In the Know: New homes site breaks ground on Livingston

Q: What is being built on the eastern side of Livingston Road a little north of Vanderbilt?

— Larry Israelite, North Naples 

Q: Do you know what’s breaking ground on Livingston, east side, between Vanderbilt and Immokalee?

— Allison D. Callas, North Naples

A: Dump trucks continually rumbling down a wide, dusty dirt trail off the eastern edge of Livingston Road signal the start of Sereno Grove, a Lennar single-family residential development.

Although Sereno Grove’s entrance will be off Livingston, the development’s 64 homes won’t be visible from the north-south connector in North Naples. Its private entry road will snake about a quarter mile through a wooded area before arriving at the 45-acre gated community abutting Wilshire Lakes, a subdivision that has its entrance off Vanderbilt Beach Road.

Sereno Grove’s entrance off Livingston is north of Vanderbilt Beach Road and between the single-family residential gated communities of Sienna Reserve and Marsala at Tiburón Golf Club. The community’s entry road, Nicholas Way, snakes through Tiburón’s conservation easement and serves as a temporary construction entrance.

Sereno Grove was in the news a year ago, just months after Lennar Corp. acquired WCI Communities, the Bonita Springs developer behind the proposed subdivision. As the developer sought final approval for Sereno Grove from Collier County officials, a few residents of Wilshire Lakes complained to county commissioners that one of the new community’s roads was planned to be built just 10 feet from their properties.

In June 2017 the proposed plat was pulled from the agenda of the county commission meeting that July because of the residents’ complaints. Commissioners postponed approval of Sereno Grove's layout until the fall, asking the developer and Wilshire Lakes residents and their attorneys to return to the negotiating table. 

Last July the developer agreed to revise the development’s layout, moving the end of Nicholas Way about 100 feet away from the property’s eastern perimeter, relocating one of the home lots and restricting one of the detached homes to a single-story residence. A 6-foot-tall wall with a 10-foot-wide landscaped area will separate the new community from the backyards of the Wilshire Lakes homes abutting the development.

The parties amicably resolved their disputes, according to a memorandum of understanding dated Oct. 4, 2017. The county commission approved the plans Oct. 24 as part of the board’s consent agenda.

Some of Sereno Grove’s homes on three roads ending in cul-de-sacs will abut one of two lakes totaling nearly 3 acres, plans show. Less than 70 percent of the community’s more than 45 acres will be developed. Nearly 14 acres will be preserved as conservation areas of native vegetation.

Although separated by preserve area, a few of the nine holes of Tiburón Golf Club’s recently remastered Black Course will be near parts of Sereno’s entry road and southernmost homes, plans show. When WCI proposed the development in 2015, residents of Marsala at Tiburón were outraged at the original plans to clear trees behind the golf course. Those residents formed a self-funded nonprofit group, Save the Preserves, hired an attorney to represent them and also won concessions that pacified their concerns, according to a story in the Naples Daily News. 

Have a local question? Email it with your name and city of residence to intheknow@naplesnews.com. Tim Aten’s "In the Know" is published every Monday and Wednesday. Follow In the Know on Facebook now at facebook.com/timaten.intheknow. 

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