Bonita Bay Group and Bonita Bay Residents-An Issue

Bonita Bay

I purchased a Toyota Sienna from a property developer who also owned one of the most beautiful homes that I have ever seen.  A few months after the purchase, this Toyota Sienna started displaying the Check Engine light and it was diagnosed with the P0420 Code disease.  A Bonita Bay sticker is still attached to the windshield of the Toyota Sienna.

Bonita Bay Group is a real estate developer of master planned communities in Southwest Florida.  It is headquartered in Bonita Springs.  Bonita Bay Group’s developments include The High-Rises at Bonita Bay in Bonita Springs, Mediterra and TwinEagles in Naples, Sandoval in Cape Coral and Verandah along the Orange River in Fort Myers.

An issue between Bonita Bay Group and Bonita Bay Residents

William Bulkeley writes in an article titled dated September 24, 2009, Teed-Off Residents Drive Developer to Brink of Ruin..

Today, like many other Sunbelt developers, Bonita Bay is being squeezed by debt and plunging sales. But its biggest problem is a dispute over the deposits homeowners plunked down for memberships in the golf clubs, a marina and other clubs. Many members want to quit the clubs and get their money back for reasons ranging from cheaper golf elsewhere to the desire for ready cash. Their membership agreements say the deposits — up to $185,000 per member — are refundable on demand, a relatively unusual stipulation homeowners say was a big part of the appeal of joining. Yet Bonita Bay says the agreements also stipulate that the rules “may be amended from time to time,” thus allowing it to cancel the refund policy at its discretion — and that at any rate, it can’t pay the money. Angry residents have filed at least 15 lawsuits against Bonita Bay seeking the return of their deposits and accusing the company of civil fraud. They say the right to amend the rules doesn’t apply to the refund policy. Bonita Bay has already closed the golf club at Twin Eagles, its latest development, where most of the lots are unsold and weeds are sprouting from the bunkers.  In addition to threatening a bankruptcy filing if it has to refund deposits at the other clubs, the developer says it might have to shut down the clubs entirely unless residents come up with millions of dollars to buy them — a prospect that has homeowners doubly steamed.

This case should be of importance to many citizens because several agreement documents state that an agreement can be amended at any time.