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GL Homes loses suit over contentious 550-home project on Calusa golf course
Developer plans to refile application to Miami-Dade County
GL Homes lost a lawsuit over its controversial plan to develop a 550-home complex on the Calusa golf course near Kendall.
The Florida Supreme Court on Wednesday denied GL Homes’ request for review of a lower court’s decision that had effectively nixed the project.
The decision marks the latest in the nearly three-year saga over the redevelopment of the 159-acre Calusa golf course at 9400 Southwest 130th Avenue in unincorporated Miami-Dade County.
Residents in the surrounding neighborhood who oppose the project cite concerns over the strain it would put on local schools and traffic, as well as the potential impacts on wildlife at the closed golf course. Some homeowners have said they bought their homes partly because of a promise the course would remain undeveloped in future decades.
The Florida Supreme Court shot down any legal recourse for GL homes in the case, writing that “no motion for rehearing will be entertained.”
“This is the end of the road,” said David Winker, an attorney for residents. “[GL Homes] will have to reapply or do something else.”
GL Homes says it’s not giving up.
“We look forward to returning to the county commission with a revised site plan,” GL Homes said in a statement. “The county commission approved our vision by a 10-2 margin, and we are confident that our plan to transform this vacant site into a low-density community of single-family homes … will be well-received by commissioners once again.”
The firm declined to provide details about its revised site plan and whether the proposal would be for fewer homes.
Save Calusa, the residents’ organization led by Amanda Prieto, first sued Miami-Dade in 2021, asking the court to void county commissioners’ approval of a rezoning for the project because the meeting was improperly noticed. GL Homes wasn’t named as a defendant, but joined the lawsuit to fight on the county’s side.
The county originally had scheduled and properly noticed the rezoning meeting for Oct. 20, 2021. But, at a meeting on the previous day, commissioners decided to push the zoning hearing to Nov. 17, 2021. Residents weren’t properly notified about the new hearing date, according to the complaint.
Miami-Dade didn’t immediately return a request for comment. The county previously said it met all requirements for meeting notices and also sent a courtesy email to residents and mailed them notices.
At first, Miami-Dade Circuit Court sided with GL Homes in 2022. But later that year, the Third District Court of Appeal overturned the lower court.
The county didn’t officially convene the noticed Oct. 20, 2021, hearing to postpone it, Third DCA Judge Bronwyn Miller wrote in the order. Instead, the county canceled the noticed hearing the day prior.
The date of the vote can’t be “deemed a mere continuation of a properly noticed hearing,” Miller wrote, adding that the county’s argument “misses the mark.”
The Florida Supreme Court’s decision this week essentially shot down GL Homes’ petition for review of the Third DCA order.
“We are naturally disappointed that a technical noticing error is delaying the delivery of much-needed housing in Miami-Dade County,” GL said in its statement.
The lawsuit was only part of the battle over Calusa.
Some of the residents who bought homes near Calusa say they relied on a land covenant that mandated the golf course remain undeveloped until 2067. The only way the covenant could be lifted is if 75 percent of the homeowners directly surrounding the course, or ringlot owners, voted in favor.
This threshold was surpassed in 2019, though residents have alleged that some of the homeowners who signed off on scrapping the covenant received $300,000 payments from the previous golf course owner. County commissioners officially voted to remove the covenant in 2020, and GL Homes bought Calusa the following year for $32 million.
Itzhak Ezratti co-founded GL Homes in 1976 and his son, Misha Ezratti, now leads the firm as president. The firm develops residential projects exclusively in Florida.
In January, the homebuilder dropped $29.4 million for 120 acres of farmland in Westlake, Palm Beach County’s youngest municipality, incorporated in 2018. GL Homes also wants to build 1,277 homes at the Agricultural Reserve west of Boca Raton, but county commissioners in October voted against a land swap that would have allowed for the project.