SEMINOLE - Dirt is flying at the former Holiday Campground as developers make way for a $120-million upscale residential community.
After several failed attempts to turn the 101-acre tract into luxury housing, the longtime RV park at 10000 Park Blvd. is going condo.
Excavation crews broke ground in early March, digging out retention ponds, hauling concrete sewer pipes and bulldozing about 70 trees, said Lowell Whittum, director of field operations for one of the project's subcontractors, Terra Excavating.
Developers anticipate construction on Seminole Isle, a gated community with 420 condominiums and 88 multistory townhomes, will last four years. The tropical theme, developers said, will include a resort-style pool and clubhouse, tennis courts, a fishing pier, and aluminum roofing on sandstone-colored buildings.
The homes will range from 1,500 to 2,100 square feet.
"We hope to start on our first building this month," said Ed Suchora, president for the Tampa region of Beazer Homes, the project's builder.
Sale of the units, not priced yet, will start in the fall.
Beazer is partnering with Tampa developer Scott Griffith, president of Park Boulevard Development, to construct the 32 residential buildings.
Griffith purchased the property for $14-million last July from Bill Baynard Jr., whose family had owned Holiday Campground since 1946. After installing roadways and storm drainage, Griffith will sell the property - piece by piece - to Beazer for $37-million.
Sitting on the shores of Long Bayou, the property is surrounded by water on three sides and developers have to be wary of the surrounding ecosystem.
Half of the land is wetlands preservation and cannot be built on, said City Planner Mark Ely. All construction must stay at least 50 feet clear of the web of mangroves that line the bayou.
Ely said workers also are clearing out about 11 acres of Brazilian peppers. These fast-growing trees cluster around the mangroves' roots, suffocating the mangroves and disturbing the marshy habitat.
"They have to clean a football field worth of peppers out of that area," he said.
This isn't the first time developers have tried to negotiate construction on the old campground.
The Baynard family almost sold the 600-lot RV park to another local developer in 2001. But a lawsuit between the Largo-based La Perla Development Group and the Holiday Campground, along with "financing issues," ended that agreement, Baynard said. He would not give further specifics.
Baynard then tried to develop the site himself, but health problems and a lack of funding killed his plan for a 350-unit condominium complex and executive golf course.
Baynard sold the land to Griffith last summer.
Ten-foot dirt piles now stand where seasonal campers used to hold shuffleboard and horseshoe tournaments. Some concrete pipes are half the size of the recreational vehicles that used to call Holiday home.
Baynard says he won't miss it.
"Pinellas County has grown like crazy," he said. "The land became too valuable to be an RV park and needed to be something else and grow with the population."
- Information from Times files was used in this report.
