Former Florida golf course’s past as city dump stymies developer’s plans to build homes

An Orlando developer’s efforts to build a new home community roughly a mile east of downtown DeLand continue to be hampered by the property’s past, both as a former golf course as well as an old city dump.

After agreeing to reduce the number of homes and townhouses planned at its proposed “Beresford Reserve” community from 861 to 615, representatives for Elevation Development were hopeful that the project could finally progress to its next step.

The development site is the former Sandhill Golf Course at 800 E. Euclid Ave. in DeLand. The 167.5-acre former golf course was also known as Southridge.

The DeLand City Commission convened a special meeting on November 22 for its fourth “first reading” of the developer’s request for a rezone. But after listening to more than four hours of testimonies from area residents as well as soil and environmental experts, the commission decided to request the developer’s representatives to come back for a fifth “first reading” in January.

DeLand community activist Wendy Anderson, an outspoken critic of the project, is a professor of environmental science and studies at Stetson University. She estimated the turnout to be closer to 250 people.

Cobb Cole land-use attorney Mark Watts who represented Elevation Development estimated the crowd to be closer to 100 people.

Both agreed that the meeting was packed. Twenty-six people signed up to speak.

Preliminary soil tests find contamination

At issue are growing concerns about contamination found in preliminary soil tests conducted on the former Sandhill Golf Course site by an engineering consulting firm hired by Elevation Development.

The preliminary tests found evidence of both pesticides in the soil from the nearly five decades that the site was a golf course from 1968 until its closure in 2017, as well as contaminants possibly dating back to when portions of the property was a sand mine and city dump used by both area residents and businesses in the 1940s and ’50s.

Jason Sheasley, a geologist with Kimley-Horn & Associates, the environmental consulting firm hired to do the preliminary soil tests, confirmed that contamination was found on the former golf course property that merits more extensive environmental study, but told the city commission, “the assessment activities that we’ve undertaken so far do not indicate that industrial-type waste is present within the landfill. (It) suggests that it’s more in line with construction demolition debris (and) some municipal waste.”

An environmental expert speaking on behalf of residents opposed to the project countered Sheasley’s assessment by telling the city commission that the preliminary test results should be enough to hit pause until further soil tests can be conducted.

“Through the (preliminary) Kimley-Horn reports, what we do know is that they have admitted to arsenic, barium, chromium, gasoline, a series of heavy metals including lead, copper, nickel, cadmium, mercury, silver, zirconium, nitrates, oils, solid waste (and) pesticides,” said DeBary resident Denise DeGarmo, an author and professor emeritus from Southern Illinois University who now does work nationally as a consultant on contaminated sites.

Anderson ceded a portion of her scheduled time to address the commission to allow DeGarmo to speak as an expert on contaminated sites. Several other area residents who signed up to speak also ceded their time to DeGarmo as well.

DeGarmo told the commission that the combination of pesticides in the ground from decades of use as a golf course and contamination from when the property was a city dump makes the site potentially “dangerous,” especially should any of the contaminants start to seep into the city’s water supply.

Anderson urged the city commission to hold off on approving the rezone request until further environmental testing can be done to fully determine both the nature and scope of the contamination at the site.

Anderson serves as chair of the Volusia County Soil & Water Conservation District. She is also a member of both the City of DeLand’s economic development and brownfield program advisory boards.

‘Consequences’ for future generations

“Tonight is about history,” Anderson told the commissioners at the meeting. “It’s about the history of our city and the 20th century and the history that we’re making and recording tonight. The decisions you all make here tonight will have consequences (for current and future generations). This is not a perfunctory rezoning hearing for yet another green space, for yet more houses.”

Watts countered that the developer has voluntarily agreed to hold off on breaking ground until a more comprehensive and thorough environmental study can be done on the former Sandhill golf course site.

“Our client entered into the brownfield program (to clean up and redevelop contaminated sites) and a brownfield site rehabilitation agreement (with the Florida Department of Environmental Protection) that was signed on December  29, 2020,” said Watts in a phone interview following the meeting.

“We’re going to do additional testing to fully understand where the contamination is and how extensive it is throughout the entire site,” he said.

Country club site required extensive cleanup, too

Watts noted during the meeting that soil contamination is not unique to the former Sandhill Golf Course.

Soil contamination was also discovered several years ago on the site of the former DeLand County Club property that required extensive environmental clean-up. That land was redeveloped to become a community called Bentley Green as well as the Publix-anchored Country Club Corners shopping center at South Woodland Avenue and Orange Camp Road.

Watts was part of a Cobb Cole team that represented the developers for those two projects. Elevation Development had no role in either project.

The soil remediation work required 40,000 soil tests and an environmental clean-up that took two years to complete, he said.

The cleanup of the old DeLand Country Club property wound up featured on “the literal cover page for the state’s annual report on the brownfield program because it was the right way to approach things,” Watts told the city commission.

“We have the same team involved here,” he said, referring to the land-use attorneys and environmental consultants working on the Beresford Reserve project. “Our concentration levels (of contaminants found so far) are much lower here than they were at the Country Club when we started that project.”

Sandhill site a ‘double whammy’ of concerns

Anderson told the city commissioners that she is “a huge proponent of brownfield redevelopment,” but said, “this (former Sandhill Golf Course) site is not the same as the DeLand Country Club site.”

The fact that the Beresford Reserve site was both a former golf course, as well as an old city dump, creates a “double whammy” of potential environmental concerns, she told The News-Journal.

This is an aerial view of what the former Sandhill golf course site (outlined in yellow) in DeLand looked like in 1958 when a portion of it was being used as a sand mine and city dumpsite. The golf course opened in 1968 and operated for nearly 50 years until its closure in 2017. It is now the site of a proposed 615-home development called Beresford Reserve. Provided image.

DeGarmo underscored Anderson’s assessment at the commission meeting.

“From what I learned from DeLandites … is that the dump was an open dump (where) there were no restrictions and no rules on what could be dumped,” she said. “The bottom line is no one knows (how much contamination exists).”

DeLand resident Asal Johnson, an associate professor of public health at Stetson, asked the city commissioners, “Would you raise your family on a house built on a city dump? … As residents of DeLand, we deserve a more thorough investigation of what’s down there … and what could potentially leach into our groundwater.”

Donna Pepin, a member of the West Volusia Hospital Authority Board who lives in DeLand, told the city commissioners that she worked as a hospice nurse for several years in the early 2000s.

“I went to the homes in the (old DeLand) Country Club Estates and wondered why I had so many (terminal cancer) patients there,” she said. The reason soon became apparent when several homeowners in that community filed a lawsuit after learning that their wells had become contaminated from pesticides used on the old golf course.

Pepin urged the commission to reject the developer’s rezoning request for the Beresford Reserve project.

“I don’t feel it fits the area,” she said of the developer’s current plans to build 272 single-family homes and 343 townhouses, as well as a two-acre commercial development of up to 20,000 square feet.

“I feel a park would be better,” Pepin said. “Land affects us all. The pollution under it as well.”

Developer revised plans after listening to residents

Watts told the commissioners that his client listened to concerns expressed by area residents over the past several months and revised the plans for Beresford Reserve to include some of their suggestions.

In addition to reducing the number of planned homes, Elevation Development also agreed to scrap plans to include apartments as well as to reduce the size of its planned commercial development. In addition, the developer has agreed to increase the total amount of usable open space to more than 50 acres, up from 27.6 acres, and to increase the size of its proposed park in the northeast corner of the property to 21 acres, up from eight.

The northeast corner of the property, bordered by Euclid Avenue on the north and Sandhill Avenue on the east, is where the old city dump was located.

The park will also be open for use by all DeLand residents, not just residents of Beresford Reserve, Watts said.

The latest plans for Beresford Reserve also include the addition of a wide range of amenities including a walking/jogging/bicycle trail along Beresford Avenue, the community’s southern border, that could connect to the city’s nearby 26-acre Earl Brown Park roughly one mile to the west.

The park at Beresford Reserve would also include a large community pool as well as a putting green, pickleball courts, and other recreational facilities.

This is a site map showing developer Elevation Development’s latest revised plans for its Beresford Reserve project on the site of the former Sandhill Golf Course in DeLand. Provided photo.

Watts noted that the former Sandhill Golf Course property is already zoned R1A, which would allow his client to develop as many as 881 homes.

Rezoning the land to allow for the homes and townhouses to be more densely clustered gives the developer more acreage that can be set aside as open space that includes several pocket parks and playgrounds for “tots.”

“At the end of the day, this is creating a much better project … one of the best designed in DeLand with a new park nearly the same size as the one in town,” said Watts.

“I think the conditions are all things we can live with,” he added in the phone interview following the meeting.

Which needs to come first? Zoning or more testing?

The old Sandhill Golf Course in DeLand, Thursday, Dec. 2, 2021. Nigel Cook/News-Journal

At the meeting, Sheasley, the geologist with Kimley-Horn & Associates, urged the commissioners to approve the developer’s request for a rezone because it is important in determining how the brownfield remediation project can proceed to know what the repurposed land will be used for.

“This site IS contaminated. A lot more work needs to go forward, but unfortunately, we’re at a pause until we can confirm the (plans for) development of the site,” he said.

Anderson in an interview the day after the meeting said she disagrees with assertion that the site needs to be rezoned first.

“For me, it was never about picking apart details (regarding the developer’s plans),” she said. “This one was a hard stop. The preliminary (soil testing) report shows enough red flags. We’ve got no business approving the zoning. You need to do that comprehensive study before you know whether you can put houses there.

“We got them (the developer’s representatives) to acknowledge (at the Nov. 22 meeting) that there could be serious contamination,” Anderson said. “If they start digging up some of that soil, it could leach into the city water supply. They said that’s just speculation, but we had to raise the level of concern so that’s what we did.”

Volusia County Chair Jeff Brower also attended the commission meeting.

“I came away encouraged by the developer’s response,” said Brower, noting Elevation Development’s agreeing to the need for more extensive environmental testing as well as its commitment to cover the cost of the study.

Brower said he shared residents’ concerns regarding potential adverse impacts to the area’s water supply, but said he does not believe calling for a moratorium on new development is realistic.

Referring to both the Beresford Reserve project as well as the controversial 10,000-home Avalon Park Daytona project that another Orlando developer is proposing in Daytona Beach, Brower said, “Instead of vilifying them, developers have to be part of the conversation (on finding potential solutions).”

An audio recording of the DeLand City Commission’s Nov. 22 special meeting regarding the rezone request for the Beresford Reserve project can be heard on the city’s website deland.org. Click on “government,” select “commission live streaming.”