SUPER-COOL DELAND WELCOMES MATTAMY’S NEW BENTLEY GREEN

Property that once encompassed the Deland Country Club is about to be reborn as Bentley Green, a 155-home community by Mattamy Homes. Buyers will be attracted by the location in arguably the coolest small city in Central Florida, as well as the reputation of the Toronto-based homebuilder, which has earned consistent kudos for customer satisfaction.

Mattamy bought the 60-acre tract at South Woodland Boulevard and Orange Camp Road from Lake Mary-based Tailwinds Development for $2.66 million.

Tailwinds, which bought the entire 105-acre country club site when the golf course closed in 2012, built Country Club Corners, which includes a 54,000-square-foot Publix as well as retailers and restaurants. The commercial development is within walking distance of Bentley Green.

The site is significant in DeLand history. Construction was completed on what was then called the DeLand Hills Country Club in the early 1920s. But as the Great Depression set in, the club was disbanded and the clubhouse burned to the ground. The golf course was abandoned. 

The DeLand Country Club was revived in 1957, when the greens and fairways were redesigned. The Great Recession, however, proved to be the club’s undoing. But there was an upside: Its closure in 2012, after years of decline, made a vast swath of undulating acreage available for new development.

At Bentley Green, Mattamy will offer nine floorplans, seven of which are new and designed specifically for the Central Florida market. The homes will include ranch and two-story designs in Prairie, French Country and Craftsman styles.

Home sizes will range from 1,700 to 3,200 square feet. Many will have front porches, and community amenities will include a pool and cabana. Paths and trails will wind their way through the community, where prices will start in the low $200s.

“DeLand is attractively positioned to provide access to the Orlando employment corridors via SunRail and I-4, while the I-4 improvements to I-95 will make the ride to Daytona even better,” says Kelly Thomas, director of marketing.

Mattamy is also building in Jacksonville, Orlando and Tampa as well as in Minneapolis, Charlotte, and in the Phoenix and Tucson areas of Arizona, according to its website.

Builder magazine, a national construction industry publication, in its most recent ranking listed Mattamy Homes as the 34th-largest homebuilder in the United States.

In 2013, DeLand decisively won a contest sponsored by the Orlando Sentinel to find Orlando’s “Other Best Downtown.” The Volusia County city beat second-place finisher Mount Dora by more than 8,000 votes.

DeLand, dubbed “the Athens of Florida,” is home to the state’s oldest private institution of higher education, Stetson University. Its picture-postcard campus is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. The city hosts the annual DeLand Fall Festival of the Arts, held in the revitalized downtown commercial district, which attracts more than 50,000 people from all over Florida.

Visit mattamyhomes.com for more information about Bentley Green, and all of Mattamy Homes’ Central Florida communities.