Nearly a year before the state revealed its now-shelved Great Outdoors Initiative, a veterans organization met with three Treasure Coast officials to pitch building three golf courses in Jonathan Dickinson State Park.
Florida Rep. John Snyder, R-Stuart, said he thought he would never hear from Folds of Honor again after he met with the nonprofit’s representatives via Zoom in December 2023.
Snyder met with Folds of Honor founder and CEO Lt. Col. Dan Rooney and lobbyist Ryan Mathews, who was a Florida Department of Environmental Protection interim secretary under former Gov. Rick Scott.
Rooney and Mathews proposed building the courses over 1,000 acres of protected scrubland, and they asked Snyder to draft a bill that would permit such development.
“When we met, it was very exploratory — what I gauged as a temperature-taking,” Snyder told TCPalm. “I said this is not something we would be interested in, but hey, let’s keep the conversation open. We can perhaps revisit this in the future, looking at other potential land sites.”
What you missed: Catch up on all the news about Jonathan Dickinson State Park golf course proposal
Martin County Commission Chair Harold Jenkins
Two months earlier, Folds of Honor representatives had pitched their idea to Martin County Commission Chair Harold Jenkins over lunch at Casa Giuseppe’s Italian Grill on Southeast Indian Street. Jenkins said he didn’t recall the names of the representatives he met with in October 2023.
A rainbow appears over Jonathan Dickinson State Park during a protest against the proposed golf courses Saturday, Aug. 24, 2024, in Martin County. Florida Department of Environmental Protection has proposed to build three golf courses in the park as part of Gov. Ron DeSantis’ Great Outdoors Initiative. (Photo: CRYSTAL VANDER WEIT/TCPALM)
They told Jenkins they wanted to build golf courses on land with “diminished environmental value,” and that there could be better uses for Jonathan Dickinson State Park, he said. Though Jenkins doesn’t have any state legislative power to aid their proposal, they still wanted his support, he said.
“I told them, ‘You’re going to start a war,’ ” Jenkins said. “And guess what? That’s exactly what they did.”
Florida Sen. Gayle Harrell
A month earlier, Folds of Honor had approached Florida Sen. Gayle Harrell, R-Stuart. Mathews and Rooney met with Harrell and her staff in her Stuart office in September 2023.
They played a video presentation…
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