Palm Coast Could Have Its First Free, Public 18-Hole Disc Golf Course in a Planned W-Section Park | FlaglerLive

Oct 14, 2024

October 1, 2024 | FlaglerLive | 21 Comments

Palm Coast and Flagler County may soon have their first disc golf course. If the Palm Coast City Council approves a proposed agreement with a builder, the 18-hole course will be the central feature of a new 9-acre city park at the corner of White Mill Drive and Pine Lakes Parkway. The builder, Marbella Apartments, will build the park at its expense, but in exchange for substantial park impact fee credits.The land was donated to the city a year ago as part of a nearby development agreement. A year and a half ago Mesa Capital Partners some 18 months ago won the city’s regulatory approval to build a 316-unit apartment complex on 19 acres on the West side of White Mill Drive and the north side of Whiteview Parkway. The complex consist of 14 buildings, some three-story high, some four-story high, near a subdivision of 205 single family homes built by KB Home.

According to the proposed agreement, Marbella Apartments would build the new park in exchange for up to $569,000 in parks impact fee credits. Impact fees are the one-time levy builders and developers pay on new construction to defray the “impact” of new residents on roads, parks, schools and so on. Currently the builder of a single-family home or an apartment unit must pay $1,769 per home as a parks impact fee.

The joint city-county parks master plan, which the two governments approved late last year, emphasized the need for a different kind of neighborhood park that could incorporate non-traditional recreation opportunities and use public-private partnerships to get past the planning stage. Deep in Palm Coast’s parks master plan are these findings: “Focus group participants, teens and survey respondents identified access to non-traditional sports/activities as a high priority. As existing parks are renovated and reimagined, and new opportunities are available, consider adding non-traditional sports/activities such as pickleball, bike parks, and disc golf as sports/activities to increase programming and attract new users. Continue to support new non-traditional sports and activities as they arise.”The park would require low maintenance, resembling more of a passive park than the sort of active parks like Holland or Ralph Carter, where city crews and maintenance are heavier.

The Flagler County Disc Golf Club was established in September 2022 “to bring the Flagler county disc golfers together in a community fashion so we can fight for our own local courses to be made and installed as well as grow together in the sport,” its Facebook page states. The group meets monthly and holds its own events in the region. It has been behind the push for the park in Palm Coast’s W-Section. Its members are expected to speak in support of the project at this evening’s council meeting. (The group’s moderator, Craig DeWind, could not be reached before this article initially published.)

Disc golf, descended from vague American origins sometime in the 1960s, doesn’t have the explosive popularity of pickleball, which continues to reconfigure empty tennis courts. But according to the Professional Disc Golf Association, participation has grown at a rate of 10 to 15 percent in typical years, and by almost 75 percent in the Covid pandemic years (2020 and 2021).

Disc golf is in some ways similar to traditional golf, and in others, very different. In similarities, disc courses may have nine or 18 holes, and the point of the game is to land an object in a basket in as few tries as possible, starting from a tee pad. Each hole has its par. The substantial similarities end there.In disc golf, players throw a light, frisbee-like disc toward an elevated basket or target on top of a pole. The basket’s circumference is wide enough to accommodate a disc, and is designed with a net-like chain above the basket that serves the same purpose as a backboard in basketball: it helps bounce or guide the disk into the basket. Players may object to the disc’s comparison to a frisbee. Just as golf requires different types of clubs, disc golf requires different types of discs, if not nearly as many–“driver,” “midrange,” “putter”–and a caddy is not necessary. Nor is the expensive maintenance of a golf course, the fertilizer, the water consumption or even much alteration of the landscape. traditional golf courses uproot and raze tree canopies. Disc golf courses thrive under them.

Most of all: disc golf is inexpensive to play and it is usually free, as it will be at Palm Coast’s new park. UDisc, the app for disc golf, reports that there are currently 15,000 disc golf courses worldwide, 9,000 in the United States, and 255 in Florida. The closest courses to Palm Coast are in Elkton and St. Augustine, the latter a nine-golf course at Aragon Park off U.S. 1.

The Palm Coast disc golf club park, which carries the name of Blue Heron Flats on some working papers, will also have restrooms, shade structures and a parking lot. It will be open to all. The city council is expected to make a decision on the plan this evening.

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