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JAMES THORNERLand purchases will allow Grey Hawk, an upscale development in Odessa, to offer 181 homes, developers say.
ODESSA - By buying property from six neighboring landowners, the developers of Grey Hawk at Lake Polo plan to triple the number of homes at their upscale project southwest of State Road 54 and the Suncoast Parkway.
Recent agreements to buy 110 additional acres will let business partners Dan Dunn and Mario Polo boost the number of lots from 61 to 181, Dunn said Tuesday.
Groundbreaking on the original 61 lots is scheduled for September. A Grey Hawk welcome center that opened three weeks ago continues to drum up sales. Buyers have reserved 27 lots, 11 of them fronting the project's 12-acre fishing lake.
Grey Hawk is unique in Pasco County's SR 54/Suncoast Parkway area for offering larger lots to a better-heeled buyer.
Lots sizes will range from a half acre and a third of an acre in the first phase to one-fourth acre in the latter phase. Square footage in the houses will mostly fall between 2,000 and 3,000. Prices run from about $320,000 to $650,000.
Grey Hawk has named Lindhorst Construction, a custom house builder from Spring Hill, its preferred builder for the first 61 homes. But buyers can hire their own contractor if they please.
Three large builders have reserved the remaining 120 lots: Windjammer Home Builders, Samuelson Builders and Premier Homes of Southwest Florida.
Grey Hawk's nontraditional amenities will include a butterfly garden adorned with four marble statues representing the four seasons, a separate tropical garden, an artificial waterfall fashioned from slate and practice putting greens.
But Dunn said one of his development's chief assets is its location. At the gates of the neighborhood will run a newly widened SR 54. The Suncoast Parkway lies less than a mile to the east.
"You're 20 minutes away from an international airport, you're 35 minutes away from beaches, yet you're surrounded by horse parks," Dunn said.
This is Dunn's first project as a developer, but the bug has clearly bitten him.
He's also contracted to buy hundreds of acres west of Moon Lake Road, already approved for an 1,100-home community called Indian Lake Ranch.
The land, once part of the Dobry family's extensive Pasco holdings, is the former home of the Moon Lake Gardens and Dude Ranch.
The ranch was a pre-World War II millionaires' playground that hosted such notables as Babe Ruth, Gloria Swanson and Cornelius Vanderbilt Jr.
If the land deal goes through, Dunn said, he's enlisted an undisclosed national company to build 750 houses.
-James Thorner covers growth and development in Pasco County. He can be reached at 813 909-4613 or toll-free 1-800-333-7505, ext. 4613. His e-mail address is thorner@sptimes.com