INDIAN RIVER COUNTY — Southern Dunes Golf Club, a 185-acre community approved in 1999, was split Tuesday to form two smaller subdivisions, with scrub jays instead of golf balls.

In separate actions, the commission rezoned the abandoned planned golfing development to form:

• High Pointe, a new planned development of 247 homes and a 15-acre scrub jay preserve on 161 acres south of 65th Street, west of the Florida East Coast Railway.

County Planning Director Stan Boling said the original planned recreational development — an 18-hole private golf course with up to 30 rental cottages — remained in effect and had to be rezoned to a planned residential development if High Pointe were to be approved.

• A yet-unnamed 24-acre subdivision, now zoned for six homes per acre, 3,230 feet west of Old Dixie Highway, also south of 65th Street.

"This is very nice," Commissioner Gary Wheeler said of the High Pointe plan.

Ameritrend Homes Inc. of Vero Beach plans to design a single access to High Pointe, at a point west of the county's Winter Beach transfer station, with double entrance and exit roads and turn lanes on 65th Street, project engineer Joseph Schulke said.

"I do have a problem with one entrance for 247 homes," Chairman Tom Lowther said.

The eastern end, however, is dominated by habitat for scrub jays, a threatened species, Boling said. And state conservation laws bar heavy traffic in such areas, he said.

"That's definitely a conflict," he said. "You can't do both (car access and scrub jay conservation) in the same area."

Boling said the eastern part of the development would have a maintained dirt road, which would allow emergency access but discourage routine traffic.

Commissioner Sandra Bowden moved approval for High Pointe and received a unanimous vote.

But she and Wheeler dissented in a 3-2 vote on Commissioner Wesley Davis' motion to rezone the unnamed western tract from the Southern Dunes planned development to six homes per acre.

"This is just a restoration of the zoning before that failed planned development," said Bruce Barkett, the Vero Beach attorney for Shiva Holdings LLC of Miami, the property owner.

The Shiva property's new zoning would allow more than 140 homes. But Barkett offered to limit the density to less than three homes per acre, or 70 homes at most, through deed restrictions.

The six-home zoning, he said, would allow smaller lot sizes than an actual three-home zoning.

The 150-foot-wide Lateral G drainage canal, which bisects the tract, already restricts how many homes can be built there, Barkett said.

But Wheeler wanted a real three-home zoning instead of deed restrictions.

"This is just another way to get a little more out of zoning without having that zoning," he said.

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