GAINESVILLE, Florida — Locals packed an Alachua County meeting room Tuesday night as county commissioners rejected a residential development proposed in place of the now-defunct West End Golf Club.
The Alachua County Commission voted 4-1, with Commissioner Raemi Eagle-Glenn dissenting, to deny a developer’s proposal to change the land-use designation for the site to low-density residential from recreational. A 70-home residential development called Tara Club was proposed for the property, located at 12830 W. Newberry Road across the street from the Tioga Town Center in the Jonesville-Newberry area.
West End Golf Course was the brainchild of Sid and Howard Hodor, a father-son team who opened up nine holes in 1969, patterning the layout after Colonial Palms in Miami.
The course, which had been a fixture in the golf community, closed its doors in December of 2019. The par-60, lighted course has been for sale for more than a year, but finally closed as it became unplayable.
The course included lights — attached to palm trees when it first opened — for play at night. Once the first nine was open, they began working in a second nine.
Residents “are not saying to us they object to development, they’re saying that our comp plan has laid out where that development should be,” said Commissioner Ken Cornell. “And more importantly, we need to have recreational green space to absorb not only the new development, but existing development.”
The proposal’s applicant, JBrown Professional Group, requested to change 38 of 75 unkept acres of the West End property from recreational to low-density residential. The plan also included 37 acres of recreational land that would be dedicated to Alachua County as a park and 10 acres of green space around existing homes.
Commissioners on Tuesday decided whether to transmit major land use amendments to the Florida Department of Economic Opportunity — the agency responsible for signing off on comprehensive plan changes.
Thirty-one residents spoke during the hearing, including 10 represented by planner and former city commissioner Thomas Hawkins.
All were opposed to the plan except for one, who said that denying the bid will continue to make homes in Gainesville less affordable.
“If my children and grandchildren want to live in the same town I live in, I think they won’t be able to afford it because there is just too limited of a (housing) supply in this town,” said Jacob Yin, a homeowner in the Arbor…
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