Parkland picks Toll Brothers to build 52 homes on a city-owned golf property

Toll Brothers plans to build 52 homes on part of a city-owned golf property in Parkland.

Fort Washington, Pennsylvania-based Toll Brothers beat 10 other developers that competed to build single-family homes on 21 acres of the permanently closed Heron Bay Golf Course, which spans 69 acres.

The Parkland City Commission voted 4-1 Wednesday to rank the 52-home development proposal by Toll Brothers as the best, ahead of proposals by second-ranked K. Hovnanian Homes, based in Matawan, New Jersey, and third-ranked Mattamy Homes, based in Toronto.

The commissioners directed city staff to negotiate a purchase and sale agreement under which Toll Brothers would acquire the development site on the old Heron Bay Golf Course, which closed permanently in 2019.

City commissioners voted in September to approve Parkland’s acquisition of the 69-acre golf property for $25.4 million.

“We spent $25 million to buy 69 acres of land. Tonight, we will sell 21 of those acres for somewhere between $18 million and $19 million,” Parkland Mayor Richard W. Walker said at the commission meeting. “That, to me, sounds like a home run.”

Toll Brothers, led by Chairman and CEO Douglas C. Yearley, Jr., successfully proposed to pay $18.46 million for the 21-acre development site, or $355,000 per lot, to build 52 houses, ranging in size from 3,500 square feet to 5,000 square feet. The homebuilder plans to sell the houses at prices ranging from $1.5 million to $2 million.

K. Hovnanian offered to pay $19.5 million, or $375,000 for each of the 52 home sites. It planned to charge prices from $1.6 million to $2 million for houses ranging in size from 3,000 square feet to 4,500 square feet.

Under its proposal, Mattamy Homes would have paid as much as $18.9 million, or about $363,000 per home site. It planned to build houses sized from 3,500 square feet to 4,500 square feet, and price them from $1.4 million to $1.6 million.

Other developers that competed to build homes on the old Heron Bay Golf Course included Ascend Properties, D.R. Horton and Kenco Communities. Brokerage firm Colliers International handled the bid solicitation process and recommended that city commissioners select Toll Brothers, K. Hovnanian, or Mattamy to build homes on the golf property.

At their meeting Wednesday, city commissioners also selected Charlotte, North Carolina-based 505Design to guide the development of a commercial town center near the residential portion of the former Heron Bay Golf Course.

Commissioners ranked 505Design as the best firm that responded to a request for proposals to plan the town center project, ahead of second-ranked Torti Gallas + Partners. A selection committee of city officials initially ranked Miami-based Bermello Ajamil & Partners as the third best firm for the project, but Bermello Ajamil withdrew from the evaluation process. So, in the final rankings after interviews with the bidders, AE7 Pittsburgh replaced Bermello Ajamil as the third-ranked firm.

Jackie Wehmeyer, the city’s senior director of strategy and intergovernmental affairs and a member of the selection committee, said Design505 is “a perfect fit” for Parkland.

“You may see some elements of some of the things that they’ve done before. But you will not see the same thing …. They will not give us anything cookie-cutter. They won’t give us something off the shelf. They will give us Parkland.”