New expansion of PBC Range
Posted: Tue Jun 21, 2022 10:31 am
If you haven't been here yet, it's pretty nice.
https://www.sun-sentinel.com/local/palm ... story.html
Michael Chubb stares out into an expanse of wild grass dotted with sandhill cranes. He aligns his vision along the barrel of his shotgun, brings it level with the horizon, and yells “Hup!”
An orange clay disc soars up from an underground bunker. Chubb locks on and shoots, the sound echoing across the field. Shards of clay fall to the grass. The cranes, on their home territory, don’t so much as flinch.
The Palm Beach County Shooting Sports Complex, where Chubb is range manager, sits in a rural area 30 minutes west by car from Palm Beach Gardens, next to the JW Corbett Wildlife Management Area.
The 150-acre range, which opened at half-capacity in 2020 due to the pandemic, is now up and running at almost full capacity. It’s set to gain 40 more acres of land from the South Florida Water Management District in about two years — the district approved a land donation on June 9.
The new acreage, once developed, will likely contain archery trails, an RV campsite, picnic areas and an administrative building.
In addition to the pending new land, Chubb intends to open the property’s five Olympic-grade international trap fields on the original 150-acre lot in the next two months. That feature, he said, is likely to draw in crowds.
[ RELATED: One of Florida’s largest outdoor shooting ranges opens, but without a bang ]
International trap, or Olympic trap, is a shotgun sport using clay targets about 4 inches in size that fly out in front of the shooter. It became part of the Olympic Games in 1900. Chubb said the new complex is one of only five public shooting ranges in the country to offer international trap training, and the only one in the state of Florida.
“The goal is to make this the foremost training facility in the country for Olympic shooting games,” Chubb said. He competed in international trap shooting at the 1988 Seoul Olympics. “I want to have Olympic shooting events here in the future.”
Anticipating popularity and increased tourism, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, which owns the land for the complex, recently requested to expand the 150-acre facility, thus the donation from the water management district.
The allotted land had originally been allocated for the Loxahatchee River Restoration project. But the water management district’s governing board deemed the acreage as non-essential for water conservation purposes in the June 9 meeting.
“The donated parcel is not within the footprint of that proposed Loxahatchee River Watershed Restoration Project, and it was not needed to fulfill water management needs,” said Jason Schultz, public information coordinator for the South Florida Water Management District.
Those 40 acres represent about 2% of the land reserved for the restoration project, and has not yet raised hackles with environmental groups. “In this case, it doesn’t appear that the restoration footprint would actually change,” said Lisa Interlandi, an attorney for the Everglades Law Center. “It seems like a relatively low intensity abuse, so I don’t see a significant conflict with the restoration project.”
The donation does, however, pose a question of whether the approved expansion could create a precedent for decreasing the scope of future restoration projects. “We don’t want to see restoration footprints getting smaller,” Interlandi said.
For the moment, resident sandhill cranes and other wildlife remain largely unperturbed.
Value, land use and cost
Chubb, the FWC and SFWMD are hoping the new facilities and additional land will lead to positive economic impact. Of the facility’s future administrative building, Tammy Sapp, the communications and marketing manager for the FWC’s Division of Hunting and Game Management, said “This 10,000-square-foot building will be used to support large state, regional, national and international events that are expected to have a significant positive economic impact to the local economy.”
The larger plot of land where the range sits has a history of being the focus of economic pipe dreams.
In the early 2000s, Palm Beach County had plans to turn nearly 2,000 acres of a former orange grove into a biotech center. More than $100 million taxpayer dollars went toward luring the California-based Scripps-Research Institute onto the site for development of an East Coast branch. But the project was axed in 2006 due to environmental concerns.
The South Florida Water Management District purchased the land seven years later for $26 million. The deal reserved 150 acres for the shooting complex; the rest of the land was slated for a reservoir to store clean water meant for the Loxahatchee River, which suffers from nutrient pollution. The reservoir has yet to be built.
One year after the deal went through, the district put $3.2 million toward funding the shooting complex. Now, more costs are expected to accrue. Though the shooting range can expand largely without additional funding from the water management district due to the land donation, there are costs associated with readying and expanding the facility.
An impending price point is the cost of paving Seminole Pratt Whitney Road, which leads to the entrance of the range and the JW Corbett Wildlife Management Area. Sapp said the road construction alone will cost an additional $1 million.
Chubb said the revenue earned at the range — spanning everything from equipment rental to concession sales — goes toward employee payrolls and maintenance or expansion costs. Since the shooting complex is owned by the FWC, Chubb and other employees are considered state employees.
“No tax dollars go into the operation of the range,” he said, “we make the money to sustain ourselves.”
https://www.sun-sentinel.com/local/palm ... story.html
Michael Chubb stares out into an expanse of wild grass dotted with sandhill cranes. He aligns his vision along the barrel of his shotgun, brings it level with the horizon, and yells “Hup!”
An orange clay disc soars up from an underground bunker. Chubb locks on and shoots, the sound echoing across the field. Shards of clay fall to the grass. The cranes, on their home territory, don’t so much as flinch.
The Palm Beach County Shooting Sports Complex, where Chubb is range manager, sits in a rural area 30 minutes west by car from Palm Beach Gardens, next to the JW Corbett Wildlife Management Area.
The 150-acre range, which opened at half-capacity in 2020 due to the pandemic, is now up and running at almost full capacity. It’s set to gain 40 more acres of land from the South Florida Water Management District in about two years — the district approved a land donation on June 9.
The new acreage, once developed, will likely contain archery trails, an RV campsite, picnic areas and an administrative building.
In addition to the pending new land, Chubb intends to open the property’s five Olympic-grade international trap fields on the original 150-acre lot in the next two months. That feature, he said, is likely to draw in crowds.
[ RELATED: One of Florida’s largest outdoor shooting ranges opens, but without a bang ]
International trap, or Olympic trap, is a shotgun sport using clay targets about 4 inches in size that fly out in front of the shooter. It became part of the Olympic Games in 1900. Chubb said the new complex is one of only five public shooting ranges in the country to offer international trap training, and the only one in the state of Florida.
“The goal is to make this the foremost training facility in the country for Olympic shooting games,” Chubb said. He competed in international trap shooting at the 1988 Seoul Olympics. “I want to have Olympic shooting events here in the future.”
Anticipating popularity and increased tourism, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, which owns the land for the complex, recently requested to expand the 150-acre facility, thus the donation from the water management district.
The allotted land had originally been allocated for the Loxahatchee River Restoration project. But the water management district’s governing board deemed the acreage as non-essential for water conservation purposes in the June 9 meeting.
“The donated parcel is not within the footprint of that proposed Loxahatchee River Watershed Restoration Project, and it was not needed to fulfill water management needs,” said Jason Schultz, public information coordinator for the South Florida Water Management District.
Those 40 acres represent about 2% of the land reserved for the restoration project, and has not yet raised hackles with environmental groups. “In this case, it doesn’t appear that the restoration footprint would actually change,” said Lisa Interlandi, an attorney for the Everglades Law Center. “It seems like a relatively low intensity abuse, so I don’t see a significant conflict with the restoration project.”
The donation does, however, pose a question of whether the approved expansion could create a precedent for decreasing the scope of future restoration projects. “We don’t want to see restoration footprints getting smaller,” Interlandi said.
For the moment, resident sandhill cranes and other wildlife remain largely unperturbed.
Value, land use and cost
Chubb, the FWC and SFWMD are hoping the new facilities and additional land will lead to positive economic impact. Of the facility’s future administrative building, Tammy Sapp, the communications and marketing manager for the FWC’s Division of Hunting and Game Management, said “This 10,000-square-foot building will be used to support large state, regional, national and international events that are expected to have a significant positive economic impact to the local economy.”
The larger plot of land where the range sits has a history of being the focus of economic pipe dreams.
In the early 2000s, Palm Beach County had plans to turn nearly 2,000 acres of a former orange grove into a biotech center. More than $100 million taxpayer dollars went toward luring the California-based Scripps-Research Institute onto the site for development of an East Coast branch. But the project was axed in 2006 due to environmental concerns.
The South Florida Water Management District purchased the land seven years later for $26 million. The deal reserved 150 acres for the shooting complex; the rest of the land was slated for a reservoir to store clean water meant for the Loxahatchee River, which suffers from nutrient pollution. The reservoir has yet to be built.
One year after the deal went through, the district put $3.2 million toward funding the shooting complex. Now, more costs are expected to accrue. Though the shooting range can expand largely without additional funding from the water management district due to the land donation, there are costs associated with readying and expanding the facility.
An impending price point is the cost of paving Seminole Pratt Whitney Road, which leads to the entrance of the range and the JW Corbett Wildlife Management Area. Sapp said the road construction alone will cost an additional $1 million.
Chubb said the revenue earned at the range — spanning everything from equipment rental to concession sales — goes toward employee payrolls and maintenance or expansion costs. Since the shooting complex is owned by the FWC, Chubb and other employees are considered state employees.
“No tax dollars go into the operation of the range,” he said, “we make the money to sustain ourselves.”
