County Buys Waterfront Property for Tourism Office

The Okaloosa County Commission unanimously approved a $4.1 total spending package to buy the old PNC Bank building and property around it to use as a new tourism headquarters at their March 4 meeting.

The building, which has over 10,000 square feet of office space, will create 20 new offices for the tourism department.

The County would spend the lion’s share of the money to fund the project – $3.1 Million would come from the Tourism Development Department budget. Cinco Bayou would add $850,000 to the pot, and the rest of the money would come from the County’s boater improvement fund.

The purchase, which Okaloosa County voted to make in conjunction with the town of Cinco Bayou, includes two waterfront lots, which the County and Town will work together to work and police.

But county officials say they are getting a good deal on the transaction. “The bank actually had an offer to sell the lot separately,” Deputy County Administrator for Operations Craig Coffey told the Okaloosa County Commission during his presentation, “They told the realtor [they had an offer] for a million dollars. So the fact that we can bundle it as part of this package makes a lot of sense, and actually allows us to really take this boat ramp and water access and bring it to the next level.”

That land comes with a boat ramp and a small dock. The whole parcel has become a concern for Cinco Bayou residents, who say vagrancy, unallowed boat launching, and traffic on the nearby surface street have combined to lower the quality of life in the immediate area.

Commissioner Trey Goodwin said he went to the town’s special meeting the week before the County Commission meeting and noted the residents had some concerns about the land where the project will sit. “I didn’t hear anybody that was fundamentally opposed to the project. What it was, I think it was more of an effort of sharing with the town council the things that those residents were worried about, and I feel confident that we can address all those things as we go forward,” Goodwin said.

The Commissioner noted four concerns:

• Vagrancy and trespass in the area of the building and dock
• Current routing of boat trailer traffic and the encroachment of trailers on private property
• commercial use of the property in question
• Drug and alcohol abuse in the area.

Coffey noted in his proposal to the Commission that County staff plan to spend roughly $400,000 on improvements. Some of that money, they added, would go toward security features like cameras and lighting, as well as on other improvements like property buffers, tree preservation, bathrooms, and stormwater engineering.

The property would not serve as a tourism center – more like an office building for the tourism department. “We’ve been adding staff over the years. We’ve got them double stacked, triple stacked in offices,” Coffey said, “And we basically need the spaces kind of serve as a tourism headquarters, not necessarily as a welcome center, not really open on the weekends.”