Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Old hunt club to become housing development
The land where the rich and famous once came to hobnob and hunt will become housing.
The seven-acre site at 5307 and 5309 Hood Road in Palm Beach Gardens that was the original site of the Bonnette Hunt Club will begin construction in April.
In 1961, William Bonnette bought seven acres of land and leased another adjacent 4,500 acres to build and run a target range and a hunting lodge for people to shoot game, quail and pheasant and chukar partridge — and even turkey for a brief period, according to his daughter, Alix Bonnette.
“Good old Florida boys,” she said.
The patrons’ list was a whowho’s that included former Florida governors and the nephew of a former president. Actor Burt Reynolds rented the place, and golfer Jack Nicklaus’ sons had their bachelor parties there. Jordan’s King Hussein came for a hunt and brought along James Kimberly, the heir to Kimberly-Clark Corp. fortune.
But in 1998, the lease wasn’t renewed and the foundation that owned the land sold 2,300 acres to a developer, which build Mirabella, a subdivision of Marisol, Bonnette said.
The hunt club days were over, although the original land was used for weddings and corporate parties for years.
In 2017, the family sold the seven acres of land to Parkwood Distinctive Homes for $2.55 million for the new project.
“The building was getting old, they were talking about a new roof, and equipment was breaking down every other week and we had termites,” Bonnette said. “It was doing quite well with the weddings — country weddings were a big deal — but everything we were making was going back to the building and we said it’s time to
stop it. And it’s time for me to retire.”
Development plans call for the three and four-bedroom homes from 1,361 square feet to 2,632 square feet. Buyers can choose from five models, starting at $500,000. The site plan calls for 24 single and twostory homes, with two-car garages. Six sites are lake lots.
The gated community will keep the Bonnette Hunt Club name, and Bonnette Hunt Club Lane will be the main road circling the development.
One of the oldest Banyan trees — planted in the mid 1960s — will remain, said Lynn Telling, the listing agent with Illustrated Properties, a member of The Keyes Family of Companies.
Telling joined the Bonnette Hunt Club in 2005, and her son and husband hunted quail there. Her son received his final merit badge at the site as a Boy Scout before becoming an Eagle Scout.
“This is the best use of the land in the current day,” she said. “There is so much to do with an old club that needed to be kept up. It will be lovely because we’re trying to keep the history behind it as much as can — we’ve promised that to the neighbors and the people who have long been members and who know Bonnette Hunt Club back in the days of Old Florida.”