Zoo Miami spokesman Ron Magill, a Kendall resident, spoke ardently for conservation of the land - or a closer study of the animals living on it. Please do the right thing for our environment, resiliency, children, community and future.” Ron Magill objects to plan The buyer paid only $2.7 million for this land because it was parks and recreation land. “The only people in support of this project were paid in a secret agreement.
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“The developer is asking you to do something for them with a series of exceptions and not giving anything back - not even a park that staff recommended,” Winker said. We reduced density and addressed environmental concerns that will be controlled during the permitting process.”īut attorney David Winker, representing the Save Calusa homeowners, said the development contradicts the county’s master plan objectives. “We’ve done the work to plan responsibly for a beautiful community. “This would be a wasted opportunity to decide this land should remain a vacant lot,” he said. He said GL Homes cut the number of houses from 1,000 to 550, giving it the lowest density of any golf course redevelopment in the county. GL Homes Executive Vice President Dick Norwalk argued that even though the land is zoned as parks and recreation, its best use is residential given that county studies show the dwindling supply of building sites for new single-family homes will be exhausted by 2025.
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Residents are upset that their neighborhood will be ruined. 13, 2020, as part of a campaign to prevent redevelopment of the golf course land into a subdivision. Residents of the Calusa neighborhood in Kendall attended a rally and drive-through demonstration to “Save Calusa” on Oct. But the developer told commissioners how those homeowners gave critical input on the project and were in favor of it. They did not speak during the zoning hearing because they had previously signed non-disclosure agreements as a condition of their settlements. On the other side in red T-shirts were Calusa ring homeowners - those whose homes abut the course - who were paid up to $300,000 each by the developer to lift a 99-year covenant that would have restricted the land’s use to a golf course until 2067. They wore green T-shirts and told commissioners how their neighborhood will be ruined and the environment destroyed by construction of a gated community. On one side of the room were dozens of supporters of Save Calusa, the grassroots campaign to keep the 168-acre property wild. The tension was palpable Wednesday as Miami-Dade County commissioners listened to impassioned debate about what should happen to the abandoned, overgrown Calusa golf course in a Kendall neighborhood where neighbors have been pitted against each other over a developer’s plan to build 550 houses on the old fairways.