DAYTONA BEACH — More than 150 Indigo Lakes neighborhood residents jammed into a meeting room Wednesday night to talk about plans for their community’s idled golf course really only had one point of contention: How quickly they should hire an attorney.

There appeared to be a universal rejection of Indigo Lakes golf course owner Colin Jon’s proposal to build more than 530 new residential units on the greens and fairways and shrink the 18-hole golf course down to nine truncated holes.

The group of neighbors decided to get a petition drive moving, raise money for attorneys’ fees through a GoFundMe account, keep everyone informed on a neighborhood website and meet with a few lawyers before deciding who they might retain.

“If we unite, it’s amazing what we’ll accomplish,” said Tom Hollman, one of the neighborhood’s homeowners’ association presidents.

Within the next two months presidents of the seven homeowners’ associations within Indigo Lakes will decide when to kick off their fundraising drive, and soon neighborhood residents will try to come to an agreement on whether it’s best to hire an attorney as soon as possible or wait until Jon officially files plans with the city. There were passionate arguments on both sides at the nearly 90-minute meeting.

“We can’t force them to do anything,” one woman said. “We’ll probably have to reach some sort of compromise. I’d rather see him put it to a reasonable use than look like a bankrupt community, which is what it looks like now.”

“No plans have been filed with the city,” another woman shouted out. “You’re asking to raise hands to support an attorney when we don’t know what we’re fighting.”
 

The woman worried that a legal fight would be futile.

“You know in the end they’ll still get whatever the city lets them have,” she said.

“But if you wait, they’ll be working with the city,” countered Dick Zimmerman, an HOA president who lives in a home just north of the driving range.
 

Zimmerman argued it would be best to hire an attorney, and then keep the attorney in a holding pattern until things progressed.

Another neighborhood resident pointed out that a solid legal fight would at least tie up Jon’s plans “and cost him money.”

“You want to get the attorney so you can react to everything they propose,” one woman said. “I feel without representation we’re already behind the eight ball.”

One resident suggested the neighborhood buy the golf course and then turn it over to the city for use as a park. But City Commissioner Rob Gilliland said the city doesn’t have any interest in maintaining the 250-acre property, which could cost upwards of $500,000 per year.

Gilliland explained to the group that if Jon pushes ahead with his plan he would be in for a months-long review process at the city, neighborhood meetings to let residents know what’s happening and votes from city commissioners to change Daytona Beach’s comprehensive plan and rezone much of the golf course.

“At this point he’s got a long row to hoe to do anything,” Gilliland said. “The City Commission will be the judges.”

Some of the HOA presidents have already talked to a local attorney who asked for a $2,500 retainer fee. But with the pushback from some people at Wednesday’s meeting it was agreed to check out other lawyers before making a decision.

While some in the neighborhood said they’re worried about keeping up with an attorney’s bills, a few of the HOA presidents pointed out if all 465 homeowners chip in the expenses will be fairly painless.

Zimmerman doesn’t understand why some of his neighbors would risk losing $10,000 or more of equity in their home when they could prevent that by paying less than $100.

“Your property values are not going up as much as the rest of the city because of the uncertainty,” Gilliland said.

Jon “has hurt us by his inaction,” one neighborhood resident said, adding the overgrown golf course that’s been closed for a year “looks like a pasture.”

For nearly 15 years, residents of the Indigo Lakes neighborhood have been living under the threat of the 18-hole golf course being torn up and turned into businesses and hundreds of new homes. At least five times since 2005, owners of the 250-acre golf course have made moves toward turning the emerald fairways into clusters of new homes, condos and shops.

It’s been happening again this spring. And now residents of the roughly 650 houses, condos and apartments in Indigo Lakes are nervously waiting to see what happens on the links that are intertwined with the neighborhood west of Williamson Boulevard near International Speedway Boulevard.

No official plans have been submitted at City Hall, and it’s possible the latest proposal will fizzle like others have. But residents are seeing surveyors walking around the golf course and planting stakes, and they’re worried.

“I don’t want to look out my windows and see tree removal, tractors and strangers,” one woman said. “I will volunteer to do whatever we need to save Indigo.”
 

Indigo Lakes Golf Club has changed ownership five times in the past 30 years. In 1994, the 18-hole Indigo Lakes facility was purchased for $5 million. In 2006, the golf course sold for $3.6 million.
 

In 2013, Jon’s group of investors bought the 18-hole property out of bankruptcy for $1.25 million.

Once a private members-only operation, in recent years the course opened to the public. Now no one plays there. After sporadic shutdowns because of hurricane damage in 2016 and 2017, the course closed down a year ago and has been deserted since.

If Jon, a Chinese-Canadian investor who was not at Wednesday night’s meeting, goes all the way with his golf course reinvention plan, he’ll build single-family homes on the 1st, 9th, and 10th holes as well as the driving range — all of which are located in the center of the neighborhood near the clubhouse.

On the south end of the course, the 11th hole would be developed with commercial uses and connected to Williamson Boulevard. The 12th hole would become a park, and a walking bridge would connect the park to the commercial development.

Most of the other back nine holes would be built over with multi-family housing. Four of the back nine fairways have homes next to them now, homes that would trade their golf course frontage for apartments or condos.

All newly developed areas would include a 50-foot landscape buffer between the new construction and the existing homes.

There would still be a golf course, but it would only have nine holes. That shortened course would include current holes 2 through 8 in the section of the golf course that wraps around the northern end of the neighborhood.

The clubhouse would be reconstructed on the current site with a new banquet room and community pool. The golf course would no longer allow carts and players would have to walk it.

The course wouldn’t be staffed, and players would register and pay online. An entry code would be provided that the players would use to access the teeing area.

All of the new residential and commercial development would be concentrated on the south end of the neighborhood — well away from the winter home Jon owns in the northwest corner of Indigo Lakes.

“Is that a viable offer or is it a smokescreen?” one neighborhood resident asked. “It’s one of the dumbest ideas I’ve ever heard.”