efforts will be made to preserve and protect existing sand dunes. Indiscriminate construction will be precluded by setting all structures back at prescribed limits. Recreational activities on the dunes will be monitored to insure that vegetative systems are preserved.

    M. Tree Preservation
    Studies: Vegetation on the site was mapped and categorized into nine ecological plant zones: march, Marsh Edge, Beach Scrub, Beach Hardwood, Upland Depressions, Bottom land Hardwood, Cypress, Upland Hardwood, and Pinelands. The two basic determinants for the function of the various associations are elevation ( as related to drainage) and edaphic conditions.
    Solution: Palm Coast has been planned to save as much of the existing wooded areas as possible. Road grades have been set to reduce the amount of grading and clearing required. Roads are staked out and specimen trees are tagged fro saving before any clearing work begins. Commitment has been made to save a minimum of 50 trees per acre. Where trees must be removed, or where they unavoidably die in place, replanting will begin as soon as possible. A graduate professional forester who is a member of the staff will manage this program.
    N. Species Preservation
    Studies Plans are underway to conduct a detailed stud of the nature and number of existing flora and fauna in Palm
    Page 139

    Above FR: 1972 – ‘…An Approach to a New City: Palm Coast…’ by Dr. Norman Young & Dr. Stanley Dea, p. 138.

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