If things go according to the plans presented to the Bellevue Planning Commission and Bellevue City Council, most of the former Fontenelle Hills Golf Course will be rezoned as ‘RE’ (Residential Estates) and sold off in nine separate lots.
Three different entities currently own different sections of the course. Hawkins & Strom Holdings, Bellevue Vue Acres, and Fontenelle Hills Golf Club. These three groups came together to purchase the course around 12 years ago when there were talks of it being sold with possible apartments or dense housing built throughout.
Jim and Mary Hawkins are part of the Hawkins & Strom, LLC. They represented all three groups at various Planning Commission and City Council meetings throughout 2022.
Mary Hawkins addressed the City Council at the June 7, 2022 meeting, “The golf course has continued to run for a number of years but has pretty much hit its end of life. At the end of 2019, notices went out to Fontenelle Hills homeowners letting them know that the land was maintained by volunteers all these years. To make it feasible to continue as a golf course, we needed at least 100 residents to sign up as club members. Less than 50 signed up.”
Hawkins continued, “We closed the course and kept it alive by maintaining it and mowing it and paying taxes, but now it is time to shift it into residential lots. We’ve kept the lot numbers very small – nine in all. They range in size from about an acre up to around 5 acres. It was the best compromise we could come up with for the land, to keep it cared for. The proposal does not include the entire golf course. We are still deciding what we want to do with some of it .”
The plans call for holes 2 through 8 to be rezoned for Residential Estates. (Editor’s note: The Fontenelle Hills Golf Course numbers changed a few years ago. The original first hole started near the clubhouse. With the new numbering, that became hole #2. All the other hole numbers moved back one – new hole #3 was old hole #2, and so on).
Many Fontenelle Hills residents came up to speak expressing concerns ranging from loss of green space, effects on wildlife, sewage, traffic, property values, and runoff. One homeowner, John Roberts, addressed the Council on an idea to form an LLC to purchase the former golf course property behind his home as well as others that border the proposed property. He mentioned if enough homeowners were interested he would help to set up the LLCs.
In a recent conversation, Jim Hawkins addressed this LLC concept that was presented at the June 7 meeting. “We don’t have any idea about the status of local residents forming an LLC, etc. Once the land goes up for sale, we will be using a realtor and believe interested parties would contact the realtor directly. Though we are vaguely aware of some of the parties that said they were pursuing the LLC idea (from the City meetings), none have contacted us.”
Whether or not the LLCs are created and work to purchase the land(s) behind their homes, it was mentioned that the rezoning request could go forward and it wouldn’t affect their ability to make a bid on the land.
The course owners are still awaiting approval of the final plat from the City and expect that to be by the end of this month. Hawkins added, “The process has been slow and the timeline has moved to the right several times. There were many more ‘wickets’ for rezoning approval than we expected. We will not put our property up for sale until we are fully in the clear to do so and it makes sense to sell. Though all three property owners are moving at the same speed with respect to the rezoning process, we cannot speak for the other property owners about their plans to sell.”
