The Woodlands

Gulf Harbors Woodlands is a waterfront community designed from the plat up for the upscale boater and with attention to nature. All utilities and cable are subterranean providing a clean, uncluttered look. The community also boasts a large waterfront heated pool, lighted tennis courts, boat ramp, club house, and a membership-only yacht club with a waterfront restaurant and lounge. A great place to tie up for a visit after a day of boating the sandy islands.

Located on the north side of Gulf Harbors' main North Channel all waterfront homes in this community have direct and unobstructed gulf access which is only minutes away at idle speed by boat.

Gulf Harbors Woodlands is a deed restricted community and has a mandatory association.  The community has a large heated pool that sits right on the waterfront and is next to the Gulf Harbors Yacht Club.  This community also enjoys two lighted tennis courts which are also situated directly on the waterfront for spectacular views while playing! There is also a private boat ramp for residents.

The community also has residents and associations which sponsor family events such as the annual Belloise Family Easter Egg Hunt and Spring Festival held at the Woodlands' field next to the community clubhouse. Gulf Harbors Life in co-sponsorship with Belloise Realty also holds the always anticipated Woodlands' Haunted Halloween Carnival. The Gulf Harbors yacht Club holds the annual Christmas Light Boat Parade which parades up Gulf Harbors' Main North Channel and several connecting canals.  They Gulf Harbors Yacht Club also holds the annual Blessing of the Fleet where dozens of boats parade the north channel to be blessed by a minister as they pass the Yacht Club.  The procession then continues out to the Gulf to lays wreaths in memorandum.

Gulf Harbor and Gulf Harbors Woodlands official website is www.GulfHarborsLife.com on which community news, events, and many informative videos can be located.  There is also several specialized forums where visitors can ask questions or check the community classified ads. There is a webcam streaming live video from the North Channel where you can often watch a beautiful sunset!

Gulf Harbors Woodlands is a great location to launch many memorable sailing adventures with the tropical sandy shores of nearby islands just minutes away! Caladesi Island was voted the nation’s 2nd best beach beating-out even Hawaiian beaches (See DrBeach.org)! And just a 45 minute cruise to Clearwater Beach and all their events such as their internationally acclaimed Jazz Holidays, big-name concerts, large seafood festivals, and amazing firework displays.

New Port Richey is quickly becoming the cultural center of Pasco County! The New Port Richey library was voted best library in Florida! Enjoy several annual events along New Port Richey's downtown river walk and amphitheater! Music festivals, Chasco Native American Fiesta, fine arts events, crafts and antique shows, and many more!

Below is a reprinted 1976 article from Lindrick's own newsletter, Gulf Harbors Light, the precursor to Gulf Harbors' Sights & Sounds, which talks about the soon-to-be developed Woodlands community!

A wilderness is being transformed into woods and waterways. Into Gulf Harbors Woodlands. But carefully and with infinite pains.

The Woodlands are not an isolated outpost. They are near a bustling shopping center, a private beach and golf course. In fact, within a radius of three miles from the sophisticated life.

Some channels have been dredged - more than two miles of them. The project is planned and being developed by Lindrick Corporation, creator of adjacent Gulf Harbors with its waterway homes for more than 1200 families.

Across the broad channel from Gulf Harbors is the waterway en­trance to the Woodlands, at Harbor Village, site of a commercial area including a Bath and Racquet Club with tennis courts, swimming pool and dressing rooms scheduled for completion by December, 1977, and a proposed private yacht club. The channel is protected from the Gulf by 347 acres of wilderness, permanently dedicated by Lindrick as the Robert Crown Wildlife Refuge under the Federal Wilderness Area Act.

Waterways wind through wooded land, following the meanders of estuarian creeks. Islands along the waterways add to the natural set­ting. Lindrick’s theme is to bring dreams of living - in comfortable company with nature - to beautiful reality.

Entering by car, the visitor finds himself at the Woodlands reception center next to a sparkling lagoon, part of the area’s inter-connected waterway system.

Twenty-nine homesites - many on waterways - have just been re­leased for sale, to be followed by other releases as required. Eventually more than 300 beautiful wooded lots, both waterfront and off-water, will be made available by Lindrick for home construction by skilled custom builders in the area.

Lindrick does not plan to sell lots “en bloc” to mass-production tract builders. As a result, the Woodlands will achieve a pleasing aura of custom homes crafted to individual tastes. Highly creative design services are available here, or, if you prefer, bring your own plan for review by our Environmental Control Committee.

The Woodlands may be among the last coastal waterway develop­ments offered the public in Florida because of legislation severely restricting dredging of coastal waterways. Fortunately for prospective residents, Lindrick won conceptual approval for the Woodlands because of the exceptional precautions proposed to preserve the balance of nature in the area.

Lindrick believes the Woodlands will have the ideal combination of wooded sites and waterways - so unlike typical artificial settings else­where - that only a visit can “tell it like it is.”

The Woodlands not only are a channel-separated neighbor of the Robert Crown Wilderness Area but include 80 acres of conservation preserves which will be donated to the Florida Department of Natural Resources.

Preparing a wilderness for living is a monumental task. The work calls for a grand design, huge machines and the touch of experts to en­sure that homesites, waterways and utilities mesh into nature’s plan with a minimum of disruption.

During this transformation, the native flora and fauna continue their burgeoning lives almost undisturbed. A Woodlands walk is a trip through a Florida coastal land little changed from pre-settlement days.

For the active sports-minded person, the Woodlands will offer rec­reation unlimited, from dawn, with its promise of pleasant boating and a harvest of fish, to dusk with the fulfillment of twilight over silhouetted trees and the vesper flights of herons overhead.

…a MONUMENTAL task

There are two ways to develop a wooded area for homesites. One way, unfortunately too common, is to bulldoze every tree, level the ground, and leave to the new resident the worrisome and expensive job of creating a natural setting.

The other way is to lend nature gentle help so she can be more natural.

Lindrick Corporation, developer of Gulf Harbors Woodlands, chose the second way.

The task of adapting a native environment to gracious living reaching an accommodation with nature has been a mon­umental one.

The area, known locally as the Devil’s Woodyard, had never been settled. A two-mile-long stretch of land along the Gulf of Mexico, it was buttressed by storm-taming mangroves,

Further on shore were tall stands of pine, rising above palms, magnolias, live oaks, cedars, cypress, laurel and pepper trees. Inlets and tidal creeks formed a thriving habitat for abundant fish and shell-fish. The uplands were primarily used for cattle grazing. The nearest the Devil’s Woodyard came to a road was a trail here and there through palmetto thickets. The area was a wilderness;

To begin its task, Lindrick experts made a definitive survey from which a plan for development emerged. Using the old trails that skirted the wooded areas or wound through them, Lindrick moved in its equipment.

Trees were marked for preservation — for distinction, not extinction. Some trees were welled in to protect them from suffocation. Others, unavoidably in the path of a projected roadway, were trenched around roots to allow the roots to adapt, and planted elsewhere in the Woodlands.

According to Bill Long, landscape contractor at the Woodlands and member of the International Society of Arboriculture, it takes up to a full season for a tree to re-invigorate its root pruning so it can be transplanted suc­cessfully. At publication date, over fifty trees have been transplanted, including several slash pines — a variety most horticulturists would say cannot be transplanted.

When it came time for installing underground utility systems, trees were kept in mind. Abandoned was the easy way of power-digging a trench straight through spreading tree roots which can damage or kill the trees. Instead, root structures were exposed by hand and pipe placed within the root system.

Marshy areas were left in their natural state. All, sea marsh areas receive nutrients in the ebb and flow of tidal waters connecting them to channels.

Channels which lead through Gulf Harbors Woodlands were created with care. Rejected was the traditional “finger fill” operation in which a monster crane claws its way, spewing rock, marl and, mud indiscriminately along its straight-line path. Instead, the channel-makers worked a bit at a time, mostly on dry land, keeping the waters at bay by a series of earth dams or “plugs”. Topsoil was reserved in huge mounds. The underlayer could be used for fill where needed. And the exposed solid stratum of limestone was dug or blasted to serve as riprap — material to line channel banks. When the channels were contoured to government specifications, the “plugs” were removed and waters of the Gulf claimed their new home.

Figures usually are boring unless it means money in the bank. But an idea of the task which is nearing completion is that more than 600,000 cubic yards of earth will have been excavated in creating the channels. Millions of dollars have been spent, and more is allocated, and, all is being accomplished in intimate partnership with nature.