NEW TAMPA — After more than three years of hearings, court rulings, appeals, delays and a neighborhood battle that deeply divided one of New Tampa’s oldest communities, GL Homes finally has approval to redevelop the shuttered Pebble Creek Golf Club.
But the Pebble Creek saga may not be over.
Hillsborough County commissioners voted 5-2 on Sept. 22 — chairman Ken Hagan and Christine Miller voted no — to approve a rezoning allowing GL Homes to build 251 single-family homes and five neighborhood parks on the nearly 150-acre former golf course off Bruce B. Downs Boulevard.
Almost immediately afterward, opponents announced they planned to challenge the decision in court.
“Today’s decision is not the end,” Save Pebble Creek, an anti-development group run by resident Leslie Green, posted on its Facebook page. “We’re appealing through the courts with our new attorney, David Winker.”
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Residents showed up for the meeting in blue (for) and red (against) shirts, packing the room in such numbers that some were turned away.
Lost at times during years of court battles and packed commission hearings dominated by opponents was this: not everyone wants GL Homes stopped.
Longtime resident Carol Clauws is one of those residents and was wearing blue.
Clauws said when golf course owner Bill Place was reported to be seeking developers for the golf course, she opposed initial redevelopment proposals that were looking to build more than 500 homes on the property. She changed her mind when GL Homes arrived with a much less dense plan and sought feedback from residents.
“I felt that they listened to any concerns that we might have,” she said, “and the plan that they brought forward I thought was a nice plan and was going to enhance the community.”
The approved plans call for 251 detached single-family homes on 149.85 acres, or roughly 1.7 homes per gross acre, well below the maximum four homes per acre permitted. The plan also includes five neighborhood parks and preserves with approximately 25 acres of wetlands.
As the fight dragged on, Clauws became even more convinced. To her, the realistic choice was no longer between GL Homes and the return of the Pebble Creek Golf Club or even a county-run park, which was previously floated. It was between a development she could live with and an abandoned overgrown golf course with no buyer waiting to bring it back to life.
The golf course closed in 2021, and much of it has since been surrounded by chain-link fencing. Clauws said the abandoned property has attracted dumping and people riding dirt bikes, and the former clubhouse has deteriorated.
“I feel like we live in almost like a prison yard,” she said. “It’s fenced in with a chain-link fence. It’s terrible. The clubhouse looks like a haunted house, and you know, we just need to move forward as a community.”
Perhaps more damaging, she said, has been what the dispute has done to relationships between the neighbors.
“It breaks my heart,” Clauws said. “It’s like politics. You can’t agree to disagree.”
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For GL Homes, the Sept. 22 vote was the culmination of a nearly three-year effort that included two favorable recommendations from the county’s zoning hearing master, two reviews by county staff and the Planning Commission, two circuit court decisions and a trip to the 2nd District Court of Appeal.
“GL Homes is pleased with the Commission’s approval of the Pebble Creek rezoning,” the company said in a statement. “The decision reflects a thorough review process, and we look forward to bringing a well-planned community to this site that has sat dormant the past five years.”
The vote was a reversal of the board’s 5-2 denial in July 2023.
This time, however, a series of legal decisions had effectively cornered the commissioners.
Assistant County Attorney Cameron Clark recommended approval to comply with the circuit court’s ruling. County staff continued to recommend approval, the Planning Commission again found the proposal consistent with the county’s Comprehensive Plan and the zoning hearing master again recommended approval following a limited remand this summer.
“This is a legal process,” said commissioner Josh Wostal before making the motion to approve.
Wostal and commissioner Harry Cohen were the only two commissioners to vote against denying the project in 2023, he noted, because they questioned whether that denial would survive a legal challenge.
“I see the divide of the red and the blue shirts, and it reminds me of the political divide that has grown in this nation, unfortunately,” he said. “But this is a legal process, and Commissioner Cohen and I were both the original dissenting nos … (because) we believed that it would not withstand a legal hearing in the 13th Judicial Court, and that turned out to be exactly, unfortunately, in this situation, what has happened.”
GL Homes challenged the 2023 denial in Hillsborough Circuit Court, where Judge Darren Farfante Huey found there was no competent, substantial evidence in the record to support it.
The Second District Court of Appeal later reversed Huey’s initial ruling on a procedural issue and sent the case back. Huey reviewed the matter again and, in an amended December 2025 order, again quashed the county’s denial.
In April, commissioners voted 4-3 against continuing the legal fight with another appeal.
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But there was one more twist: County attorneys discovered an ex parte communication involving golf course owner Place and a commissioner while the case was pending. Because commissioners were essentially acting as judges in a land-use case, communications about it outside the public meetings had to be disclosed and addressed.
The board sent the case back to the zoning hearing master for a limited hearing to put the communication into the public record and allow interested parties to respond.
Following that July hearing, the zoning master again recommended approval, finding the application consistent with the county’s land development code and comprehensive plan.
Opponents weren’t ready to give up. Their last-ditch argument at the meeting was that the problem went deeper.
Pebble Creek resident Emma Szymborksi said additional public records requests had uncovered other communications involving the property owner and commissioners that she believes raise due-process concerns.
And Green argued that simply disclosing communications after the fact could not necessarily undo any influence they may have had.
“Due process requires fairness,” Green said. “The community deserves a proceeding in which everyone is on equal footing.”
Winker, an attorney representing Green, Szymborski and other opponents, argued that ex parte contacts warranted further action.
GL Homes attorney Jake Cremer countered that none of the communications changed the underlying evidentiary record already reviewed by the courts.
“The record has been tested by your hearing master twice, your planning commission twice, your staff twice, a circuit judge twice after getting direction from the appellate court,” Cremer said. “So everything points in one direction, which makes this the rare land use case where you can have confidence that your decision rests on solid ground that’s already been reviewed by a judge.”
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Clauws, who had hoped the meeting would settle the issue once and for all, was disappointed by the news of a possible appeal.
She said the process has been nasty and created a divide she worries will linger long after the land-use fight ends. She was hoping work could begin on those repairs.
She said she understands why residents whose homes border the former golf course oppose redevelopment but believes the property must eventually become something.
“I’m a realist,” Clauws said. “I’d rather take something I know.”
Commission chairman Ken Hagan, whose district includes Pebble Creek and who has consistently sided with residents opposing the redevelopment, remained part of the opposition.
“I think we let the neighborhood down,” Hagan said, “and I hope we don’t make the same mistakes when other neighborhoods are in front of us with the same issue.”
Save Pebble Creek quickly made it clear it considered the meeting another chapter rather than the final one.
“This isn’t about blaming the County,” the group said in its post. “There were missteps along the way that need to be corrected, and our community has every right to seek that correction. We deserve a fair and just process.”
So, after three years of legal wrangling, GL Homes finally has the county approval it has been seeking. Whether that means bulldozers are coming, or another judge, remains to be seen.