Article Courtesy of The
Daytona Beach News-Journal
By Katie Kustura
Published November 19, 2020
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For about 50 years the site at 800 E. Euclid Ave. in DeLand was a hilly, par-72
golf course with narrow fairways.
Sandhill Golf Course
closed in 2017, and the former fairways have become
overgrown while the 10,000-square-foot clubhouse remains
boarded up.
But this month the DeLand City Commission gave Orlando-based
Elevation Development the final nod of approval to designate
the former golf course as a brownfield site.
Eventually, Elevation Development plans to put 541
single-family homes and 320 multi-family units on the
approximately 168-acre site, according to city documents.
The city's Planning Board at 5 p.m. Wednesday will get a
look at a request from the owners of the parcel, Sandhill
Enterprises, LLC, to change the property's zoning to
Beresford Springs Planned Development. |
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Before the cleanup of the site can begin, a Brownfield Advisory Committee, a
role filled by the city's Economic Development Committee, will first need to
review the Brownfield Site Rehabilitation Agreement for the property.
The agreement could make the site eligible for the Voluntary Cleanup Tax
Credit program, which was created in 1998 "to encourage participants to
conduct voluntary cleanup of certain drycleaning solvent contaminated sites
and brownfield sites in designated brownfield areas," according to the
Department of Environmental Protection.
The Brownfields Revelopment Act went into effect in 1997. Its goals,
according to the Department of Environmental Protection, include: to reduce
public health and environmental hazards on existing commercial and
industrial sites that are abandoned or underused due to these hazards;
create financial and regulatory incentives to encourage voluntary cleanup
and redevelopment of sites; and derive cleanup target levels.
Cobb Cole attorney Michael Sznapstajler, who is representing the developers,
explained the process during the City Commission's first hearing on the
resolution.
The designation "does not affect the land use, it does not affect the
zoning, but is the beginning of a process that someone endeavoring to clean
up and redevelop a property would undertake," Sznapstajler said. "You go out
and you investigate the site; you sample soil, groundwater, surface water,
look at what the issues are out there; you study the history of the site."
Sznapstajler said once the issues are identified, a cleanup plan is made.
The plan is then sent to the Department of Environmental Protection for
review.
"I think it makes sense for us to designate it as a brownfield regardless of
what happens there," Vice Mayor Charles Paiva said during the Oct. 19
meeting. "I feel like this is a tool in the toolbox to help us fix some of
the damage that occurred much like at the other golf course south of town."
The 105-acre DeLand Country Club, which closed in 2012, has since been
transformed into Country Club Corners, a Publix-anchored shopping center
created by Tailwinds Development.
Mayor Bob Apgar asked Sznapstajler how long the cleanup and remediation took
in that case.
"We got through that in a little under two years, which, for an
environmental cleanup, is impressive," Sznapstajler said.
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