Alachua County Commission explores appeal of City of Alachua golf course decision, moves forward with West End Park improvements

BY JENNIFER CABRERA

GAINESVILLE, Fla. – At the March 24 Regular Meeting, the Alachua County Commission voted to ask the County Attorney to explore appealing a decision by the City of Alachua to approve a golf course, moved forward with recognizing Alachua County Community Remembrance Day on August 19, and discussed Commissioners’ priorities for improvements to West End Park.

Tomoka Hills golf course

During General Public Comment, Soorya Lindberg asked Commissioners to look into a recent decision by the City of Alachua Planning and Zoning Board to approve a site plan amendment for the Tomoka Hills property, owned by Tower Hill Insurance. Lindberg said the original site plan, approved in April 2025, was for a private golf course for Tower Hill employees, but the amendment changed the users of the golf course from Tower Hill employees to the Tomoka Farms Property Owners Association because “someone at the state level has some heartburn about an insurance company having a golf course.” Lindberg said, “When you expand the user base, you expand the environmental impact,” and she asked the County to appeal the decision. She also said the City of Alachua did not provide public notice that it was a quasi-judicial hearing. Cornell asked the County Manager to provide an update at the end of the meeting. 

During Manager Comment at the end of the meeting, Stacie Greco with the Alachua County Environmental Protection Department said the Tomoka Hills project has received an environmental resource permit and a consumptive use permit from the Suwannee River Water Management District. She added that the applicant has expressed interest in continuing to work with the County on water issues and said her department does not recommend appealing the decision at this time because they’re not aware of any basis for appeal that is likely to succeed and the only change was to expand the users of the golf course from Tower Hill employees to the Property Owners Association; even if the appeal were successful, there would still be a golf course. She said the County will monitor a well in the area. 

Commissioner Marihelen Wheeler said, “I’m just floored, you know, I’m just really floored, with the water situation being what it is, that Suwannee River Management would be so flip and just let this go through… What if the water [from wells in the area] comes out mud?… I’m exaggerating, of course.” Greco said that consumptive use permits have language stating that the project is not supposed to impact any existing users. She added that the permit replaced an agricultural permit that was already active on that property, although it expanded the usage. 

Chair Ken Cornell said he would support an appeal, even though he didn’t think it would change the ultimate outcome; he hoped that an appeal might prompt the City of Alachua to change its policy and move the decision-making from an appointed board to the elected Commission. 

County Attorney Sylvia Torres said that even if they won the appeal, the decision would probably just go back to the same board again, although she would need to review the City’s code to fully understand what would happen. She said if the board passed a motion asking her to go back and look at it and possibly file an appeal, she could do that, and Wheeler said, “So moved.” Commissioner Anna Prizzia seconded the motion, and the motion passed unanimously. 

Alachua County Community Remembrance Day: “The date of August 19th will serve as a reminder of the racial terror that existed locally, help promote reconciliation through recognizing these events, and foster healing.”

After a presentation from the Alachua County Historical Commission about the history of the city of Alachua, Cornell said the County Commission had received a letter from Trey Asner, Chair of the Historical Commission, asking the County Commission to support an annual observance of Alachua County Community Remembrance Day. The letter recommended observing this on August 19 because “it was on that date in 1916 that one of the most heinous acts of local racial violence occurred when the ‘Newberry Six’ were lynched. The date of August 19th will serve as a reminder of the racial terror that existed locally, help promote reconciliation through recognizing these events, and foster healing.”

County Attorney Torres said the DEI bill that is on the Governor’s desk may prohibit the County from doing that after January 1, 2027. She said, “If you want to do it before then, we can set a date for that.” Cornell suggested deferring the request to the Attorney, but Prizzia said she didn’t think this is a DEI issue: “This is an issue of history and recognizing a historical event that happened in our community, and making sure it doesn’t happen again.” 

Commissioner Prizzia: “I love the small government folks just deciding they will usurp all kinds of local powers.”

Torres said the bill is very expansive: “It isn’t just under the definition of DEI. It has a number of prohibitions, one of which is the recognition of anything other than… federal holidays and state holidays.” Prizzia said, “I love the small government folks just deciding they will usurp all kinds of local powers.”

Commissioner Mary Alford said they should go ahead and schedule it for this year “and ask staff to look at the future of how we might do that in the future.”

Wheeler asked to see the bill, and Alford said, “I’ve seen it plenty of times. It’s a nasty bill.” 

Alford’s motion passed 4-0, with Commissioner Charles Chestnut absent. 

West End Park Master Plan

West End Park is a 75-acre park that used to be a golf course and is now owned by the County; it is directly across Newberry Road from Tioga Town Center. 

The Kimley-Horn consultant recommended adding two new entrances and not using the current entrance, which has a non-compliant median. The consultant proposed several phases: Phase 1A would include infrastructure that is needed for the World Masters event in 2027, including a restroom building on the west side of the park and associated walkways. Phase 1B could include a playground, picnic pavilions, pickleball courts, a basketball court, a restroom on the east side, petanque courts, trails, site furnishings, an arboretum, lighting, and landscaping. Phase 2 would include passive elements such as additional walking trails, fitness equipment, a dog park, and disc golf. Elements such as a community center, event stage, pitch & putt course, and driving range could be implemented as public-private partnerships. Most of the funding for the restroom on the west side will come from tourism development tax funds, to support the World Masters event.

The consultant presented two concepts: Concept A placed the majority of the active recreation elements closer to Newberry Road, and Concept B placed the active recreation complex in a more central area. The consultant said the attendees at community meetings preferred Concept A; the public also preferred disc golf over pitch & putt and expressed a preference for passive uses instead of public-private partnership uses. 

The legend on the final Master Plan is too small to see here, but you can see it on slide 19 of this presentation. It has 80 parking spaces at the front, a dog park in the central part of the park, and a two-mile trail around the entire park; the plan also includes 18 holes of disc golf, six pickleball courts, a playground, a basketball court, and petanque courts, all grouped around a central lawn. 

The consultant said their original estimates were $400,000 for Phase 1A and over $7 million for Phase 1B, so the timing of the work will depend on the availability of funding. 

Assistant County Manager Tommy Crosby: “We don’t want to jump ahead of everything else, just because it’s a hot topic of the day… The funding is not available yet to go beyond Phase 1A.”

Assistant County Manager Tommy Crosby, who was acting as the County Manager during this meeting, said that the west side restroom has to be added before the World Masters event, but “it was our understanding the board didn’t want to all of a sudden jump this entire plan ahead of all the other Parks Master Plan that we’ve been talking about.” He said the staff recommendation was to proceed with rezoning the park, but beyond that, “this is more of a longer-range plan,… not usurping funding from a lot of the other projects that have been… on the list… We don’t want to jump ahead of everything else, just because it’s a hot topic of the day.” He said the pickleball courts and disc golf course are “not funded in the Master Plan right now… The funding is not available yet to go beyond Phase 1A.”

Commissioner Prizzia: “I’m not interested in moving forward with any more amenities for the World Masters until we’re also committing to doing some of the park infrastructure.” 

Prizzia said, “This is like a ridiculous conversation to be having right now if we’re not talking about funding this, because the public… thinks we’re going to build this… We have a public amenity that we bought with tax dollars, not so that we could do tourism, but so that people in our community could have a park in one of the most populated parts of the county… I’m not interested in moving forward with any more amenities for the World Masters until we’re also committing to doing some of the park infrastructure.” 

Alachua County Capital Projects Coordinator Ed Williams said that $1 million in Wild Spaces Public Places funding is allocated for this park in FY26, and a second million dollars is allocated in FY27. If the board wants to move forward with Phase 1B, he said, that would require another $2.8 million, “and our suggested path for that would be defunding the ‘industrial park’… on 39th near Spring Hill.” He said that park currently has some nature trails, but it has $2.8 million dollars allocated for improvements. 

Cornell: Build the pickleball courts, arboretum, and playground first

Cornell said, “The problem with [the design] is that we want it all, and unfortunately, we can’t afford it all. And Tommy [Crosby] tells us what we can and can’t afford.” He said he wanted to take the $2.8 million from the “industrial park” budget and move it into the West End Park and added that he wanted to do “all the active stuff” first, including the pickleball courts, the arboretum, and the playground: “I want to build that first,… so I think we’ve got to cobble together another one and a half, or maybe two million… Maybe we can bond some stuff, and y’all come back to us with a plan that says we can’t afford $8 million, but maybe we can afford six and a half or six, and we can move the active pieces first. So that’s where I hope this board wants to go today.”

Alford said she didn’t support doing the active piece before the passive piece, because the consultant had explained that the passive piece included all of the infrastructure, which will need to be done first, anyway.

Prizzia said she saw the park like “Depot West… This is going to be a park of regional significance,… and I think as many of the amenities as we can get up front, so that we can have an active, awesome park that people can enjoy… — There’s lots of grants and funding available out there.”

Motion

Prizzia made a motion to “move forward with Phase 1A, so that we can get the bathrooms there for all of our users now and in time for the World Masters, and that we explore Phase 1B, having more active elements engaged with it, as well as moving funding from ‘industrial park’ in order to be able to have the money to do that, and to bring back a plan,” along with moving forward with rezoning the West End property to a recreational use. Alford seconded the motion.

Staff said they would bring back a new Phase 1B to incorporate the Commissioners’ comments. 

Assistant County Manager Crosby: “The [Parks] Master Plan was already adopted… What we really need to do is incorporate this back into the Master Plan during the budget process, over the summer.”

Crosby said, “I’m not trying to be a Debbie Downer… The Western Regional Park kind of created its own life… The [Parks] Master Plan was already adopted, which included a lot more money for the ‘industrial park,’ by the way; that’s where we got a lot of this money to start with… The remaining ‘industrial park’ money is not scheduled until the FY29 and FY30 budget years of the surtax,… so it’s not like it’s out there right now, budgeted, available… We have capacity to do some short-term borrowing… What we don’t want to have happen is a false sense of expectation on timing. These projects take a while… What we really need to do is incorporate this back into the Master Plan during the budget process, over the summer.”

Crosby added, “I agree completely: Phase 1A and the rezoning need to happen now. They’re in the budget. They’re planned. Let’s get that behind us.” He asked them to refer the rest of the motion to staff to bring back along with the County’s Capital Improvement Plan at a future meeting: “Give us a chance to regroup. Incorporate this with all of that, so that you see that impact — so we can do this, we can go to that $4.8 million number, or that $6 million number, or whatever that number is within the plan, without disrupting other major elements of the plan.” He said he would try to schedule that meeting in June. 

Cornell asked the consultants whether they could explore the costs of moving the active part “to the front end” by June, and when they said they could, Cornell said, “That’s all the motion is asking for.”   

Wheeler said, “I just want this enthusiasm to spill over to the Rails to Trails, too. The contract has been signed; they just need money… We’ve got to make sure that we’ve got some money set aside for that, if we really want to see that through to the bloody end.”

The motion passed unanimously.     

At the end of the meeting, Commissioners asked GRU for an easement variance to save some trees that are blocking a roadway in South Pointe that is currently under construction.