- October 11, 2024
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It’s back to the drawing board for the developers of Tomoka Reserve, the proposed 276-unit development on the former Tomoka Oaks golf course.
After a five-hour Planning Board meeting on Thursday, July 13 — where the board heard from over 30 residents of Tomoka Oaks and surrounding neighborhoods, all but one voicing opposition to the development — the board decided to continue the public hearing to a meeting on Monday, Aug. 21.
“I’ve been on this Planning Board for 33 years, and I’m going to tell you: This is in the top five of the most important issues I’ve ever heard,” Planning Board Chair Doug Thomas said. “And I am not going to go along with forcing this through — if it takes us two months, if it takes us three months.”
Thomas is a resident of Tomoka Oaks himself.
Developers Carl Velie, Ray Barshay, Sheldon and Emily Rubin are asking the city to issue a development order so they can build a gated single-family home subdivision on the 147-acre golf course, which closed in 2018. The property, located at 20 Tomoka Oaks Blvd., has been zoned as a Planned Residential Development after a 2006 attempt to develop about 30 acres of the golf course failed.
The latest Tomoka Oaks development order application came before the Planning Board with a city staff recommendation that the board deny it based on its lot sizes and setback plans and the developer’s proposal for a 50-foot buffer without a permanent irrigation system.
Planning Director Steven Spraker also said city staff felt the developers should reconfigure the St. Andrews Drive and Tomoka Oaks Boulevard diamond road design and add sidewalks on both sides of Tomoka Oaks Boulevard. If built, Tomoka Reserve’s only entrance and exit would be on Tomoka Oaks Boulevard.
If the City Commission denies the development proposal when the commission reviews it, the developers will seek to rezone the property to R-2 Single Family Low Density and develop it under that zoning designation, which requires 100-foot-wide lots. With that zoning designation, the development would not have to go through the City Commission review process again, and the minimum buffer requirement would be 6 feet. The property had an R-2 zoning designation before it was zoned as a PRD in 2006.
“The R-2 is what we call a ‘by right’ use,” Spraker said. “It’s a permitted use of the zoning district, so as long as they meet the criteria and the land development code, there’s nothing the Site Plan Review Committee can do to basically deny the application.”
Switching to R-2 Single Family Low Density is a move Dennis Bayer, the attorney representing the Tomoka Oaks Homeowners Association, called the “nuclear option.”
“They’re telling us in one breath that ‘We have to have 80-foot lots — we can’t have 100-foot lots because the market won’t support it, but if we don’t get our way, we’re going to have nothing but 100-foot lots,’” Bayer said. “It doesn’t make sense.”
The developers brought a team of 10 experts to testify at the Planning Board meeting. In an unusual move, city staff asked all public speakers to take a sworn oath.
“Normally, we don’t swear in the witnesses because we don’t have an issue that is this hotly contested,” City Attorney Randy Hayes said.
If the developers appeal a denial by the City Commission at a later date, Hayes explained, the judge will be able to know that he or she is reviewing sworn testimony if all public speakers were sworn in.
The city also held the meeting at Calvary Christian Church because of how many citizens planned to attend.
Attorney Rob Merrell, representing the developers, said the developers have been working on bringing the Tomoka Reserve development forward for two years.
The city’s recommendation to deny it, he said, was based on things the Planning Department wanted to be done differently.
One by one, the experts brought in to testify defended the developer’s proposal for lot widths ranging from 50 feet to 80 feet, the maintenance plan for the 50-foot buffer, the proposed density of 1.87 units per acre, and the development's traffic study and architectural standards.
Sans Lassiter, president of LTG Engineering and Planning, said the traffic study conducted by his firm — which calculated that the subdivision will add about 2,774 daily trips — found that the existing diamond intersection at Tomoka Oaks Boulevard and St. Andrews Drive is sufficient.
The study projects that 96% of the trips generated by the new development will use Tomoka Oaks Boulevard, and 4% will use Iroquois Trail to access Granada Boulevard.
For existing residents, about 64% go through the Trails and 36% exit on Nova Road, Lassiter said.
“The thing I like about this project, because of its location, its primary impact is going to be on Nova Road, a state road,” Lassiter said.
One of the experts who testified, Michael Hotaling of Moody Williams Appraisal Group, said that the closed golf course has hurt property values.
“Any potential development that’s done there, regardless of size, is going to have a positive impact on those values,” Hotaling said.
Addressing concerns that the developers’ proposal is not compatible with the existing Tomoka Oaks neighborhood, Mark Karet, director of planning and landscape architecture for Zev Cohen and Associates, argued that it is: The land use is residential in both cases, he said.
“This is infill development,” Karet said. “It’s encouraged throughout your [comprehensive] plan.”
The pending R-2 zoning application is “not a nuclear threat,” Merrell said.
“It’s the zoning that we’re surrounded by,” he said.
He noted that the property’s current PRD zoning is expiring. “... I think your city attorney will tell you, we are entitled to a zoning,” he said. “You guys pick it for us: We picked two. We have two of them now in process, one of them that’s custom, that you get to pick what goes in it, or another one that’s cookie-cutter.”
Residents’ concerns ranged from increased traffic and lack of medical infrastructure to support further growth to the incompatibility of lot sizes and a decrease in quality of life, particularly for the estimated 170 property owners whose homes back up to the golf course.
Residents don’t want cookie-cutter houses, said Tomoka Oaks homeowner Barbara Handsman Doliner said to the board. They don’t care if the subdivision is gated or if the developer puts in sidewalks. That’s not the point.
“The point is the shoe doesn’t fit,” Doliner said. “This Cinderella will never have that shoe fit, no matter how many different ways it’s going to be packaged to us.”
Tomoka Oaks Resident Carolyn Davis — who for the last year has argued that the golf course can't be legally developed, because the property's original covenant declared it to be used perpetually as a golf course — asked all Tomoka Oaks and surrounding homeowners to raise their hands.
“I want the board to see the faces of my professionals,” Davis said. “Board members, please take a good look at our faces and tell me we are not credible as well.”
On Wednesday, July 12, Davis’ attorney, Brent Spain, submitted an opinion to the Planning Board stating that the golf course’s original 1963 restrictive covenant remains valid.
Tomoka Oaks residents Leonard Gaspary and Scott Ryalsalso opposed the development. Gaspary built homes in the subdivision, and Ryals tried to develop the property in 2006 with his father.
Gaspary testified that the lots fronting the golf course were more expensive at that time.
“I do feel that the closing of the golf course will impact the value of my home and my lot, and I am just seeking some way to mitigate the loss of value of my house,” Gaspary said. “I also feel that it changes the complete character of the community by adding 276 lots, which will add close to 800 people when everything is said and done.”
Ryals said that when he tried to develop the property in 2006, they could only fit 122 units. The proposal included 35 townhomes and six condo buildings on about 30 acres of the property.
“I’m the one that proposed that if we did anything with that property, that it would remain a golf course,” Ryals said. “I beat my head night and day on how I could do it.”
Bayer said that the developers’ presentation didn’t address staff’s comments and concerns.
The Tomoka Oaks Homeowner’s Association also brought in Thomas Harowski to testify. Harowski, a certified planner and a resident of Tomoka Oaks, said that Tomoka Reserve would become “the new heart of Tomoka Oaks” when built.
“It’ll be the first thing that people see when they come into the community,” he said. “And it will be a defining element. To the extent that new homes give a different impression of the neighborhood, that’s going to change how people view Tomoka Oaks and our existing neighborhood.”
Two of the developers spoke at the meeting. Velie said they were proposing 80-foot lots because that’s what current market buyers are seeking.
A 100-foot lot would run the price of a new home into the $1 million range, and while there may be some buyers for that, he questioned whether there would be 200 of them — and whether they would be looking to buy in the next five years.
“I want to build something, or have a product that can be built on, that will sell quickly, will be as good or better than what’s in the neighborhood,” Velie said.
Sheldon Rubin said he didn’t understand why the residents and the city want 100-foot lots.
“We will have a higher-priced house in a community with a [Property Owner’s Association], with security and those benefits with a bigger buffer,” Rubin said.
The development team has gone through several iterations of this proposal, Rubin said.
“I have total confidence this is all going to work, but give us some flexibility here,” he said. “Don’t lock us down. This is a superb site plan.”
At the end of the meeting, board members said they still had too many questions to come to a decision. They wanted improvements in lot size, in particular. Board member GG Galloway likened the development to putting 5 pounds of sugar in a 1-pound bag.
“There has to be a happy medium here somewhere,” Galloway said. “The homeowners have to realize that something will be built there, or they need to come to the table and buy your land.”
Developers have rights, Thomas said. So do homeowners.
“We’ve got to compromise,” he said. “We have to find something because there is a hardcore group of residents who don’t want anything in there.”
The homeowners are already compromising, said board member Angeline Schull. The developers need to as well.
“This is a totally unique piece of property, and that has to be taken into consideration,” she said.
Board member Barry du Moulin asked if the developers would be willing to explore other development options, such as an agroenergy farm. If the developers want to develop homes, he said, he would rather they be million-dollar homes.
“Is there another way that you can look at this, that everybody wins?” du Moulin said.
Board member Mike Scudiero said the proposal would likely be considered low-density in cities like Miami.
“But up here in Ormond, it’s not,” Scudiero said. “Not in this neighborhood. Not with what’s going in the middle of that doughnut hole.”
Board member Al Jorczak shared his concerns regarding density, especially as more people move to Florida.
“We should not be looking at just augmenting what has been done in the past,” Jorczak said. “We should be looking for excellence — what can we do that goes above and beyond what we’ve already done, that helps make Ormond Beach the jewel on the East Coast that people want to come here and live.”
