In the Know: New school, homes, retail center planned on Immokalee Road

Q: What’s going on at the plot of land across from TwinEagles? We noticed that a plot of land has been cleared on the south side of eastbound Immokalee Road, just west of the entrance to TwinEagles. Can you shed some light on this? Thank you.

— Kathy Gerber, Naples

A:Collier County Public Schools is clearing property it owns to keep its permit active for the eventual construction of an elementary school on that corner of Immokalee Road and Moulder Drive.

About 10 years ago, the school district obtained the permits necessary to build the unnamed future school, referred to for now as Elementary L School, and incurred more than $1.3 million in expenses, including $428,830 in Florida panther mitigation, to completely design and fully permit the elementary school site. But based upon revised student projections after the Great Recession in the late 2000s, the school district did not build the school as planned.

The district has been able to twice extend permits obtained from the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the South Florida Water Management District, but the final extension was set to expire in 2020, and the Corps of Engineers permit would lapse if construction activities did not begin before then, public documents show.

“If the Corps permit expires, any future construction on the Elementary L site would require an entirely new Corps permit and potentially open the project up to more mitigation and preservation requirements under new and more stringent Corps permitting standards because the school district would be forced to start the Corps permitting process all over again,” according to an executive summary from the consent agenda of a regular school board meeting in March.

At that meeting, the board approved the use of capital outlay funds for a $51,700 contract with Q. Grady Minor & Associates of Bonita Springs for its engineering and environmental consulting services to prepare excavation, grading, drainage plans and specifications to meet all environmental compliance requirements to eventually clear and fill the Elementary L school site, records show. 

“Clearing and filling the site, prior to their expiration date of July 10, 2020, would constitute the commencement of construction under the current development permits and all permits would remain active and valid until the project is eventually completed at some date in the future,” according to the executive summary.

A new date or timeline has not been set for construction of an elementary school on the 22 acres the school district owns at 2400 Moulder Drive.

“There are currently no plans to move forward with the construction of an elementary school in the immediate future,” School District spokeswoman Jennifer L. Kupiec wrote in an email.

GL Homes development

Before a new school is built on Immokalee Road, other development projects are planned nearby.

To the east of the school property will be the first phase of GL Homes’ 850-home single-family development on Immokalee Road south of TwinEagles, a residential golf community.

“We have submitted plans to start earthwork after the first of next year,” said Kevin Ratterree, vice president of planning for GL Homes, a Florida-based home builder.

The 563-acre development in Collier County is proposed to stretch south from Immokalee Road to the Cypress Canal. Its entrance on the south side of Immokalee Road will line up with TwinEagles' entrance on the north side of the road. The southwestern edge of the property abuts the Olde Florida Golf Club course, which begins at the current end of the Vanderbilt Beach Road extension.

Although the new development has been approved as TwinEagles South, the proposed gated community has yet to be named and is not part of TwinEagles or aligned with that subdivision, Ratterree said.

“It’s a stand-alone community. There’s no affiliation or plan for those two communities to be related in any way,” he said, noting that the community’s name, pricing and construction timeline have not been decided yet.

The first phase will have about 300 single-family home sites on cul-de-sacs around 11 small lakes and an amenity center. After the buildout of future phases, the residential community is expected to have 853 units. The conceptual layout for homesites in additional phases has not been finalized, Ratterree said.

All of the streets are proposed to be named for native flowers or flowering plants and trees, such as Azalea Way, Dahlia Court, Jacaranda Drive and Peony Terrace, according to Waldrop Engineering plans filed with the county’s Growth Management Department.

The property includes designated preservation areas and archaeological sites. A 300-foot-wide wildlife corridor along its western edge lines up with a concrete culvert that serves as a wildlife crossing. The 20-foot span was built in 2004 beneath Immokalee Road 3 miles east of Collier Boulevard, allowing wildlife to cross from the property on the western border of TwinEagles to the TwinEagles South property across the street.

Immokalee Square

The GL Homes development will wrap around Immokalee Square, a mixed-use project planned on an L-shaped property on the southwest corner of Immokalee Road and Catawba Street. The 24.5-acre development is proposed to have a commercial component up to 80,000 square feet fronting Immokalee Road with an undetermined number of multi-family housing units behind it, county development records show.

“We are in the early stages right now. We don’t know exactly what can get approved,” said Antonio Brown, president of Nian Custom Homes, a family-owned-and-operated homebuilder in Naples.

Immokalee Square will include a retail strip that is 20,000 to 80,000 square feet with proposals for a commercial daycare center and affordable housing units, Brown said.

“I think there’s a need for affordable housing in that area,” he said. “That’s what we’re planning to do.”

To prepare for development there, a pre-application meeting was held with county planners in August to discuss amending the county’s growth management plan and rezoning the property, which is within the county’s Rural Fringe Mixed-Use District on land designated for development east of Collier Boulevard.

Following the planning stage, expect to see some activity on that corner in 2020.

“I think in a year and a half, if everything goes well, we would have the plans ready,” Brown said. “The idea is that as soon as we have it approved is to start building.”

The two parcels combined for the project were purchased by Immokalee Square LLC in July from World Strategic Alliances for $2.4 million. World Strategic Alliances bought the land from a Naples couple in May 2016 for $1.2 million, county property records show.

Three years ago, the previous landowner had considered developing an elderly care community there, county records show.

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