Miami-based 13th Floor Homes paid $5.6 million for 120 acres of the land west of Delray Beach, Fla., to build Delray Trails, a 55-and-over community that will have a 10-acre recreational campus with pools, tennis, pickleball, bocce and shuffleboard, along with a clubhouse with a billiards room, café, library, fitness center and card rooms. The 436-home development will be built near Avalon Trails, which 13th Floor is about to open on the former Marina Lakes Golf Course.
Miami, Fla.-based 13th Floor Homes has closed on 120 acres of former golf course land west of Delray Beach, Fla., as homebuilders throughout South Florida continue their aggressive search for land, reported The Real Deal, a South Florida real estate publication.
13th Floor paid $5.6 million for the land that was previously home to the shuttered Villa Del Ray Golf Club, according to a spokesperson, The Real Deal reported. The developer is planning to build Delray Trails, a master-planned active adult community for residents 55 and older, on the property.
The development will have 436 single-family homes and townhouses, and the first homes will be completed in 2021. The community will also have a 10-acre recreational campus with pools, tennis, pickleball, bocce and shuffleboard courts; a clubhouse with a billiards room, cafe, library, fitness center and card rooms; lakes and canals, pocket parks, gardens and walking trails.
Delray Trails will be built near Avalon Trails, another residential community that 13th Floor is building west of Delray, on the former Marina Lakes Golf Course, The Real Deal reported. That project, with 217 single-family homes, will host a grand opening of its model houses in late March.
13th Floor received unanimous approval from the neighboring Palm Greens community for Delray Trails, The Real Deal reported. It will also invest in infrastructure and drainage systems, and buffer areas between the development and Palm Greens, which has 1,400 units close to the old Villa Del Ray golf course.
Florida still has the highest number of golf courses of any state in the country, with 1,146, The Real Deal reported. Less than 200 of those are in Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties (Delray Beach is in southeastern Palm Beach County).
In October 2019, The Real Deal reported, Pulte Homes closed on 139 acres on a former golf course in Oakland Park to build 405 homes with nearly 50 acres of open space.
Prices for homes in the Delray Beach development will start in the mid 300s and “continue through the 500s,” Landon Massel, Director of Acquisitions for 13th Floor, told the Fort Lauderdale Sun-Sentinel. The mix will be 164 single-family homes and 272 villas.
Massel said residents from Delray Trails and Palm Greens would jointly use the recreation campus. “We will be constructing the clubhouse and other amenities that will be used by the existing and future residents within the existing community,” he said.
Many Palm Greens residents are from the U.S. East Coast and Canada, Massel added, and he expects the new owners at Delray Trails to hail from the same regions as well as from South Florida. Some will be retirees, with others still in the work force.
“We expect a bunch of buyers to be in that 55 to 70 year old age range,” he told the Sun Sentinel. “These are people that are looking for that active adult lifestyle—a nice clubhouse and programming to basically create that community.”
Susan Herman, president of Condo 2 at Palm Greens, issued a statement that indicated her group consulted with 13th Floor on the development of Delray Trails, the Sun Sentinel reported.
“The former golf course site became a major issue for our community as it became fallow and created a lot of uncertainty,” Herman’s statement said. “We feel much more confident in the future of our community now that we have a clear path forward.”
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