Additional concessions are on the table — are they enough?
Just when you thought the Calusa saga was heading for yet another showdown at County Hall, plot twist: the fight over the former golf course — and its politically famous bird island — is being punted again.
But this time, not because Miami-Dade forgot to send a notice, misplaced a legal ad, or tripped over its own process. This time, it’s because the two sides actually sat down in the same room and talked.
Yes, talked. In Miami-Dade land-use warfare. Mark the calendar.
After last month’s dramatic deferral — when Commissioner Raquel Regalado realized she didn’t have the votes and kicked the 
540-home proposal down the fairway — Sunrise-based developer GL Homes and Save Calusa leader Amanda Prieto met privately to kick around some compromises and then publicly at a Kendall Federation of Homeowners Associations forum last week.
Dozens of residents showed up. Questions flew. Emotions simmered. Nobody flipped a table. Progress.
Then, they announced that both sides asked the county commission to postpone the March vote until April 23. Purportedly to get closer to a deal everyone can live with for the project that would not die.
Or it could be that the developer is buying more time to regroup.
Read related: No votes, no vote: GL Homes’ Calusa development kicked down the fairway
GL Homes still wants to build hundreds of houses on the abandoned Calusa Country Club golf course — land that once had a 99-year covenant protecting it from development until ring-property owners voted to lift it after receiving six-figure buyouts.
What’s changed is the number of homes. But barely. Originally: 550. Then: 540. Now: 525. That’s a whole 15 fewer homes. But many residents at the KFHA meeting — and a few homeowner association meetings since — don’t think that’s nearly enough. They say that only a bigger reduction in density will do.
Developer executive Richard Norwalk says the new plan addresses concerns about traffic, wildlife, and neighborhood impact. The company insists it will “enhance” the organic rookery on the tree island in the lake — home to bunchy of wildlife, including multiple protected state bird species 
that inconveniently turned a former golf hazard into an ecological asset.
Residents remain skeptical. Particularly about the daily 4,300 additional cars on local our roads.
Traffic has always been the quiet third rail of this debate. Not as photogenic as herons, not as emotional as green space — but potentially more decisive to commissioners who have to answer to voters stuck in Kendall gridlock.
Prieto, who founded Save Calusa, has become the de facto spokesperson for the rookery — a multi-species nesting colony that formed organically after the course closed — and has been going to these meetings to get “as much feedback as possible” from the community. “I don’t want to make the decision locked up in a silo. Is this good enough? We are way past what do you want to see here. I can’t save the whole thing.
“It’s not exactly what we want but it is better than what they had,” Prieto told Political Cortadito. “I need to know if it’s something the community can live with.”
Developers say their new plan protects the rookery. Environmental advocates say surrounding a rookery with luxury homes, lights, noise, pets, and human activity is not protection — it’s pressure. The Tropical Audubon Society has recommended a 330-foot buffer. And not to drain any part of the lake that serves as a feeding ground. Anything less will lead the rookery to fail.
Prieto said that GL Homes has already agreed not to drain the lake. And they will also stock it with fish two years before the construction starts on the homes nearest the rookery. They have also allowed to let the Audubon Society monitor the rookery and collect data and are willing to stock the other lakes with fish as well, to create a whole feeding habitat.
They are also willing to prohibit boating all year long, not just during nesting season, which would have disrupted the rookery.
The buffer? That’s not so easy a task. Apparently GL Homes has agreed to a nearly 330-foot buffer. Close, but no cigar. For some reason, they couldn’t go all the way. And for some reason, they put the center of that radius at the middle of the rookery island, other than the northern end, which means it cuts into existing homes more and into the construction zone less. Sneaky.
Nevermind that Prieto and others wanted more. Like a park of several acres protecting the rookery. Not an active park with soccer fields, mind you, a passive park with walking trails far from the nesting birds.
But it’s not about what she wants. She needs to know what the community will accept.
Read related: KFHA brings Save Calusa fight to a public neighborhood forum Tuesday
All these “concessions” sound like low-hanging fruit, like just the very bear minimum needed to make it look like GL Homes is making real compromises. Maybe Norwalk will go to the commission and say, “Look at all we’re offering and it’s not enough for these people.” Because it’s not. It’s not nearly enough.
One good thing: The talks show that Norwalk and GL Homes are willing to move the needle. They just need to move it a little bit further.
The fight has never been about whether something will be built. Even Prieto acknowledges that ship sailed when the covenant was lifted. It’s about how much.
Last month’s commission hearing made one thing clear: the votes weren’t there for the project as proposed, but they weren’t there to kill it either.
Several commissioners openly questioned the scale, traffic impacts, and environmental buffer around the rookery. The political sweet spot is a compromise everyone can live with — or at least not campaign against.
At the KFHA forum, both sides sounded cautiously optimistic. Not exactly hugging, but no longer throwing legal briefs at each other either.
Norwalk said the company is “very accustomed” to working with residents and believes its latest efforts will be successful. Prieto said she believes in “the power of community” and wants everyone to have a voice.
Read related: Calusa project is back at Miami-Dade County — so is developer’s checkbook
In Miami political translation, that means: negotiations are ongoing, positions are flexible, and nobody wants to look unreasonable before the next vote.
If the item had gone forward this week, commissioners likely would have faced a binary choice: approve a project many residents 
oppose or reject a major development after years of process and litigation. Now they get an off-ramp.
By April 23, GL Homes could return with a materially different proposal — fewer homes, larger buffers, traffic concessions, or something else designed to peel off just enough votes to pass. Or not.
Because Calusa has become more than a zoning case. It’s a political Rorschach test: growth vs. green space, housing vs. infrastructure, developer influence vs. grassroots organizing.
And hovering over everything are those birds — unaware they’ve become the most litigated wildlife in Kendall.
The bulldozers aren’t coming tomorrow. But they’re not going away either.
What happens over the next month — in conference rooms, neighborhood meetings, and quiet phone calls — will determine whether the Calusa golf course becomes a reduced-scale development and a symbolic environmental victory, a political compromise nobody loves or simply phase one of a project that keeps shrinking until it finally fits.
For now, both sides say they’re talking. Which, after nearly a decade of lawsuits, buyouts, deferred votes, and dueling T-shirts, may be the most surprising development of all.
The birds, meanwhile, are still nesting. Unaware that their future depends not on migration patterns or food supply — but on negotiations that end on April 23.
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