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Couple build dream homes on the green

By ELIZABETH BETTENDORF
Published October 7, 2006

TRINITY - Jeff Marsh used to play golf with his best friend at the Fox Hollow golf course in southwest Pasco County and imagined what it would be like to live on the 15th hole.

"We looked at the undeveloped land around the fairways and green and thought, 'Wow, it would be nice to have a lot overlooking this,'" recalls Marsh, a financial analyst.

Now Marsh and his wife, Krista, are living that dream.

They're building a house on that exact spot in the new Trinity community of Mirasol in the Champions' Club.

The Champions' Club is a gated golf course community overlooking the 18-hole championship golf course at Fox Hollow Golf Club, which opened more than a decade ago. The semiprivate course is the last designed and built by venerable golf-course architect Robert Trent Jones Sr.

Both 34, Krista and Jeff grew up in Pasco County.

When they left for college in that pre-development era of cattle ranches and citrus groves, they couldn't imagine coming back - much less buying a luxury home in a master-planned golf course community.

But times changed.

Florida boomed.

Pasco's star rose.

They never saw the Pasco phenomenon coming, they say. They just were attracted to the Trinity area because of "the newness, the freshness and how up-to-date it was," Jeff recalls.

In 1998, they moved to Trinity Oaks. Those were the early days when there was little else around, "not even a Kash n' Karry," recalls Krista, a private tutor who worked for several years as kindergarten and first-grade teacher at Trinity Elementary School.

As Pasco grew, the couple forged ahead and built a house in the neighboring new community, the Champions' Club. The area was quickly changing from rural to suburban with major box stores and chain restaurants moving in.

It was a turning point for the Champions' Club, a time when asking prices were high, interest rates low, and a cadre of smart young couples were moving in.

Many were old friends, some were new.

The Champions' Club, which adjoins the $1.5-billion master-planned community of Trinity, is one of the largest communities of its kind in the Tampa Bay area.

"The Champions' Club really established Trinity as a high-end place to live," Jeff says.

Today, more than half of the community's 368 home sites sprawl along the golf course, while many others overlook lakes, woods and conservation areas. The Champions' Club is made up of seven Mediterranean-style villages. Homes in some villages must offer a minimum of 2,700 square feet of living space, while other villages require homes provide at least of 3,800 square feet. Residential prices range from $700,000 to more than $2-million, which includes the buyers' chosen home site.

Pricey, yes, but it hasn't scared away the young and ambitious.

The Marshes count among their circle of friends at least seven other 30-something couples who live in Champions' Club. Most have young children, including the Marshes, whose daughter, Alivia, is 11-months.

"And we all have golf carts," Krista said with a laugh.

In Fox Hollow, golf carts are the major mode of transportation to the club swimming pool, the clubhouse for dinner, to tennis lessons, yoga, even the bus stop at the end of their gated community.

"At 4 p.m. you'll see parents picking up their kids in the golf carts," Krista says.

The golf carts also provide house-to-house transportation, especially to the regular Thursday and Friday night group dinners.

Most nights involve group dining. That means everyone takes the kids up to the clubhouse for a bite to eat, or the neighbors just show up - the way they did for Krista's homemade spaghetti one night last week.

The couple likes Champions' Club so much that they're already building another home. They sold the one they built two years ago to Krista's sister and are living in a leased house while they build another - the one on the 15th hole of Fox Hollow.

It's a Nohl Crest home - a second time around for the Marshes and Nohl Crest Homes, a national building company formed in 1985.

"We love them, because when they're done with the house, they're done. They don't have to keep coming back to fix things," Krista raves.

In the few short weeks they've been living in the leased home, Krista has styled the interior of the house with the panache of a decorator of model homes.

She blended garage-sale finds like the wicker and wood chair and ottoman in Alivia's room and her sister-in-law's childhood dresser with new stylish pieces like the Bali-style wardrobe in the master bedroom.

The house is filled with original artwork, a scattering of well-placed accessories like the chunky wicker candlesticks in the great room.

The Marshes already know their neighbors on either side and across the street, where Krista helped rearrange the furniture and redecorate for about $80.

The coolest thing yet?

Their Realtor asked Krista if she would consider styling some of the model homes in Champions' Club.

She can't think of a better offer because she and Jeff are in the neighborhood to stay.

"It's become everything we thought it would be. It's outperformed my expectations," Jeff says. "We're not real estate speculators. We didn't identify it on a map as a place that would make a lot of money for us. We had ties to the Pasco area. It's where our childhoods began. We were just coming back to our roots."

Elizabeth Bettendorf can be reached at ebettendorf@hotmail.com.

[Last modified October 7, 2006, 06:38:06]