After nearly 15 years of debate over what’s going to happen to the former Baymeadows Golf Club course, we now have our answer.
Baymeadows Park, a mixed-use urban village project, was announced this week for a stretch of land that once served as the golf course’s thirteenth hole.
The project will be developed by Joyce Development Group, the company behind Tapestry Park and Mercado Walk at Palencia.
A site plan for Baymeadows Park shows four different retail buildings: a stand-alone, 2,500 square foot building with a drive-thru (expected to be a Starbucks Coffee location based on renderings), two 7,000 square foot buildings, and a two-story building with office and retail space. Altogether, the project will offer 35,000 square feet of office, retail, and restaurant space.
Behind these retail buildings will be a five-story, 100-room hotel.
The project will cost $15 million, and will not require any additional funding from the city.
The land has been marked for redevelopment ever since development company D.R. Horton purchased it – leading to the closure of Baymeadows Golf Club in 2005. D.R. Horton proposed a massive multi-use project with new houses and significantly more retail and restaurant space than Baymeadows Park will offer. But the proposal was vetoed due to neighbors’ concerns about increased traffic along an already busy stretch of Baymeadows Rd.
Multiple factors have allowed Baymeadows Park to move forward, though.
One is that D.R. Horton has scaled back its original plans, and while they’ll still be building new houses on the remainder of the course, there will be less houses than originally planned and less mixed-use space as well.
Another is Florida Department of Transportation’s $6.6 million project to improve traffic flow on Baymeadows Rd., which is expected to be completed by the fall – around the time construction begins on Baymeadows Park. This will help mitigate additional traffic from both that project and D.R. Horton’s development project.
And while increased traffic around an already busy area is concerned, Baymeadows Park also has the potential to bring new, interesting tenants to an already diverse corridor.
What do you think about the proposed Baymeadows Park project? Let us know in the comments or on social media!
