Welcome to the Hidden Creek CDD & Southshore Bay!

This site is not affiliated with Metro or Hillsborough County!

From what's been said at the board meetings, the gates are too heavy and constantly break the hinges, and the motors that open the gates constantly blow the fuses. In other words, they were installed by a company that didn't know what they were doing, and purchased by a company that didn't care what they were doing. You'll find a lot of that around Hidden Creek and Southshore Bay.
Anyway, the gates are just for show, so don't worry about them. You'll see why in the next section.

The CDD is a "special-purpose" government entity, as defined under Chapter 190 of Florida Statutes. That means they're allowed to issue "tax-free" bonds. The benefit of issuing tax-free bonds is that the residents then usually can pay a lower interest rate to the bond buyers, compared to what they would have to pay if the interest was taxable. The downside is that Section 103 of the Internal Revenue Code has all sorts of regulations about something being "tax-free". One of those being private use vs public use. Like most developers, Metro decided to go the tax-free route.
Several CDDs have tried to convert their "public-use" roads into private roads, but I'm not aware of any who were successful.

The lagoon is a private entity. At no point was it ever planned to be turned over to the residents, so let's get that rumor out of the way. Think of it kind of like a good old fashioned mining town from the late 1800s. Someone buys a bunch of land, builds a private business, then builds a "community" around said business. Fortunately, we don't have to work in the mines, but we do need to pay the lagoon a stipend every year. I haven't been to the lagoon since 2024, so I don't know if they ever figured out how to actually run it, but the last time I was there, all the staff acted like they hated their jobs, the food was inedible, and everything was more expensive than their Disney counterparts. In other words, it's not a place a lot of residents wanted to go to, even though we have to pay for it, like it or not.

That's Medley, an "active adult" community within Southshore Bay. I'm still a few years away from being allowed in, but in addition to having to deal with the lagoon club, they have their own HOA, plus the Southshore Bay HOA, plus either the Hidden Creek or Southshore Bay CDDs to deal with. They have their own awesome website.
https://www.medleymembers.net/

Once I moved in to Southshore Bay, I wanted to learn about the CDD, the Lagoon, and my new neighborhood. Unfortunately, I didn’t like a lot of what I found out.

If you read the "club plan" (that's part of the deed since we're a "deed restricted" community), basically the Lagoon can do whatever they want, whenever they want. They want to double your stipend? They can do that. They want to annex the community across the street? They can do that too. They can do pretty much anything they want to make them more money.

The CDD is the only authority that can hold the lagoon accountable, and that's a big responsibility. Fortunately Chapter 119 of Florida Statutes says the CDD must provide documents regarding CDD business to the public.

Kai (formerly known as Breeze) is the management company the CDD hired to run everything. It's not official, but pretty much everyone involved in Florida real estate believes Kai is owned by Metro, which makes a lot of sense if you see how Kai operates.

Originally I started a Wordpress website https://southshorebay.info to catalog all the information I was digging up about Southshore Bay. That was too cumbersome, so I tried a Facebook group, but I honestly don’t go on Facebook much, and when I do, I always get distracted.

Back in January, Kai decided either I had already revealed too much, or I was getting too close to discovering something they were hiding (I don't know why, but those are the most logical possibilities), and so they cut me off from obtaining any more CDD documents. Even though they're legally required to give them to me.

That lead to John Studebaker vs Hidden Creek CDD. More on that to come.

Anyway, now I finally have a nice, simple home so I can share all the stuff Metro doesn't want you to know. Enjoy!

I'm not certain what this page will look like once I'm finished, but here's what I have for now:

  • Lawsuit 25-CA-002512 Judgement The judge made it official today. I highlighted the important parts on page two. And now I remember why I told my friend I lost the battle but won the war. This was never about the emails, that was just the excuse for the lawsuit. The Mandamus was denied as moot, but the judge found the CDD violated their duties under Chapter 119. Kia is officially a legally deficient liability to all of us, and next time, she's not going to go so easy on them.

  • Creation of Hidden Creek This is the Hillsborough County Ordinance that created Hidden Creek. Check out Section 4. Any of those names ring a bell? They should, Michael Lawson is Metro's Managing Director of Operations (as of today, 8/16/2025) as well as the Chairman of the Hidden Creek CDD, and Doug Draper is still on the board as well.

  • Kai Contract Here's our contract with Kai. Fun fact, when I was talking to one of the representatives of a different CDD management company, I told him we were paying Kai $6,000 a month. His reply was "Wow, yea that's a lot." Pay attention to #12. Remember, these are the people who have been saying everything will be done "next month" for six months now, and are directly responsible for Hidden Creek being one of the very few CDDs to be successfully sued by a resident for violating Florida Law.

  • Gate Cost Sharing Here's where Hidden Creek says we'll pay for 90% of the cost of the gate and the guard, and Metro only has to pay for 10%. Pay attention to #5. Metro's Managing Director of Operations signs a contract with Metro's Chief Executive Officer. Arm's length transaction my ***.

  • Southshore Bay Club Plan I left my comments directly in this PDF. If you don’t want to read the whole thing, my comments will answer a lot of the questions and complaints I’ve heard about the lagoon. I don't know a single person who would have purchased a home in Southshore Bay if they had read this beforehand. Remember, we're a Deed Restricted community. Part of our Deed says we agree to this.