Out-of-town home builders have big plans for area

ICI Homes, Inc. owns the development of Oakmont, a new subdivision being built at 11619 SW 24th Avenue in Gainesville.

Before the past decade, single-family home construction in Alachua County was largely the domain of local builders. That changed at the height of the boom in the mid-2000s when a few regional builders that were already operating in Orlando or Jacksonville expanded into the area to take advantage of the increased building activity.

With the subsequent crash and recession, out-of-town builders have been slowly building out their holdings in the area, but with new home sales on the rebound, they now have big plans going forward.

Maronda Homes, which is in five states and has its headquarters near Pittsburgh, has been building in Newberry and Alachua since 2006 and now has plans to build more than 400 homes combined in those towns.

ICI Homes of Daytona Beach, the developer and one of the builders of Oakmont near Jonesville, is now moving forward on the 999-home development approved 10 years ago, sharing the first phase of 233 homes with five local builders.

ICI was also one of the original builders in Weschester in Gainesville, along with Jacksonville-based Watson Custom Home Builders. Now New Atlantic Builders, formed from the ashes of Watson, is preparing to build the next phase of 132 homes.

Rosy Messina, vice president of online sales and marketing for ICI Homes, said Gainesville was a natural fit for the company when it first came here 10 years ago since the city was close to its large projects in Jacksonville and Daytona Beach.

Gainesville's slow and steady growth is also a good fit for a company specializing in higher-end homes that don't sell as fast, she said.

"We see potential in good, long-term growth," she said. "We're not like, run in and build production-tract housing and get out. That's just not how we operate."

Local builders and Realtors say the lack of large, national builders such as D.R. Horton and Pulte Homes that build large subdivisions lessened the severity of the housing crash here compared with other areas where they dumped a lot of inventory on the market that went into foreclosure.

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Out-of-town home builders have big plans for area