Quail Hollow Golf Course Inches Ever Closer To Being Replaced By Homes

Quail Hollow Golf & Country Club, which opened in 1965, continues to inch closer towards extinction.

On March 9, the Pasco County Development Review Committee (DRC) voted to okay a zoning change and move forward plans to convert the 18-hole golf course into a residential community of nearly 400 multi-family homes. The Dade City courthouse was filled with current Quail Hollow residents who objected to the plan, to no avail.

“Bottom line, this is terrible for our community,’’ said Jack Diamond, who lives on Golf Course Loop.

The DRC didn’t agree, by a 4-1 vote.  The only member to vote against the plan was director of planning Chris Williams.

The project now seeks approval from the Pasco Board of County Commissioners, which meets next on Wednesday, April 12, 11 a.m, although the agenda for that meeting had not been set at our press time.

Andre Carollo’s Pasco Office Park LLC, the owner of the golf course (located at 6225 Old Pasco Rd.), was represented at the DRC meeting by New Port Richey land-use attorney Barbara Wilhite.

Carollo has been seeking to rezone the property from R1, which allows for one home per lot on 20,000-sq.-ft. lots, to a Master Planned Unit Development (MPUD), which would allow for homes on 4,000–sq.-ft. lots.

Most of the Quail Hollow residents in attendance at the Dade City Courthouse, as well as a number from adjoining neighborhoods, argued that 400 homes being built on the 80 or so acres of the 175-acre site was too dense, and that they would lose the green space they had bought into when purchasing their homes.

“You can’t stop progress,’’ said Scott Winter of Country Club Rd. “But, let’s be realistic about the amount of homes you can put on here.”

Wilhite said she and her staff did everything possible to appease local residents’ concerns while meeting all of the requirements from the county.

The golf course, which closed in 2008 during the economic downturn, was purchased for $1.7-million in 2010 by Carollo and reopened in 2011 after an extensive renovation that was well received.

But in 2015, plans were first disclosed  to plow over the course to build homes. In Jan. 2016, according to Wilhite, a rezoning request was filed seeking permission to build 400 detached homes and townhouses over the golf course, with room set aside for a day care center and a 30,000-sq.-ft. office building.

In April of 2016, Wilhite said a number of changes were made to the plan, including removing the townhomes, removing some residential units from the north end of the project and replacing it with flood draining and open space, and extending buffers between the existing homes and new homes.

A meeting was held with residents in May, and Wilhite said her team continued to work hard with the existing homeowners associations to gain their support for the plan.

“We agreed to a binding conceptual plan,” Wilhite said. “We’ve never done that before…those are the commitments we are making.”

Also, Wilhite said the developer is improving Old Pasco Rd. by adding two turn lanes onto Boom Boom Dr., which leads into Quail Hollow. “We’re quite proud of what we’ve done,’’ she said.

To address potential flooding — one of the bigger concerns raised and also a concern voiced by the DRC at the last meeting in January — Wilhite added Gregg Singleton of Singleton Engineering to her team. He presented a stormwater summary to the DRC and said there were plans to alleviate any flooding issues.

“This is just the first step,’’ he said, while offering an overview of the drainage flow on the property. He also promised detailed reviews as the project progressed, and added, “If we find issues, we will remediate them.”

Still, current Quail Hollow residents like Michael Morgan, who said he bought his home on Sandbagger Lane 40 years ago because of the golf course, were not pleased, and cited are other issues as well — traffic on Old Pasco Rd., a two-lane road, which also will be home to new combined middle and high school campus in August, and the loss of privacy for which the homeowners feel they paid a premium, as well as higher taxes.

“Why bother having zoning if every 10 years we change it?,’’ asked James Luczynski, who also argued that traffic and density would devalue the home prices of current residents.

Two DRC members — assistant county administrators Cathy Pearson and Flip Mellinger — who expressed support for the residents at the last meeting seemed satisfied with Wilhite’s updated report.

“I feel for the homeowners, but I also feel the developer has done everything he could to make it right,’’ Mellinger said.