The 100-acre expansion of Butler Plaza hasn’t come without skepticism from residents who worry that the construction will affect wildlife.
The expansion will cover the former Windmeadows Mobile Home Park, an area that has been abandoned since 2002. In more than a decade, it became overgrown with trees and small animals — animals that could be displaced by the new development, residents have argued.
Ken Weyrauch, a UF urban & regional planning graduate student, said the concern came to his attention last week.
Weyrauch, who lives in the Windmeadows apartment complex behind the Butler Plaza expansion site, said the clearing happening outside his window wasn’t a problem until he saw a baby squirrel looking for shelter.
“One night, I heard a squeaking scream outside my door, and I went out, and there was this baby squirrel,” Weyrauch, 33, said.
Representatives at the county Environmental Protection Department could not be reached for comment.
Like Weyrauch, other residents have expressed concern that the clearing could prove detrimental to the area’s 12-year inhabitants. But Gerry Dedenbach, vice president of Causseaux, Hewett, & Walpole Inc., the development company handling the project, said the expansion won’t affect the area’s wildlife.
In fact, it is part of the expansion plans, Dedenbach said.
“We are selectively preserving several trees,” he said. “And there are dozens of trees that will be incorporated into a new plan.”
The area was previously farmland, which later became Stengel Airport in the 1940s. About 30 years later, Clark Butler purchased the airport to build the previous mobile home park, he said.
“Through the course of those approvals, there weren’t any wildlife or significant environmental concerns because it was farmland, then airport, then a mobile home park,” he said.
The area never became fully wooded — simply overgrown, he said. Squirrels and birds can continue to live in the new area.
“As the site is redeveloped and revegetated, it will remain populated by urban mammals and urban avian species.”
[A version of this story ran on page 5 on 10/1/2014]
Dump trucks sit in the lot of what used to be Windmeadows Mobile Home Park, which has been empty and covered in overgrown grass since 2002. A 100-acre expansion of Butler Plaza will be built there.
