Concession navigates helistop placement

EAST COUNTY — Representatives of The Concession Golf Club hope a proposal to install a helistop within the golf club’s property will fly. But they are modifying their plans to address neighbors’ concerns.

On July 30, the club resubmitted site plans relocating the proposed helistop from near The Concession’s gated entrance off Lindrick Lane, off State Road 70, to another site farther within the project close to the golf course’s clubhouse.

“It’s what you would call well within our borders. We’re trying to work with them,” The Concession Golf Club spokesman Otto Jack Jr. said. “It took a while to come up with a position we thought would be a good compromise. We’re trying to be good neighbors.”

The Concession Golf Club in April filed its original application to revise its general development plan to include a helistop.

Jack said representatives of The Concession Golf Club presented their proposal for the helistop to the board of the Foxwood at Panther Ridge Homeowners Association, the section of Panther Ridge closest to the proposed site, shortly after submitting the original application to the county.

“We wanted to involve them early in the process in an effort to be good neighbors,” Jack said. 

However, club owners began working on revisions to the site proposal after learning from Manatee County that neighbors had raised concerns about the helistop’s location. Finding a new location took time because The Concession hosted the NCAA tournament in May and June.

Jack noted the proposal is for a helistop, which has a less intense use compared with a helipad.

“We don’t know how often it will be used, and we don’t expect it to be much, but it’s something there to be able to use, if it’s needed,” Jack said. “We didn’t ask for overnight landings.”

Since 2006, there have been only five known helicopter landings within the property, he said.

Panther Ridge residents who submitted objections to the original proposal said helicopter landings would spook horses, putting their handlers and riders in danger, and also affect property values and resales for horse or residential properties near the helistop.

Foxwood resident Daniela Drillman, whose home is nearest the original project site and who is heading up a committee on the helistop, has circulated a flyer to educate other homeowners about the proposal and said she will continue to fight the project if it proves a potential disruption to her and fellow neighbors.

“It is my feeling, while (I’m) glad the efforts were to move the helipad, we will have to carefully review the proposed location, as well as investigate the ramifications of flight paths and takeoff/landings,” she said. “We will actively oppose any disruption to our community, as well as to the area as a whole that a helipad may bring.”

Stephanie Little, vice president of the Foxwood at Panther Ridge Homeowners Association, said the board was “very concerned” the closest residents would have problems with the helistop being so close, as well as the adverse impacts on horses.

“No one wants the helistop,” she said. “I’m not aware of the exact location of the new proposal, but it is still too close and we do not want a helistop anywhere near our equestrian community.”

Debbie Miller, property manager for five of Panther Ridge’s nine HOAs, said she’d received only a few comments from residents, about half of whom opposed the project and half who didn’t mind it.

The Concession Golf Club had discussed adding a helistop within its boundaries in 2010, but the plan was abandoned before any proposals were submitted to the county, Jack said.

Contact Pam Eubanks at [email protected].