The first townhome residents will move in by fall and the entire project will be completed by year's end.
By SHARON L. BOND
Published May 30, 2004
ST. PETERSBURG - Banyan Bay, the reincarnation of the failed Rutland Estates project on Little Bayou, is sold out.
A project that stalled out and looked a nuisance for four years came to life last year with a new owner and will be about finished by year's end.
The 54 townhomes ranged in price from $400,000 to $720,000, according to Richard Ladd, project manager for land acquisition for D.R. Horton, a national developer from Arlington, Texas, who bought the abandoned project last year.
Ladd said the company expects to have residents in the townhomes by the end of September and be gone from the site at 5200 Fourth St. S by the first of 2005.
"We don't play around," Ladd said. "We are in the business to build houses."
He said buyers ranged from locals to investors.
The townhomes, which sit near the historic Rutland Mansion, have three bedrooms and 21/2 bathrooms with two-car garages. Living space is on both the ground and second floors.
"We built above the flood elevation so you have living space on the first floor. That is one of the reasons that makes these so desirable."
Another is that the project sits on Little Bayou at the southeastern end of St. Petersburg, one of a dwindling number of waterfront sites in the city. The near 10 acres once were part of the Rutland Estate.
Developer Robert Swain bought the estate in the 1990s and then sold the mansion with some acreage, leaving room for his development. By 1999, the just-started project was abandoned when Swain declared bankruptcy. It sat with three unfinished, decaying buildings until Horton purchased it last year. The new owner tore down the buildings and the perimeter wall and started over.
Horton has preserved banyan trees from which the development gets its name. It spent extra money rebuilding the perimeter wall and adding landscaping at the front gate to make nearby residents feel better about the development, Ladd said. Residents fought the development in the beginning because they wanted the pristine acres left as they were. But after the project was abandoned, some said last year they were glad the project was starting again.
Some still objected to Horton's plan to build a 20-slip dock for the development. They said it would restrict use of the waterway and damage natural resources.
The developer's first attempt to gain approval for the dock failed in February, but the request was renewed. Ladd said he thought it would be heard again in June or July by the Pinellas County Commission.
