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BILL COATSA country club owner wants to knock down the wall and add a neighborhood. He may have to ask a judge.
LUTZ - Rand Gentry has big plans at Cheval. But he may need court orders along with his building permits.
Gentry plans to develop 22 homes, starting at $1-million apiece, off Cheval's entrance at N Dale Mabry Highway. He vows to build up to 100 condominiums or other housing near the driving range at Cheval Golf and Country Club.
But the Cheval Property Owners Association may stand in Gentry's way.
This week, the homeowners group prevailed in a zoning showdown with Gentry, as Hillsborough County commissioners unanimously rejected Gentry's request to transfer development rights from the golf course practice area to a 22-acre former horse farm near Dale Mabry.
The association also disputes whether Gentry, the majority owner in a group that bought the country club last September, has the right to build housing there. Those rights were assigned to the homeowners association, its lawyer has argued.
The dispute has spawned so much confusion that the proposed rezoning made double trips to both a zoning hearing master and the County Commission before being defeated.
"I think this is fraught with legal problems," Commissioner Jan Platt said during the first hearing on May 25. "However this turns out, I believe this is going to go to court."
A key issue in the case was whether a developer can buy property beside Cheval's wall, knock down the wall, and add a neighborhood to Cheval.
The country club can, said Gentry's attorney, Biff Craine. It owns the wall separating Cheval from the former horse farm. Gentry has a $1-million deal to buy the old farm. Just inside the wall, the club owns the golf course land between the wall and Cheval Boulevard. And on Cheval Boulevard, the club has an easement allowing all club members use of Cheval's private roads. Gentry plans to require through deed restrictions that every homeowner in the new section belong to the country club.
"There's no way they're going to be able to prevent us from using the right of way we're going to use," Gentry said.
Three weeks ago, the owners association sued Gentry for starting road construction there. It asked a judge to order the roadway to be removed.
Gentry said he had not seen the suit, but it was a misunderstanding. The road work wasn't linked to the housing project, Gentry said. It was to help dump trucks reach the golf course sand traps, which are being reshaped.
If Tuesday's rezoning had passed, Gentry would have been allowed to build up to 39 houses on the horse farm land. Without the change, he is limited by the existing zoning to 22. Gentry said all the lots have been reserved by current or former Cheval residents.
Technically, the proposal also would have rezoned all of Cheval East, the older, ritzier half of Cheval with some 500 homes. Cheval East is governed by a single unified zoning that limits the remaining development to some 100 houses or other residences, most of those on land owned by the country club. Gentry wanted to transfer 39 of those future houses to the horse farm property.
Staff attorneys and planners for the county concluded that was legal without the approval of Cheval's other residents. But Martin Smith, the advisory zoning judge, decided in April that they deserved a say-so.
The homeowners association polled residents last month. In results that Gentry disputed, association president Lea Welch said 54 percent voted against annexing the new development, 20 percent voted for it, and 24 percent didn't vote.
The next day, the association's vice president, Louis Timchak, exhorted commissioners to oppose the rezoning.
"If we didn't say "yes,' " Timchak insisted, "you must say "no.' "
- Bill Coats can be reached at 813 269-5309 or coats@sptimes.com.