Baymeadows Area Residents Hear Plan For Golf Course Site

More than 300 people showed up for a town meeting to discuss a controversial plan to build a 1,400-home community at Baymeadows Golf Club.

Residents in the Los Lagos, Los Prados and Village Green condominiums, and the Linkside and Las Casas communities that ring the 170-acre golf course, have protested D.R. Horton's project since it was announced Aug. 17. They say Baymeadows Road can't handle the traffic that already clogs it, and this will make it worse.

Developer spokeswoman Victoria Pennington, at the meeting with company officials, said they are working with the city and state Department of Transportation to make the proposed community's access points on Baymeadows Road work better.

"We appreciate the concerns raised at the meeting. It is still very early in the planning stages, and we look forward to working through the process," she said. "We are also having informal discussions with the JTA to include their planned rapid transit station in the project. We also received input from members of Better Baymeadows Inc. on recommendations for improvements developed as part of the Baymeadows Road Mobility Study."

Horton has the 35-year-old golf course under contract for an undisclosed price, and plans to turn it into a mix of 1,400 homes and condominiums, with a new office next to existing office space and more commercial sites along Baymeadows Road.

The site has been zoned for residential use for years, so it doesn't need rezoning. But Baymeadows Road in front of the golf course is over capacity on the city's Road Links Status Report, and the developer must make a $4.8 million Fair Share payment to the city for its portion of future area road improvements. That needs City Council approval.

Members of 10 area homeowner associations opposed to the project formed the Baymeadows Community Council and launched last week's meeting with a presentation on its possible impacts. Using pictures of jammed traffic on Baymeadows Road, they claimed the Fair Share money wouldn't help because there are no projects planned for Baymeadows Road. And because many people use their narrow private roads as a shortcut between Baymeadows Road and Southside Boulevard, adding traffic from 1,400 more homes would make a bad situation worse.