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Rain Doesn't Dampen Spirits
Sun Herald - April 15, 1997
It's never supposed to rain on a golf course, but perhaps that doesn't count when it isn't built yet. The wet weather Monday didn't dampen the spirits of Bobcat Trail developers and PGA champion Bob Tway. They talked about the project to members of the community, the press and North Port Chamber of Commerce, as a drizzling rain drummed on a tent top set up near the middle of the property off Toledo Blade Boulevard. Bobcat Trail, when completed, will be a 480-acre golf course community with 428 single family homes and 112 villas. It may also have 250 rental apartments, although the decision on that isn't final, on the west side of Toledo Blade. That 110-acre parcel will include commercial office space. Kent Arnold of KEB Inc. in Jonesboro, Ark., developer of the planned community, talked to the group about North Port and Bobcat Trail, saying that Southwest Florida has increased his vocabulary. "I've had to learn a new language in Florida," Arnold said, "new words like quasi-judicial and SWIFTMUD. I found out the definition of SWIFTMUD. It means you'll be older than dirt before you get through with them." Arnold said he first discovered North Port on the internet. "When we came to look at it, we got off Interstate 75 on Toledo Blade and kept on driving," he said. "We saw all those roads and streets and I thought, 'My God, something's really happening here,'" he laughed. One of the things that sold him, he said, is that North Port's government is pro-growth, unlike some of the other communities he visited. He said it appears to be taken for granted in the South County area. "It's unusual to have a 15,000 population in a 75-square-mile city," he said. "North Port is so undiscovered. Bobcat Trail will give the area something it doesn't have -- a master planned community with a daily-fee championship golf course that is affordable, but really feels like an expensive community." Lee Singletary, head of Singletary Golf Services Inc., will be working on the golf course design with Tway. He said the course will be something "the community can be proud of." Tway agreed and said he was excited about it. "Planning the design of the 6,500-yard course is a "dream of mine," he added. Tway was the 1986 PGA Player of the Year. That was the year he holed a bunker shot on the 18th at Inverness in Toledo, Ohio, to beat out Greg Norman for the PGA Championship. The development still needs the approval of the North Port City Commission, which was scheduled to consider rezoning, the development concept plan and establishment of the a community development district Monday night. It already has the approval of the Planning and Zoning Advisory Board and preliminary approval of the commission. As a community development district, which would be a first in the city, state law would allow the company to sell bonds that are financed by special assessments that Bobcat Trail homeowners will pay. Money from the bonds will pay for the water and sewer systems. Once built, the systems would be turned over to the city to maintain. If the development proceeds as planned, the company hopes to have a grand opening of its models in February, and the golf course open by June. It may not be the last project in North Port. Arnold said KEB is trying to purchase the 2,300-acre Panacea, a property by Toledo Blade and I-75. Why the interest in the city? Arnold summed it up in a few words: "North Port is an opportunity waiting to happen."
By MARSHALL GROVE
North Port Editor |
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