Massive Tatum Ridge apartment proposal underscores Live Local concerns

This article appears in its original form on Suncoast Searchlight

By Derek Gilliam, Suncoast Searchlight, and Michael Barfield, Florida Trident

Dozens of residents gathered inside a quiet, gated subdivision off Tatum Road last week, many dressed in yellow golf shirts, to protest a plan they fear could transform their rural corner of east Sarasota County.

They came in waves — retirees in polos, young families in T-shirts and jeans — united by frustration over a proposal to replace the Tatum Ridge Golf Links with a sprawling apartment complex that could bring thousands of new renters into a low-density area where cows and horses still graze along narrow country roads.

“Our kids and our grandkids play outside,” resident Mark Salomonsky said. “You put 4,000 cars running down Racimo Drive, there’s gonna be a dead kid.”

The proposed development was filed under Florida’s Live Local Act. Passed in 2023 and expanded in 2025, the Live Local Act was designed to accelerate affordable housing by shifting key development decisions away from local governments. Projects that meet the law’s requirements can be approved administratively, without public hearings or votes by elected officials. 

But Live Local has become a flashpoint across the state, as residents and elected officials argue it can be used to push through projects that might not otherwise win approval. 

In Tatum Ridge, neighbors say that is exactly what is happening.

A group of StayTRU members rallied on April 16, 2026, to discuss their concerns about development of the Tatum Ridge Golf Links. The county commission blocked the owner from developing the property under Live Local Act, but organizers still fear plans could progress. | Photo by Derek Gilliam, Suncoast Searchlight

The same developer has already tried to build on the golf course at least twice before, with an earlier plan that would have allowed hundreds of single-family homes rejected by county commissioners and a separate proposal tied to potential commercial development still working its way through the approval process. 

The current apartment plan now relies on the Live Local Act.

Under the law, developers who set aside at least 40% of units as affordable — for households earning up to about $130,000 a year for a family of four in Sarasota County — can exceed local limits on height, density and land use. If a project meets those requirements, it must be approved administratively, limiting opportunities for public input.

Since September, at least seven projects have been proposed in Sarasota County under the law, including in rural and low-density areas. The one on Tatum Road is the largest and perhaps the most controversial, with plans for 2,250 rental units on land zoned for just one home per two acres.

On April 7, county commissioners voted to block six of the seven applications, despite warnings from County Attorney Joshua Moye that the decision could be difficult to defend in court. He said a strict interpretation of the law allows Live Local projects in any zoning district that permit commercial activity. That would include rural residential areas like Tatum Ridge.

The move also prompted some public pushback, including from Christine Robinson, chief executive officer of the Argus Foundation, which is a foundation that acts as a unified voice for business leaders to collaborate with the public sector.

“We have an across-the-board housing problem, and I know that people don’t want to admit that,” Robinson said. “But that’s the truth.”

Others question whether the Sarasota projects proposed under the law will address the current problems. The area’s apartment rental market has more units sitting empty than at any other time in decades.

This week, commissioners directed the county attorney to seek outside legal advice about the Live Local Act, including an opinion from the Florida Attorney General.

“It’s ridiculous to think that Live Local is something that will increase affordability for citizens of Sarasota County,” said Commissioner Tom Knight, who also called the affordable housing component of the law a Trojan horse. “To say this will resolve our affordable housing problem is a fantasy.”

An evolving development grows bigger through Live Local

The Tatum Ridge subdivision, now called The Legends, sits just east of Interstate 75 and was developed in the late 1990s on more than 300 acres.

The neighborhood was designed around a Scottish-style golf course that carves through wetlands, lakes and wooded preserves, where deer and other wildlife still roam through the area.

Homes were clustered on one end of the property, while the remaining 200 acres were left largely untouched, protected by restrictions requiring the land to remain open space.

For years, many residents in The Legends believed that property could never be developed. 

Then, in December 2020, a newly created limited liability company called New Pope Holdco III bought the golf course for $2.9 million. Records show the company is tied to Sarasota-based home builder Eldon Johnson Jr.

In 2024, the company hired Sarasota attorney Bill Merrill to help it win county approval to build on the property.

The initial proposal called for an amendment to the county’s comprehensive plan to allow denser development on the golf course property, paving the way for 400 single-family homes.

That’s when residents began to organize. They formed a group called Stay Tatum Ridge United — StayTRU — launched an opposition website and bombarded elected officials with messages protesting the plan.

When the project came before the Sarasota County Commission in May, more than 100 StayTRU members in matching yellow shirts packed the chambers. After a short deliberation, commissioners voted unanimously to reject the project. 

Even before the county voted down the first plan, the developer had already filed a second proposal using a different tactic that would have allowed commercial business parks to be built within 2,000 feet of a major thoroughfare. Previously, those commercial developments were required to be located directly on a major road.

The second proposal, filed in April 2025, is still winding through a county review process and has yet to reach commissioners for a vote.

Neither Merrill nor Johnson have returned phone calls seeking comment about the project.

Changing a county growth policy is a slow process that requires months of back-and-forth discussions between developers and county staff, while also requiring a supermajority vote from the county commission.

The Stay Tatum Ridge United group packed the Sarasota County Commission chambers on May 20, 2025, as elected leaders shot down a growth plan amendment that could have allowed a golf course in their neighborhood to be turned into 400 single-family homes. | Courtesy StayTRU

When state lawmakers changed the Live Local Act during the 2025 legislative session, plans to develop the Tatum Ridge Golf Course sped up.

Merrill used Live Local to come back with a third proposal. This time, the plan called for 2,250 apartments and townhomes on the golf course, a decision that stunned longtime residents of Tatum Ridge. They fought plans for 400 new homes — and never imagined it could somehow more than quadruple in size. 

“There are no development rights on the land — that has been known since 1999,” said Matt Procaccini, who’s been leading opposition against the development.

Traffic, flooding and environmental destruction. Residents vent frustrations.

Residents of Tatum Ridge pushing back on the Live Local project point to problems that could be created by development outpacing the infrastructure surrounding them.

They also cite concerns with future flooding, environmental destruction and potential depreciation to their home values.

Richard Byrd, 76, has lived for decades in the Tatum Ridge area. He was there before the golf course was developed and remembers when you could hear a pin drop on Fruitville Road. 

That’s not the case anymore.

“Fruitville is toasted,” he said of the current traffic problems, fearing the massive Live Local proposal would only make matters worse.

John Meyer, who also lives in the area, said losing the golf course could tank property values. He also worries about future flooding in the neighborhood as land that once soaked up the falling rain gives way to concrete.

During the 2024 storm season, historic rains fell across Sarasota, leaving some roads near his home impassable.

“Unless you had a lifted vehicle, you weren’t getting out of our neighborhood,” he said.

Procaccini and other homeowners in Tatum Ridge said before the current challenges, most in the community kept to themselves. But facing down the massive apartment project has brought everyone together. 

“I like our position, where we are at this moment,” Procaccini said. “But it’s one of those things where you feel like you got to keep looking over your shoulders, and that’s the piece that’s frustrating.

“At this juncture, we have to keep fighting.”

This story is a collaboration between the Florida Trident, a nonprofit newsroom of the Florida Center for Government Accountability, and Suncoast Searchlight, a nonprofit newsroom of the Community News Collaborative. Learn more at suncoastsearchlight.org or floridatrident.org.