12 minute read
Babcock Ranch: Growing Into A Sustainable Future
By Joe VanHoose
Driving through Babcock Ranch doesn’t feel all that much different at first than cruising through any number of other master-planned communities around the state. Different neighborhoods dot the landscape around the 300-acre Lake Babcock. The roads are wide and expansive, flanked by bike lanes and multi-use paths. Golf cart parking is readily available.
Go through a few roundabouts and you’ll run into a championship golf course, parks – six parts are currently being constructed in a four-mile stretch – and enough pickleball courts to make you think you may be in The Villages. Take a few more turns and you see the fire station and EMT headquarters and then the K-12 school, whose students are nicknamed the Trailblazers – an appropriate name for what this community is trying to be.
The name is also quite literal, as there are 100 miles of trails in the community. Developments are broken up by wide swaths of greenspace and wetlands. There are signs around touting a groundbreaking for a new neighborhood soon.
More than 10,000 people live in Babcock Ranch now, including David Mercer, PE, the design engineer for the development. Mercer spent nearly nine years working for Kitson & Associates, the master planning group behind the community, and has worked at Kimley Horn, the district engineer, for the last two.
He drops his twin daughters off at the new school every day. Friday nights, he and his family often congregate with other residents and visitors and enjoy live music and a bustling food truck scene around Founders Square.
“It’s hard in Florida for people to understand this isn’t a gated community; this is a town,” Mercer said. “There are some gated communities inside, but for the most part everything – parks, commercial property, etc. – is open to the public.”
The town of Babcock Ranch, about 15 miles northeast of Fort Myers, sits on 18,000 acres adjacent to more than 70,000 acres of preserve. It contains housing communities, commercial buildings, restaurants, shops, a daycare facility, the charter school, pools and playgrounds, all surrounded by green spaces and overlooking the namesake lake.
The built environment at Babcock is focused on sustainability, resiliency and preserving and appreciating the environment. Houses are energy efficient and built with sustainable materials, surrounded by lake vistas and landscaping that consists of low impact native trees and shrubs. Irrigation is taken care of with water reclaimed from the onsite water and wastewater utility.
“The sustainability of Babcock is what makes it special,” Mercer said. “When you drive through, it feels different, and part of that is because of all the wetlands we preserved. You have these huge areas that are in preservation forever. You have rain gardens along the road and native landscaping. It has a very different feel.”
Planned For Sustainability From The Start
A New Jersey native who played football for the Green Bay Packers and Dallas Cowboys over four seasons in the NFL, Syd Kitson spent a lot of his youth and his offseasons hiking and camping throughout the Adirondack and Appalachian mountains, enjoying what nature had to offer.
After leaving pro football in 1985, Kitson formed a real estate company and started developing residential neighborhoods, commercial properties and senior housing. He serves as Kitson & Partners chairman and CEO.
In 2006, Kitson & Partners purchased 91,000 acres (143 square miles) of Babcock Ranch for an 18,000-acre town. Preservation efforts include 9,000 acres of the 18,000 total, as well as 73,000 acres the State of Florida purchased from Kitson, equating to roughly 90% of the ranch’s original property. This created Babcock Ranch Preserve and resulted in the biggest land preservation deal in Florida history.
Kitson sees himself as an environmentalist and a developer, which he views as a perfect combination. He recognizes that more homes need to be built for a growing population in Florida. But he also knows the impacts development can have on the environment and views mitigation as a chief responsibility.
“From my perspective, there couldn’t be a better combination of providing the houses people need but, more importantly, doing it in a way that is sustainable,” he said. “A lot of that has to do with preservation of the land. A lot has to do with how we treat the wetlands and flowways and where and how we build.
“It’s very important we protect our environment and we grow the right way.”
Case in point: even though Kitson purchased the property that would become Babcock Ranch in 2006, any development of the property was still a decade away. The first house in the property wasn’t completed until 2018.
“All of the work done in the first five to seven years before ground was broken set everything up going forward,” Mercer said. “We always say the train has already left the station. It’s rolling and it’s not stopping.”
Six years later, Babcock Ranch has become one of the top-selling communities in America. In 2023, 958 new homes were sold, enough to land Babcock Ranch seventh on Real Estate Consulting’s list of top-selling U.S. master-planned communities. Only The Villages and Lakewood Ranch outside of Sarasota sold more homes in Florida last year.
“It’s Important to know we closed our first home in 2018, and here we are six years later and we’re one of the top-selling communities in America,” Kitson said. “That’s something I think that’s a testament to the idea that people really care about sustainability. We got to 1,000 homes a year about as fast as anybody’s ever done it, so I think people really do care.”
Driving around Babcock Ranch in early February, it’s easy to see just how much of a town this development is becoming. A new commercial development features a Publix, Great Clips, Pet Supermarket and Starbucks. Native palms, pines and vegetation fill the median that divides the main four-lane road.
Roofs on a line of new homes are being shingled. Multifamily buildings trimmed in black and white are rising fast. Multimodal paths continue along the main thoroughfares. Crosswalks are everywhere, and roundabouts break up what traffic there currently is.
Downtown currently features 85,000 square feet of commercial use, with another 150,000 square feet in the works. Woodlea Hall hosts the discovery center and realty office. A market, coffee shop and ice cream parlor, brick and mortar restaurant and healthcare offices make up the few buildings that border Founders Square on three sides – the 300-acre Lake Babcock and its boardwalk complete the frame.
Stormwater And Utilities
Babcock Ranch has three large water resources permits on the property: one from the Army Corps of Engineers, a conceptual environmental resource permit (ERP) from the South Florida Water Management District (SFWMD), and a Florida Department of Environmental Protection (FDEP) 404 permit.
For stormwater, Babcock Ranch incorporated several existing mining lakes. Another lake is used for irrigation.
As more neighborhoods have been added to Babcock Ranch, the community has still been able to stay within the footprint of the conceptual ERP. Creating and restoring wetlands helps mitigate the impact of the development.
“We are not going to have to buy one credit from any mitigation bank because we have set aside our own onsite mitigation,” Mercer said.
Old farm pastures now serve as wetland collection areas. Discharge points from within the community flow through these new areas, and water is cleaned by aquatic plants of nitrogen and phosphorus. These new wetland areas have also created more flora and fauna on the property.
Bird season lasts for half the year instead of a few months. Three master lift stations in the community handle water pumped to and from a treatment plant by tertiary stations, which can save flow to the plant at inopportune times, Mercer said.
“We were able to run ladder logic of what stations run when, reducing pressures and pump sizing because we can tell which stations to run when, so they aren’t always running at once against each other,” he added.
Water resources was a focus for Babcock Ranch’s engineering team from Day 1, Kitson said. By looking back at maps of the land from the 1940s, they were able to identify natural floodways and design their development around them.
“As properties were drained in order to farm it here, it was easy to lose track of where the water was going to go,” Kitson said. “If you build in an area that’s prone to flooding, you’re going to have problems. You can’t challenge Mother Nature because you’re going to lose every time.”
Sustainable Power
In 2018, Florida Power and Light (FPL) launched its 10-megawatt (MW) battery storage project at the Babcock Ranch Solar Energy Center, making Babcock Ranch the largest combined solar-plus-storage facility in the U.S. at the time.
The project was made possible after Babcock Ranch donated 400 acres to FPL for the solar farm, which has since been expanded to 800 acres of solar panels producing 150 MW, enough electricity to power 30,000 homes. All that power runs down transmission lines to a substation next to Babcock Ranch’s utility plant. The FPL Babcock Ranch Solar Energy Center ensures that the net production of renewable energy at Babcock Ranch exceeds the total amount the community consumes.
“Except for the transmission lines along State Road 31 to tie into the grid, we have direct underground duct bank feeders,” Mercer said. “A nine-way feeder comes out of the substation and splits into nine 60-inch PVC pipes stacked three-by-three, concrete encased, down the middle of all our spine roads.”
That underground concrete encasement also carries a 4-inch natural gas line and 288 strand fiber optic cable, which run throughout the entire community.
“All of it being underground in a concrete case, we’re going to be OK as far as resiliency and major storms are concerned, and also with longevity,” Mercer said. “Reliability and sustainability for the future is us walking the walk of everything Syd’s talked about for almost 20 years.”
In September 2022, Babcock Ranch did not lose power during Hurricane Ian, which decimated the neighboring cities of Fort Myers to the south and Punta Gorda to the west. Three smart ponds developed by the National Stormwater Trust also prevented hurricane-related flooding in the community.
Positioned For Planned Growth
In the six years since the first home was built in Babcock Ranch, the community has moved from selling individual lots to builders to selling larger communities. Eight of the 10 biggest homebuilders in the U.S., including D.R. Horton, Christopher Alan and Lennar Homes, are currently building in Babcock.
Every builder has to follow community standards focused on sustainability, and every home must achieve bronze certification from the Florida Green Building Coalition (FGBC). At least three appliances in each home must connect to natural gas. Sod is allowed to cover only 50% of the front yard, and all landscaping must be native, hardy and have no need for a lot of water, fertilizer or pesticides.
Residences also come pre-wired for EV charging stations in the garage, a requirement Kitson said is important to the community’s sustainability.
Babcock Ranch operates as an independent special district (ISD) similar to The Villages and Walt Disney World. Babcock’s ISD is responsible for the maintenance of improvements, infrastructure and facilities within the District. In accordance with applicable federal and state laws, all district-owned improvements, infrastructure and facilities are open and accessible to the general public.
If Babcock Ranch fully realizes its development plan, the community could boast nearly 20,000 homes, 3 downtown areas, close to 6 million square feet of commercial space, and more than 50,000 residents.
“The idea is that people don’t have to leave,” Kitson said. “Everything will be here for them – the shopping, recreation, jobs, all the things people want. What we’re making certain as we continue to grow is that it maintains that small town charm and I think we’re able to accomplish that through having these three distinctive downtown areas that will serve each section of the community.”
Kitson and his team have received calls from developers and community planners, and they’re more than happy to assist and help people with what they’ve learned, what’s worked and what hasn’t, he said.
“We traveled all over the country visiting large master-planned communities before we started here,” Kitson said. “I loved learning and how open the developers were – they were very candid. We want to be the same way.
“The private sector does need to step up, and we’re proving this (development) works from an economic perspective as well as a sustainability and social perspective. We want to be leaders, not followers, in what is possible.”
