The Silverlakes community is part of the development known as Gateway. In Gateway there are planned areas for shopping, schools, parks, places of worship, and offices. There are many different communities in Gateway. The Silverlakes community is but one of approximately twenty-six different residential areas, all within Gateway.
The 5400 acres that make up the land that is now Gateway was purchased (approximately 1984) by Westinghouse from a Mr. George Sanders. This is the same Mr. Sanders that was involved with the construction of the Edison Mall. Westinghouse then established the name of Westinghouse Gateway Communities, Inc to develop Gateway. On September 28,1992 Lennar Homes, Inc. purchased the Silverlakes portion of the property from Westinghouse Gateway Communities, Inc. (now know as WCI) for $6,000,000. Lennar installed the Silverlakes infrastructure and was the original builder of the homes in the Silverlakes community.
Originally Lennar intended to build villas on the property, but during the design phase changed to the current configuration of 14 villas and 315 homes.
On July 1, 1999 Colonial Homes, Inc. purchased from Lennar the remaining unsold one-hundred-ten lots plus the four finished model homes for $2,524,500 and continued to build the same type of homes plus a few new models.
Turnover of the community from the developer (Colonial at this time) to the resident controlled Board occurred on March 19, 2000. Originally there were five members on the HOA Board, but at the start of 2001 this was changed to seven. The first task for the new Board was to get the HOA finances under control and establish a new budget for the year 2001. The HOA annual meeting in 2004 changed the number of members on the Board back to five members.
Originally the Club House was owned by Lennar. On December 27, 2000 the Silverlakes at Gateway Homeowner's Association purchased the Club House from Lennar for $987,000. This price was thought to be outrageous at the time. However, the residents thought that the purchase was in our best interests as Lennar had a third party offer to buy at the same price. If the third party purchased the Clubhouse, the HOA would not have had another purchase option until the year 2010 at which time the purchase price would have increased to $2,023,350.
In January 2002, Colonial Homes Inc. had essentially completed their sales activity. They closed the sales office and turned over the sale of the remaining three homes to outside realtors.