ST. AUGUSTINE, Fla. — Outrage continues to grow over Governor Ron Desantis's office and Florida Department of Environmental Protection's proposal to build hotels, disc golf courses and pickleball courts inside nine Florida state parks.
Late Friday afternoon, the Florida Department of Environmental Protection announced the public information sessions that were planned for Tuesday will be rescheduled, possibly during the week of September 2.
"You can absolutely for certain say that those construction opportunities will be clear cutting natural habitat. This is absolutely not in the best interest of the conservation value of these state parks," Sarah Gledhill with the Florida Wildlife Federation said.
The plan for Anastasia State Park calls for a 350-room hotel. The only larger hotel in St. Johns County is the Sawgrass Marriott in Ponte Vedra which has more than 500 hotel rooms.
"It’s bigger than the Embassy Suites that is located right next door to the state park. It's bigger than the (Renaissance Resort) hotel at World Golf Village. And it’s not just the hotel building. There’s parking that will come with that," Gledhill said.
The Florida Wildlife Federation along with the Audubon Society and the Sierra Club are taking the state to task for the proposed plans inside state parks.
"It has politics written all over it," Logan Cross said. He is with the Sierra Club of Northeast Florida. He said, to his knowledge, there’s little support for the projects except from the governor’s office.
Desantis's office and the DEP touts the projects' goal is to increase visitors at state parks. But Cross says there are enough pickleball and disc golf courses in Florida.
"But you don’t have many of those places on the beaches that are close to being in the natural state," Cross said.
Who benefits from the project? Gledhill says the people who will be "constructing the golf courses and running the courses and constructing the hotels and running the hotels. Those will be the ones that benefit from this."
At this time, there is no word who those companies are.