Judge ‘Quashes’ County Commission’s Decision To Prevent Rezoning Of The Golf Course. So, What’s Next?
Long-time Pebble Creek resident Leslie Green is still in limbo, but it’s nothing new for the founder of “Save Pebble Creek,” the organization she started two years ago in an effort to prevent Pebble Creek Golf Club owner Bill Place and his Ace Golf from rezoning the golf course land to allow for further residential development.
Development company GL Homes had attempted to rezone the 149-acre golf course property in order to build 250 single-family homes. At that time, Green and her Save Pebble Creek group began holding community meetings and distributing petitions asking the community to oppose Place’s plan to sell the golf course to GL Homes. And, although there were some members of the community who supported the idea of redeveloping the shuttered golf course, the campaign resulted in a flurry of emails to Hillsborough County Commission Chair and District 2 Commissioner Ken Hagan.
Place then sued Green for defaming his character and for interfering with his attempts to find a developer. She filed a countersuit in May 2022, but then sought to have Place’s suit dismissed under Florida’s Anti-SLAPP (Strategic Lawsuit Against Public Participation) statute. A little more than two years later, that case still has not been decided.
In July of 2023, GL Homes’ attempt to rezone the golf course property was denied 5-2 by the Hillsborough County Board of County Commissioners (BOCC), after Hagan said he had received 1,800 letters from residents of the community, the vast majority of which were in opposition to the rezoning.
Green, whose home has faced the golf course for more than 30 years, applauded Hagan’s efforts to preserve the beauty of her community. Hagan said at the time that Place only had a couple of options going forward:
“He can come up with another developer with a different plan that might be more acceptable to the residents,” Comm. Hagan said after the July 17 meeting. “We’ve also discussed the possibility of the county purchasing the golf club to convert it to a county-owned course, but he (Place) would have to come down in price a lot for us to be interested.”
Green also suggested that Place might’ve been waiting for this year’s elections, when three of the seven Commission seats are up for grabs, in the hopes that perhaps the new commissioners might look more favorably upon the rezoning proposal.
But, GL Homes found another option. In October of last year, the home builder appealed the county commission’s denial of the rezoning request to Hillsborough County Circuit Judge Paul Huey.
Eight months later, on June 24, Judge Huey “quashed” the decision by the BOCC to deny the rezoning, which means, in legal terms, “to set aside or void.” (Note-For a lot more information about why the BOCC’s decision was quashed, see page 4.) It also meant that now, the county had its own decision to make: Either ask Judge Huey for a rehearing, appeal the judge’s verdict to a higher court, or allow GL Homes to proceed with its development plan.
On July 5, the county filed a petition to the Circuit Court for a rehearing.
Judge Huey’s ruling on the developer’s appeal was that, “The court cannot find that the Board of County Commissioners relied on competent, substantial evidence when it denied GL Homes’ proposal.”
The judge also felt that the BOCC’s decision was more of a personal attack on Place, even though neither he nor his Ace Golf submitted the rezoning proposal. Although the Board’s original decision was based on the rezoning “not being infill and not compatible with the Comprehensive Plan,” the judge saw that GL Homes’ rezoning request was recommended for BOCC approval by the county’s Planning Commission and the zoning hearing master (ZHM), both of which said the proposed development was consistent with the comprehensive plan.
The judge also noted that Hagan said he was basing his decision to deny the rezoning, in part, on the Pebble Creek resident emails that accused Place of “spiteful tactics, intimidation, vindictiveness, innuendo, and fearmongering.”
But, in its petition for rehearing, the county claims that Judge Huey, “overlooked record evidence or misapprehended several points of law or fact in a manner that the County believes fundamentally affected the Court’s Order Granting Petition for Writ of Certiorari (“Order”). The County requests rehearing and requests that this Court rescind its Order Granting Petition for Writ of Certiorari and issue an Order Denying Petition for Writ of Certiorari.”
In other words, the county said that Judge Huey did not consider all of the factual evidence upon which the county based its decision, claiming, “The Application for rezoning as proposed would result in a complete change to the character of the existing community, by eliminating the central feature of a neighborhood which has existed for decades. Further, this decision has the potential to impact redevelopment of other similar communities within the State of Florida.”
The county’s arguments for requesting the rehearing included the following:
1. There was Competent Substantial Evidence for the BOCC to Deny Petitioner’s Application. As the Court notes in its Order, the Florida Supreme Court has set forth a framework that requires rezoning applicants to prove that their proposal is consistent with the comprehensive plan and complies with all procedural requirements of the zoning ordinance. If a rezoning applicant provides competent, substantial evidence that its application is consistent with the comprehensive plan, the Board may still deny the application to accomplish “a legitimate public purpose,” at which point the Board has “the burden of showing that the refusal to rezone the property is not arbitrary, discriminatory, or unreasonable.”
2. The county’s petition also says, “Ultimately, the Court concluded that there was no competent substantial evidence that the Application did not comply with the Comprehensive Plan, nor was there competent substantial evidence to support the County’s legitimate public purpose for denying the Application. However, in reaching the above conclusions, the Court overlooked competent substantial record evidence on which the Board could have relied, or misapprehended several points of law or fact.”
“Under this Court’s limited scope of review, it must be determined whether the record contains any competent substantial evidence to support the Board’s denial. In evaluating the evidence presented, it does not matter whether there is also evidence to support a conclusion different from that reached by the Board for ‘the point is that when the facts are such as to give the County Commission a choice between alternatives, it is up to the County Commission to make that choice — not the circuit court.’”
As for the evidence that the BOCC made the correct decision, here is a summary of what the petition for rehearing says:
1. [The Application] is inconsistent with he Comprehensive Plan.
2. The open space character of the subject property is an integral part of the neighborhood.
3. The removal of the open space around which the surrounding existing neighborhood was developed and constructed would not protect nor maintain the neighborhood’s character
4. The golf course was opened in 1967, five years before the Pebble Creek Planned Development was rezoned. The golf course was included as a central part of the zoning, and integral to the neighborhood design.
5. The golf course also was an integral part of the neighborhood’s character. The golf course is identified on the plan as the center of the planned development, around which the other uses in the neighborhood were designed and planned.
6. Because the golf course came first, it is a central component — or cornerstone — of that planned development. To completely replace this use, which currently makes up 25 percent of the acreage of the planned development, with additional residential housing, is a significant change to the character of this golf course community.
7. There is testimony in the record taken by the ZHM that supplements the other record evidence that the existing 150-acre golf course is the centerpiece of the neighborhood, and that to completely eliminate its use and to replace it with a residential development would be to lose an integral part of the neighborhood itself.
8. Pebble Creek was “uniquely designed” to incorporate the golf course, and by removing it “you are removing the very thing that built the community.” The golf course was a “primary reason” or “major factor” for some of the homeowners to live in the community.
9. In the Court’s Order, the Court notes that “[t]he Board argues logically that because the neighborhood was designed and built around the golf course, the land acts as a fundamental ‘centerpiece,’” which appears to imply that that the Board’s determination about the neighborhood having been designed and built around the golf course was based merely on logic and inference, rather than substantial competent evidence in the record. However, the County used future land use maps, zoning maps, the prior approved plan, and lay witness fact-based testimony to support its determination.
10. The Board also cited evidence that supports that the retention of the existing zoning accomplishes “a legitimate public purpose.” As argued at the Hearing, the legitimate public purpose is to protect the character of the neighborhood, which is not only a recognized public purpose under current case law, but also a mandate of the County’s Comprehensive Plan.
11. Judge Huey also ruled that the Board’s decision was based, in part, on the belief that the president of Ace Golf “lacks good sense and common decency.” However, the basis for the Board’s denial must be found in its adopted resolution, and not in singular comments made by a particular commissioner regarding an application or voting on an application.
The Board’s petition concluded that, “The record contained competent, substantial evidence that the Application was inconsistent with the County’s Comprehensive Plan, and that there was a legitimate public purpose to maintain the existing zoning, and therefore support a denial of the Application. Moreover, the Court misstated the Board’s reasons for denial of the Application by relying on a commissioners’ comments rather than the Board-adopted resolution.”
Comm. Hagan says that once Judge Huey rules on the Petition for Rehearing, the county has 30 days to accept his decision or appeal the judge’s ruling to an appellate court.
Meanwhile, Green says, “We still feel that the BOCC made the right decision and the rehearing will give them the opportunity to give the judge more clarity to see that they did in fact use proper evidence in making their decision.”
The bottom line, she adds, is that, “This is my home. Rezoning the golf course will change completely the character and beauty of our neighborhood forever.”
She’s holding out hope that the county’s Tampa Sports Authority will be able to purchase the golf course and reopen it, as Comm. Hagan mentioned could happen at his June 10 New Tampa Town Hall meeting (as we reported last issue).
In the meantime, all Leslie Green can do is continue to wait.