A three-year legal saga between residents of Gran Paradiso and their developer-controlled government has ended — resolving a fight over irrigation water rates that divided the upscale neighborhood and exposed the power imbalance between homeowners and special-purpose districts that control essential services.
 

The current Gran Paradiso board also said in the written statement to residents that some of its former members were “extremely mean-spirited (and dishonest)” at points in the dispute, appearing to place blame on the prior directors for how the legal fight ended.

Those excluded from the settlement told Suncoast Searchlight they believe the move was intended to stifle opposition and send a warning to other communities considering similar challenges.
 

But two homeowner association attorneys who spoke with Suncoast Searchlight said the terms appeared highly unusual.

Dan Lobeck, a Sarasota attorney who’s also represented property owners associations his entire career, said the settlement appears lopsided and aimed at retaliation. He called it “an attempt to twist the knife politically.”

Others noted that they had never seen former directors excluded from a settlement unless some kind of verifiable wrongdoing — like stealing association funds — was found.

As the majority landowner, Toronto-based homebuilder Mattamy Homes appoints four of the five members of the West Villages Improvement District Board, the special-purpose government that manages infrastructure and services across all of Wellen Park –– previously called West Villages. The other board member is a property owner from one of the 14 communities inside Wellen Park.

“It seems like the ultimate betrayal,” Sarasota construction and HOA attorney Alan Tannenbaum said. “I’ve never seen it in my 47 years of practice where the prior board brought a lawsuit that was justified and left the former directors out in the cold.”

The imbalance reflects the broader power wielded by Florida’s developer-controlled, special-purpose districts — a mechanism that Suncoast Searchlight exposed last year in its investigation of how these districts have fueled the explosion of home building across Manatee and Sarasota counties, saddled homeowners with debt and stripped them of a voice.

Across the region, developers have used these districts, including the more commonly known “community development districts,” to finance roads, utilities and amenities with tax-exempt bonds, then pass the debt on to homeowners. In some ZIP codes, as much as 90% of new homes built carry this developer-backed debt. Over the past five years alone, such districts have collectively taken out $2.9 billion in public bonds, giving private developers nine times the spending power of the city of Sarasota over that span.

Unlike a city, residents in these districts can go years without electing their own representatives. In the West Villages Improvement District, only one homeowner sits on the board. The other four members are appointed by the developer.

That structure was central to what unfolded in Gran Paradiso. The prolonged dispute over irrigation costs divided neighbors and threatened property values, according to residents.

As the litigation stretched on, negotiations faltered. According to residents involved in the talks, Mattamy and the district declined to engage in settlement discussions while certain Gran Paradiso Property Owner Association directors remained in place. Those directors resigned and were replaced as negotiations moved forward.

Under the deal that ultimately was approved, Mattamy retained the same irrigation terms imposed from the beginning, plus more than $500,000 in legal fees.

Victor Dobrin, who is among the former directors excluded, told Suncoast Searchlight that the restrictions imposed by Mattamy and The West Villages Improvement District amounted to silencing dissent.

“Are we living in Russia or the United States?” Dobrin said. “That is exactly what they’re trying to do. They want us to be quiet and accept them pushing us around.”

Bill Kelly, the current president of Gran Paradiso Property Owners Association, said the board had no choice but to exclude the former directors, as Mattamy would not agree to a settlement under any other terms.

“My personal feeling is that nothing will come of it,” he said. “I feel bad about it personally, but I wasn’t going to hold up the settlement.”

Origins of the Wellen Park water war

The Gran Paradiso lawsuit stemmed from a 100-year water deal residents argued they never agreed to and feared could cost the district $2.8 billion over its lifetime.

Four of the five supervisors on the West Villages Improvement District, a special purpose government that controls Wellen Park, are appointed by Mattamy.

When Gran Paradiso challenged the arrangement in court, Circuit Judge Hunter Carroll criticized the district during a 2023 hearing for including terms that weren’t in the public interest and ruling that Gran Paradiso would likely prevail at trial on a potential violation of Florida’s open government laws. He went on to call the agreement “palpably obscene.”

Despite that early courtroom win, the slow plod of the legal battle lasted two more years before Mattamy and the West Villages Improvement District cut the neighborhood off from irrigation in March, isolating its pipes from the development’s broader system and threatening more than $1 million worth of tropical landscaping, according to court documents.

As part of the settlement in November, Gran Paradiso’s current board apologized for starting the legal fight, promised to pay $525,000 in the attorney fees for the Mattamy-affiliated individuals and business entities named in the litigation, and withdrew its claims while also promising to never bring them up again.

In response to questions from the community, the Gran Paradiso board appeared to place blame on some of the excluded directors.

“The excluded individuals were not known for ‘playing nice and developing a spirit of togetherness,’” the board wrote in response to written questions from residents. “To the contrary, some if not all of them, were extremely mean spirited (and dishonest) in their attacks against the WVID supervisors, WVID and Mattamy, in the litigation and on social media and to the press.”

Steve Glunt, the only excluded current board director, voted to approve the settlement.

“I have to do what’s best for the community and set my own self-interest aside,” he said. “It’s that simple.”

No guarantee of irrigation water

While the settlement agreement has been approved by all parties, according to Kelly, the Gran Paradiso president, there’s one last item for the community to decide.

In December, additional requirements of the settlement started circulating in the neighborhood. The community would also give up a parcel of land near its main gate where the district could build a new 5,000-square-foot headquarters or hand over $300,000 to cover part of the legal fees the district had incurred in the dispute.

That set off another round of social media battles in the already worn down community that continues to heal from years of litigation.

The settlement also doesn’t guarantee irrigation water for Gran Paradiso will be turned back on, only promising that the West Villages Improvement District will support an application to add Gran Paradiso back to its water use permit, which must still be approved by the South West Florida Water Management District.

That process takes on average 90 days, but Kelly said he’s hopeful that it won’t take that long given the district’s support.

A town hall meeting to discuss the potential land deal has been scheduled for Tuesday, Jan. 13, and homeowners will then have two weeks to vote on the matter.

Ali Johnson, who was on the board for about two months and never voted to start any of the litigation, called the current situation “incredibly disheartening.”

Most of her frustration settled on the elected leaders in Tallahassee who have allowed special purpose government to proliferate throughout the state.

“It appears to me that our elected officials are, and at an alarmingly increasing rate, favoring developers (who are merely temporary residents/landowners) and their abstract promises of future residents over the interest of the current residents who elected them,” Johnson wrote in an email to Suncoast Searchlight. “The Constitutions and Charters of the government entities begin with ‘We the people’ and officials should be viewing their jobs through that lens.”

Tannenbaum, the Sarasota attorney, said that the Florida Legislature in recent years has only made it harder on residents to hold developers accountable.

“Everything works against the homeowner in Florida when it concerns developers and there’s nothing on the horizon to fix that,” Tannenbaum said.