Conservancy buys Wildflower Golf Course

Posted by Nancy Guenther Chapman on September 8th, 2010 at 6:29 pm

Brazil­ian Pep­pers sur­round one of the few pieces of evi­dence that there was ever a golf course on the cor­ner of Gas­par­illa Pines Boule­vard and Placida Road. The Lemon Bay Con­ser­vancy plans to turn the 80-acre prop­erty into a park.

The spec­u­la­tion and the wait­ing are over — the for­mer Wild­flower Golf Course is now the prop­erty of the Lemon Bay Conservancy.

The Conservancy’s pres­i­dent, Jim Cooper, and vice-president,  Jim Wade, signed the clos­ing doc­u­ments Wednes­day, final­iz­ing the pur­chase of the 80-acre par­cel along Placida Road in Cape Haze, accord­ing to a press release.

The pur­chase price is approx­i­mately $750,000. The Con­ser­vancy has gone into debt to buy the land.

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“To obtain this unique prop­erty at a favor­able price (less than $10,000/acre) required LBC to bor­row slightly over $200,000 to final­ize this key acqui­si­tion,” Cooper said in the press release. “Bot­tom line, LBC will be actively rais­ing the funds required in order to retire this debt in a year’s time.”

Fund rais­ing began just six months ago, accord­ing to the Conservancy’s secretary,Vanessa Smith.

The Con­ser­vancy plans to turn the prop­erty into a pub­lic nature pre­serve, with walk­ing trails, scenic over­looks and native species iden­ti­fi­ca­tion. Con­tin­ued pub­lic involve­ment is expected in the phased restora­tion and preser­va­tion plans for the prop­erty, includ­ing the removal of exotics as well as deter­min­ing future park nat­ural fea­tures and pub­lic amenities.

One of the water bod­ies in the for­mer Wild­flower Golf Course.

“(This is) a sig­nif­i­cant mile­stone in Lemon Bay Conservancy’s mis­sion of sav­ing envi­ron­men­tally sig­nif­i­cant land,” Cooper said. “This was a true com­mu­nity team effort in which nearby neigh­bors and those from the com­mu­nity at large all con­tributed might­ily to this unique achievement.”

Bill Dun­son, a Penn­syl­va­nia State Uni­ver­sity pro­fes­sor emer­i­tus of biol­ogy and a part-time Engle­wood res­i­dent, has said the prop­erty is  “hugely sig­nif­i­cant to the Lemon Lake ecosys­tem.” Lemon Creek tra­verses the Wild­flower prop­erty and is vital to the health and well being of Lemon Lake —  a wide vari­ety of birds feed on the Lake’s aquatic life. Lemon Creek is also thought to be of sig­nif­i­cance to the Tar­pon Fish­ery, as juve­nile tar­pon make their way into its pro­tected water.

The Con­ser­vancy plans to con­nect the Wild­flower prop­erty with Amber­jack Envi­ron­men­tal Park.

Cooper said he is grate­ful for the sup­port and con­tri­bu­tions received from the com­mu­nity, from Boca Grande to Man­a­sota Key, and from­var­i­ous local leaders.

“To have raised the amount of money we were able to raise dur­ing this past sum­mer sea­son, when so many peo­ple are away from the area, was truly heart warm­ing,” he said.

For more infor­ma­tion, go to http://www.englewoodedge.com/2010/08/02/enthusiasm-will-turn-wildflower-golf-course-into-park/#more-31768

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