The sale of Marineland Dolphin Adventure on Monday has created doubt about the future of a historic and troubled local attraction. The park, which is located just south of Flagler County’s border with St. Johns County, was built in 1937 and serves as a formative memory for thousands who grew up nearby.
The tumult surrounding Marineland Dolphin Adventure has to do with its peculiar municipal location. It exists within the Town of Marineland, a community of no more than a dozen or so residents overall. The town is run by a three-person Town Commission, consisting of its entire voting base. Mayor Buddy Pinder, Vice Mayor Dewey Dew, and Commissioner Jessica Finch are grappling with an uncertain future as the attraction’s mysterious buyer may go one of many different directions with the park.
Marineland Dolphin Adventure went up for auction after its parent company Leisure Investment Holdings, and that firm’s parent company The Dolphin Company, both went bankrupt earlier this year. On Monday the park was sold at auction to Delightful Development, LLC for $7.1 million in an auction held in Delaware. They outbid the Hutson Companies, a St. Augustine-based development firm.
Very little is positively known about the nature of Delightful Development or what they may plan to do with Marineland. They could feasibly decide to invest money into the park and try to give it a renaissance. They may scrap the idea altogether and put any number of tourist-commercial development in its place. Or they may do something entirely different, or in between these possibilities. Speculation is hard to avoid for the commissioners and town government staff, being as the buyer has yet to contact any of them.
Marineland’s Future
“I’ve never met the guy [behind the company] before, unfortunately,” said Vice Mayor Dewey Dew on Thursday. “So I’m looking to get in contact with him to develop a relationship.” Dew expressed a sentiment shared by Mayor Buddy Pinder, that they remain hopeful the dolphins are there to stay.
“Personally I hope they keep the dolphins there. That’s what Marineland is, that’s what it’s known for,” Pinder added. “They’re gonna have to talk to us. They can’t just go do something over there and tear it down and then turn it into a go-kart track or whatever. It ought to stay what it is, truthfully.”
Commissioner Jessica Finch has a slightly more conflicted outlook on the keeping of the animals. She observes the seemingly cramped living conditions of the seventeen dolphins, and how that will resonate both ethically and superficially for the attraction. “I’m not sure that it should stay as a dolphin facility,” she said. “I want to protect those dolphins that are there, and I know four were just recently moved so it wasn’t always seventeen.”
Still, even those who frown upon the captivity of intelligent marine mammals like dolphins are inclined against an entirely soulless replacement. “There’s got to be a way to come to some sort of middle ground that, maybe they don’t have to keep the dolphins in captivity,” Finch continued. “They can find a safe home but it doesn’t completely transform the original use of it. I mean, I went there as a child on a field trip, it’s been beloved for a long time. But there’s consensus of the public now to get away from keeping animals in captivity, especially in such confined spaces. I have mixed feelings, because I don’t want some big development there, I think that’s completely wrong.”
Some community advocates of the Dolphin Adventure have turned to its historic value as a potential bargaining chip if the attraction’s future is jeopardized. Marineland is included in the National Register of Historic Places, having been added in 1986 to commemorate it becoming America’s first oceanarium. Unfortunately for the attraction’s fans, that designation will not present an obstacle to the facility’s owner should they want to bring about the park’s end.
All good things come to and end too, in a world that as per my personal view does not get any better that was before!