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Collier Enterprises quietly pulled an application for a long-planned new town in eastern Collier County last week, raising questions of what, if anything, the company plans as county leaders continue to review rural growth plans.
In a statement on the website for the project, known as Rural Lands West, Collier Enterprises said it is "exploring all options for the future."
"We remain committed to helping meet Collier County’s future growth demands while embracing a historic opportunity to work with environmental groups to preserve thousands of acres of environmentally sensitive lands and wildlife habitat," the statement said.
The development had been planned for 4,000 acres off Oil Well Road east of Golden Gate Estates and would've included up to 10,000 homes. It could have had up to 1.9 million square feet of commercial development.
In a letter dated Jan. 4, Collier Enterprises Vice President Patrick Utter wrote to Mike Bosi, the county's planning and zoning director, that the company was withdrawing its application, which it had submitted in January 2016, effective immediately.
"Over the last three years, Collier Enterprises has navigated the permitting process in good faith, including receiving and responding to six comment letters from Collier County staff," Utter wrote.
"Based on discussions with Collier County Management during recent months, Collier Enterprises has decided to withdraw the Rural Lands West SRA application and consider other alternatives."
An SRA application, short for Stewardship Receiving Area, is an approval required for developing in the county's Rural Lands Stewardship Area program. The voluntary program allows landowners to build villages, such as Ave Maria, with shopping centers, schools and businesses, in Stewardship Receiving Areas, using credits earned by giving up their rights to develop more environmentally sensitive land.
The plan would have been to preserve more than 12,000 acres of agriculture, wildlife habitat and environmental flowways in exchange for building the development.
More: Collier Enterprises hosts neighborhood meeting on Rural Lands West
The first phase was to include 4,000 homes and a town center. The first resident was expected to move in by 2020.
Commissioner Bill McDaniel, whose district encompasses the project, said he didn't know the specifics of why the company withdrew. He said he wasn't part of the negotiations. However, he said, his understanding was that there was "inequity."
Developments, he said, demand "a certain amount" of return on investment.
"Business people are only going to take so much from a risk-reward standpoint," McDaniel said. "That's the inequity that transpired."
Though he said he was surprised that Collier Enterprises pulled out, McDaniel added that he "was wondering why it took so long." The negotiations, he said, had not been going "in as positive" a manner "as they needed to."
What the impacts ultimately will be are "still yet to be determined," McDaniel said.
"I believe this is just business," he said. "The job of Collier Enterprises is to maximize the assets."
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McDaniel said he "absolutely" expects the land to be developed, but he said he has not seen any new plans yet.
"What we don't have now is a planned development," he said.
McDaniel said the project "made sense to me" and included an "enormous amount of environmental protection."
"I wasn't in opposition of it," he said.
Mark Strain, chairman of Collier County's Planning Commission and the county's chief hearing examiner, said the developer put "a lot of work and a lot of years" into the project. He didn't expect to see the application withdrawn.
"There was quite a bit of activity with that project," he said. "I was completely surprised by it."
The developer faced some challenges, but Strain said he didn't know whether to consider them big or small.
"I had never really read the entire application because it hadn't got that far," he said. "It hadn't gotten to the Planning Commission."
Rural Lands West was the successor to a much bigger community that Collier Enterprises first proposed in 2006 called the Town of Big Cypress. That plan would have created 25,000 homes on 8,000 acres of agricultural land.
But the earlier plan raised some environmental issues, and the housing bust eventually shelved the project, Jim Beever, a principal planner with the Southwest Florida Regional Planning Council, told the Daily News in 2015.
The latest withdrawal comes at a time when county leaders are reviewing a variety of growth management plans, including the RLSA, which includes 185,000 acres around Immokalee.
The Rural Lands Stewardship Area plan is in the community outreach phase with 10 workshops completed and three more planned for 2019. County staff hopes to have a white paper for the RLSA restudy drafted around April or May.
"This move has no impact on what we're doing," McDaniel said. "This is a business decision by Collier Enterprises."
That sounds like progress to me. The best idea I have heard of for sometime. A project like RLW needs too much financing and the time horizon is so long, I can not see how they can expect reasonable ROI with any confidence. I guess we will be seeing more tomatoes on the ground along Immokalee Road for sometime to come. My chickens will be happy.
I think they figured out the market is just not there.... look how long it's taking for the new built houses to sell in GGE now...and they were planning 10,000..and no roads to support that
After pulling an application for a long-planned new town in eastern Collier County last week, Collier Enterprises is mulling a scaled-down version instead.
Instead of building a 4,000-acre town off Oil Well Road east of Golden Gate Estates, the company now intends to file an application to build what county growth plans define as a village that could be up to 1,000 acres.
"They probably won't file for another month or so," said Collier Enterprises spokeswoman Tina Matte, adding that the company was still going through some details.
With a potential project going from a 4,000-acre town to a smaller village, Collier Enterprises will continue its farming leases on the rest of its land for now, Matte said.
"It will be business as usual," she said.
How many units the new proposal would include and other details were not known Wednesday.
The larger Rural Lands West project would have included up to 10,000 homes. It could have had up to 1.9 million square feet of commercial development.
In case you missed it: Collier Enterprises withdraws application for long-planned 4,000-acre town
More: Mega-permit for rural Collier development draws opposition, support
Both the number of units and the commercial square footage would be scaled down for a village.
A village is also allowed fewer units per acre than a town. Density for a town can be up to four units per acre; a village is limited to three units per acre, said the county's planning and zoning director, Mike Bosi.
A village can be between 100 and 1,000 acres. Unlike a town, which can have a mixed-use town core and up to three satellite town centers with mixed-use, a village can have only one central mixed-use area, Bosi said.
How much commercial space will be required depends on the number of units. There is a minimum square footage requirement for commercial space, but no maximum, Bosi said.
The plan for Rural Lands West would have preserved more than 12,000 acres of agriculture, wildlife habitat and environmental flowways in exchange for building the town.
Rural Lands West would have been within the county's 185,000-acre Rural Lands Stewardship Area, where a voluntary program allows landowners to build towns and villages with shopping centers, schools and businesses, in Stewardship Receiving Areas, using credits earned by giving up their rights to develop more environmentally sensitive land.
How much land a village would need to preserve will depend on its size, Bosi said, adding that for a 1,000-acre village, 4,000 acres would need to be set aside for preservation.
More: Read the county's letter to Collier Enterprises outlining concerns for Rural Lands West
And: Read Collier Enterprises' full statement
Conservationists cautious about revamped plans
Some conservationists welcomed news of the withdrawal of Rural Lands West, but cautioned that even a smaller, new proposal needed to be cognizant of environmentally sensitive lands and endangered species like the Florida panther.
"We're glad that the development footprint is going to be smaller," said April Olson, senior environmental planning specialist for the Conservancy of Southwest Florida.
However, any new project needs to be pulled out of primary panther habitat and should not encircle preserve areas, because that "reduces the habitat viability," she said.
Olson said a proposed village also has to meet the goals of the RLSA: protecting listed species, their habitats and wetlands; preventing sprawl by creating compact, walkable communities; and preventing "premature conversion" of agriculture lands to development.
With Rural Lands West, she said, three-quarters of it would have "directly impacted" primary panther habitat.
From June: Collier Enterprises hosts neighborhood meeting on Rural Lands West
Under the Rural Lands West plan, preserve lands were "completely surrounded by development," said Nicole Johnson, director of environmental policy for the Conservancy.
Without Rural Lands West, she said, those areas "retain their functionality" for the Florida panther.
Bosi said a pre-application meeting with Collier Enterprises is scheduled for Jan. 23. From there, the company would have to submit an application within six months, or a new pre-application meeting would need to be held before an application is filed with the county, Bosi said.
If Collier Enterprises submits a downsized proposal, it wouldn't be the first time the company has scaled back the project.
Rural Lands West was the successor to a much bigger community that Collier Enterprises first proposed in 2006 called the Town of Big Cypress. That plan would have created 25,000 homes on 8,000 acres of agricultural land.
But the earlier plan raised some environmental issues, and the housing bust eventually shelved the project, Jim Beever, a principal planner with the Southwest Florida Regional Planning Council, told the Daily News in 2015.
'Driving people back to Lee County'
Randy Thibaut, CEO of Fort Myers-based Land Solutions Inc., said Rural Lands West would have filled a growing need for homes in the $250,000 to $400,000 range.
"That's the highest-demand price point in the Southwest Florida market," he said.
To that end, the eastern region of the county "is the only place for growth to occur" in that price range, Thibaut said. Most of that market is now going north, he said.
"All we're doing is driving people back to Lee County," Thibaut said.
However, with a market that has enjoyed growth for years and interest rates rising, Thibaut said he expects the market to level off some in 2019 and 2020.
"There's the perception that we're in a boom," he said. "But we're not."
Developer blames county bureaucracy
Collier Enterprises in a statement Monday pointed the finger at the county, arguing bureaucracy and "economic overreach by Collier County management" forced the company's decision to pull its application for the 4,000-acre town Jan. 4.
Bosi, however, said the county's application process is "indifferent to the applicant."
County officials sent Collier Enterprises a letter in November, outlining some of their concerns with the project, including transportation, infrastructure and affordable housing issues.
In the letter, Deputy County Manager Nick Casalanguida characterized the deliberations as "collaborative" but said "there are several areas where we fundamentally disagree."
A county spokeswoman said Tuesday the company did not respond to the county's Nov. 1 letter.
"Their only response was to pull the project," county spokeswoman Margie Hapke said in an email.
I've never seen a Collier Enterprise project that wasn't first class. Collier traded 160,000 acres of land to create the Big Cypress. They are one of the founders of Ave Maria.
Unlike most of the cookie cutter projects that litter Golden Gate, I think the Collier's have always been good for Collier county.
All of that may be true. Not it appears their direction is cookie cutter by breaking up their grand plans into smaller projects. One of the major stumbling blocks was their part in the improvement of infrastructure from what I read. They did not like it.
I think they figured out the market is just not there.... look how long it's taking for the new built houses to sell in GGE now...and they were planning 10,000..and no roads to support that
This. The prices in GGE are really starting to turn south compared to the two previous years as well. In areas where this isn't reflected in reduced listing prices, days on market are through the roof.
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