Clermont City Council has approved the comprehensive plan amendment and rezoning for Ivey Ridge, a purpose-built rental home community, allowing the long-awaited project to move forward with vertical construction later this year.
The property was approved for up to 155 single-family homes by Lake County in 2020, with Las Vegas-based homebuilder AMH — formerly known as American Homes 4Rent — paying $9.4 million in June 2021 the subdivision. AMH is one of the nation’s largest developers and owners of purpose-built rental homes.
After a utility agreement was struck between the City of Clermont and Lake County in November 2022, AMH filed construction plans in 2023 for the development — designed by Winter Park-based Appian Engineering — to include detached homes on 50-foot lots and an amenity center with a pool, clubhouse, fitness center and playground.
The City Council voted to annex the 57-acre property, located on Hammock Ridge Road, last June with the understanding that a large-scale comprehensive plan amendment and rezoning would be required at a future date. According to city staff, the property was annexed before any building permits were issued so the city could collect the $1.8 million in impact fees.
The Clermont Planning & Zoning Commission ultimately voted 5-0 to recommend approval of the project at their Nov. 4 meeting last year, but voiced several concerns echoed by Councilwoman Alison Strange at the following council meeting on Nov. 18.
Strange said that the acreage for the Ivey Ridge subdivision, combined with the adjacent Hammock Reserve community, should contain amenities that match what a small town would provide.
“When you look at this 60 acres, and you add the Hammock Ridge and Lake Louisa properties, what you have is 80 acres of residences and the new urbanist community says that 80 acres is a town,” she said. “It should be a walkable, bikeable town.”
Strange argued that the communities should collectively include more space to live, work and play.
“I think this is not a good project as designed, so I’d like to find what tools we could use to make it as good as it can be under the circumstances,” Strange said.
Because the project was initially denied by Clermont before being approved by Lake County in 2020, Mayor Tim Murry indicated several times during past discussions that the council would be unable to stop it from moving forward.
By approving the future land use and rezoning, Murry noted that Clermont would be able to capture impact fees and limit the project to the city’s density of three units per acre for the development.
“We refused it before because [the developer] refused to go down to our codes, so they took it to the county where they knew they could get it through and get a higher density,” Murry said at the Dec. 9 Clermont City Council meeting. “That’s why it behooves us to go ahead and change this to get it back down to our standard so that we can have less stress on our infrastructure.”
With no discussion, during Tuesday’s meeting, the council voted 4-1 to approve the land use change from Lake County Urban Low to City of Clermont Low Density Residential and rezoning from Lake County Planned Unit Development to City of Clermont Planned Unit Development. Strange was the sole ‘nay’ vote against the ordinances.
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