Miami-Dade Discards Calusa Golf Course Covenant Despite Pleas From Residents

Ana Batista bought her Calusa Club Estates home in Miami’s West Kendall neighborhood 33 years ago because she liked the golf course setting, but now the 168-acre shuttered course is set to sprout houses.

The golf course at 9400 SW 130th Ave. was to remain untouched until 2067 under a covenant. Many residents say they bought their houses based on that appealing promise as urban sprawl spread west for miles beyond Calusa Club.

The Miami-Dade County Zoning Board on Thursday voted 9-3 to side with the course owner and lift the covenant despite pleas from 35 residents who spoke at the meeting and thousands more organized under the “Save Calusa” campaign.

“If you allow this covenant to be lifted our home values will plummet,” Batista told the board. “The schools will become so overcrowded. Traffic is already overwhelmed in this area.”

Commission Vice Chairwoman Rebeca Sosa and Commissioners Daniella Levine Cava and Joe Martinez voted no. Commissioner Barbara Jordan was absent.

The course owner includes a company with a member of Miami’s Bacardi family, and it’s under contract to sell to prolific Sunrise-based homebuilder GL Homes with the covenant release necessary to close.

GL Homes and its attorney, Bilzin Sumberg of counsel Eileen Mehta, argued Thursday’s vote merely lifted the covenant and noted there’s no development application.

Under current zoning, 30 homes could be built, and any more would need a public hearing. Calusa Club residents fear the door is open to building 550 homes. They generated the number from two sources: a 2016 application when GL Homes got involved and settlement talks in a long-standing lawsuit over the covenant, said Amanda Prieto, a resident who opposed the covenant change.

“The number we have consistently heard over and over is 550,” she said.

Mehta said she hasn’t seen plans and the settlement is private.

The fight may seem like it’s neighbors versus a builder, but it also pitted residents against each other.

The 1968 covenant could be released if 75% of owners of the 146 homes on the golf course agreed, and GL Homes said 84% signed. The course is the doughnut hole in a single-family neighborhood that fills most of the space between four major thoroughfares: Kendall Drive, 104th Street and 127th and 137th avenues.

Dick Norwalk, GL Homes vice president, told the board the ring lot owners are rightfully the ones entitled to have a say as they would be impacted by construction in their backyards.

Miami attorney David Winker, who represents neighborhood opponents, said his clients were “really disillusioned” with the vote.

“In the end, the billionaire wins,” said Winker, who is known for taking up cases for the little guy against deep-pocketed developers.

Litigation

“I heard objectors talk about secret payoffs,” Norwalk told the board. ”The fact is the parties to the lawsuit came to an agreement.”

Construction has been years in the planning stage, dating back to 2003 when St. Andrews Holdings Ltd. bought the course for $2.7 million with plans for a retirement community, but most of the ring lot owners declined to lift the covenant. A lawsuit was filed in 2012.

Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Jennifer Bailey in 2014 sided with the property owner and granted its motion for summary judgment, only to be reversed by the Third District Court of Appeal two years later.

Kendall Associates I LLLP, a GL Homes affiliate, in 2016 submitted a comprehensive development master plan application to the county for low-density development allowing 2.5 to 6 units per acre, according to Prieto.

The County Commission in 2017 split 5-5 on the proposal, meaning it couldn’t go forward, but strongly encouraged the owner and immediate neighbors to talk through their differences. That’s what they did, and GL collected signatures of ring lot owners to lift the covenant.

Mehta said a judge must agree before the covenant change is final.

“The property owners around the golf course and the homeowners took the message to heart and worked very, very hard to listen to each other, to talk to each other, to understand each other,” she said. “The homeowners will tell you they have confidence GL Homes will do exactly what they have told the homeowners they would do.”

Arguments

For Prieto and the rest of “Save Calusa,” the fight isn’t over, Winker said. He claims some of the signatures by ring lot owners aren’t valid.

Ana Pardo is a ring lot owner who didn’t signed to lift the covenant but discovered the previous owner signed a release a month before selling to her.

“Why would the previous homeowner decide what happens in my backyard. They knew they were going to sell. I moved to Calusa because it’s one of the spaces left with green space and wildlife,” she said.

Pardo echoed a common sentiment among opponents that just over 100 Calusa Club owners who agreed to the release shouldn’t be able to dictate the future for the 2,300 Calusa residents. Their Change.org petition to keep the covenant in place has 3,254 signatures.

Norwalk told the zoning board that the golf course served no community purpose since it closed in 2011 and was a money loser for eight years before that. He said the county verified the signatures met the 75% threshold.

The zoning board was divided in its discussions.

“When you buy a home, you want to make sure that what exists around you stays,” Sosa said.

Zoning board member Xavier Suarez, a commissioner whose district includes Calusa, reiterated the vote was only to lift the covenant and no development proposal is pending.

“To all of the folks that oppose this, I hear you,” he said before moving the item for a vote without agreeing to an amendment to limit development to 30 homes.

Prieto said the vote paves the way for more construction.

The board was saying, “OK, today we just need to release the covenant,” she said. “But all zoning decisions are related.”