(Disclosure: Rose Law Group represents D.R. Horton.)
By Paul Maryniak | Ahwatukee Foothills News
One of the nation’s largest homebuilders is eyeing the Club West Golf Course for 573 single-family homes.
But pre-application documents filed with the Phoenix Planning and Development Department show DR Horton must clear a series of significant planning hurdles before a more detailed plan can move through the city’s approval process.
Those hurdles include a rezoning, amendments to the city’s General Plan and Foothills Planned Community District, and revisions addressing open space, hillside protections, traffic and other issues.
The base plan for 573 homes is over three times the number of houses that the former course owner, The Edge, pitched in 2020 before it became enmeshed in a four-year legal battle it eventually won.
That battle ended with a judge’s ruling that whoever owns the course can do what it wants with the 162-acre parcel rather than be required to keep it only for golf.
The Edge, which bought the property from Wilson Gee in 2019 for about $750,000, sold the course last month to a consortium of 15 investors called Community Harmony Coalition LLC for $2.1 million.
Gee closed the course in 2016 because of the high cost of city potable water to irrigate it and the unavailability of gray water. A potential buyer returned it to a lush golf course from late 2017 to February 2018, but he eventually went broke over city water bills totaling over $200,000.
DR Horton, which has not bought the land from Harmony, faces a long road in getting approval to develop a total 162 to 167 acres at the southeast corner of 17th Avenue and Chandler Boulevard.
