Killearn Estates, Tallahassee

Killearn Estates is a Tallahassee subdivision developed in the mid-1960s, which a City planning document calls Tallahassee's first big suburban planned community (City of Tallahassee Market District plan).

The same City plan places it in the story of the Market Street area: Interstate 10 came through north of downtown and was completed in the late 1970s as the first east-west route north of town, and a Capital Circle flyover with its northeast end in this area followed in the 1990s. The same plan describes the Market District commercial center as bounded on the south by Interstate 10 and on the east by Killearn Estates (City of Tallahassee Market District plan).

No official boundary map of the subdivision was among the sources fetched for this guide, so its location here comes from City documents that name it. The City's lake reports put Lake Killarney within the subdivision of Killearn Estates, just north of Interstate 10 near Thomasville Road and inside the City of Tallahassee corporate limits (City lake report, Lake Killarney), and Lake Kinsale within Killearn Estates off Shannon Lakes Road (City lake report, Lake Kinsale).

Three lakes in the City's monitoring program sit in Killearn Estates, Kinsale, Killarney and Kanturk, and the City lists all three as private and not publicly accessible (Lake Kinsale report; Lake Killarney report; Lake Kanturk report).

Water runs from one to the next: Lake Killarney lies downstream of Lake Kinsale (City lake report, Lake Killarney), and Lake Kanturk, in the north side of Killearn Estates, lies downstream of both (City lake report, Lake Kanturk). Each 2026 report rates its lake as eutrophic in the Red Hills physiographic province, with biological health listed as poor and a 4e restoration plan for chlorophyll, total nitrogen and total phosphorus (Kinsale; Killarney; Kanturk).

Drainage areas grow down the chain, from 3,478 acres for Lake Kinsale (City lake report, Lake Kinsale) to 5,642 acres for Lake Killarney (City lake report, Lake Killarney) and 7,720 acres for Lake Kanturk (City lake report, Lake Kanturk). Lake Killarney is the only one of the three Killearn lakes with a fish consumption advisory listed, for largemouth bass (City lake report, Lake Killarney).

It is a City of Tallahassee stormwater project to enlarge a golf course pond near Paddrick Drive and Dutchess Court, after an April 2024 storm overflowed a private pond on the Killearn Golf Club and flooded five homes (City Paddrick-Dutchess project page).

Working with the Killearn Club, the City plans to expand the existing pond in the 9-hole Clover golf course, excavating the former golf green island and the areas around the pond, and it has bought two neighboring flood-prone properties to widen the pond footprint. The project page says demolition of the flooded properties was expected to be finished in June 2026 and that construction of the pond expansion is scheduled from late fall 2026 through early spring 2027, with more notices to residents before work begins (City Paddrick-Dutchess project page).

Buyers looking near the Killearn golf course should note what the City found about the flood map. The current FEMA Zone A floodplain there was mapped in 1997, after the golf course pond was built, and lacks detailed hydraulic analysis; the City's newer modeling after the April 2024 event produced an estimated Zone AE floodplain, and it judged the April storm greater than a 25-year storm but not quite a 100-year storm (City Paddrick-Dutchess project page). City Stormwater Management takes questions at 850-891-6860, and the page also still describes the project as in the early design phase (City Paddrick-Dutchess project page).

The City's own records disagree on timing. The FY26 Capital Budget entry describes a project to design modifications to an existing stormwater facility to relieve structural flooding at homes on Paddrick Drive and Dutchess Court in the Killearn Estates and Barron Parc subdivisions, gives a start date of 10/1/2025 and an end date of 9/30/2026, and notes that funding and timeline are subject to change, with the improvements on land of the Killearn Fairways Townhomes Homeowners Association and the Killearn Country Club (City FY26 Capital Budget, OpenGov). That end date falls before the construction window on the project page.

Property records for any Killearn Estates parcel are searched through the Leon County Property Appraiser, whose website offers a Property Search, a Sales Search, a Tax Estimator and online homestead filing (Leon County Property Appraiser).

The Property Appraiser's buyer's checklist lists four steps after buying a home: file for homestead exemption, check for additional exemptions, apply for portability and get an estimate of property taxes. Notices of Proposed Property Taxes, known as TRIM notices, are mailed to owners each August with proposed values, tax rates and estimated taxes. The office answers at (850) 606-6200, Monday to Friday from 8:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., and sits in the Leon County Government Annex at 315 S Calhoun St, Third Floor (Leon County Property Appraiser).

The bill itself comes from the Leon County Tax Collector. Notices are normally mailed on or before November 1 and are due by March 31, becoming delinquent on April 1, and early payment earns a 4 percent discount in November, 3 percent in December, 2 percent in January and 1 percent in February (Leon County Tax Collector).

A 72-acre City park sits among seven neighborhoods in the Killearn area of northeast Tallahassee, and StarMetro runs an hourly weekday Killearn bus route (City of Tallahassee park page; StarMetro Killearn route).

The park is A.J. Henry Park, at 2701 A J Henry Park Drive (850-891-3866). The City acquired the land in March 1985 with a Land and Water Conservation Grant through the State Department of Natural Resources, City money and a contribution from the donor, and built the first phase in 1986 with help from the Florida Recreation Development Assistance Program. The park has four picnic shelters, a large picnic pavilion, a comfort station, nature and hiking trails and parking areas (City of Tallahassee, A.J. Henry Park).

StarMetro's weekday Killearn route runs Monday to Friday from 6:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m., with a bus every 60 minutes, linking the Kerry Forest Walmart, Midtown and C.K. Steele Bus Plaza by way of Thomasville Road and Velda Dairy Road (StarMetro Killearn route). Southbound Killearn trips end at Gate 19 of C.K. Steele Bus Plaza, and northbound trips end at the Kerry Forest Parkway Walmart stop (StarMetro Killearn route).

Two appear: the Killearn Homes Association, named Large Neighborhood of the Year for neighborhoods of more than 200 homes in the City's 2025 Neighborhood Awards (City of Tallahassee news, October 8, 2025), and the Killearn Fairways Townhomes Homeowners Association.

The award notice does not say which subdivisions the Killearn Homes Association covers (City of Tallahassee news, October 8, 2025).

The City announced the winners on October 8, 2025, and each Outstanding Neighborhood of the Year winner received $500 toward a neighborhood project (City of Tallahassee news, October 8, 2025). The City's capital budget names the Killearn Fairways Townhomes Homeowners Association as an owner of property for the Paddrick-Dutchess work (City FY26 Capital Budget, OpenGov).

Last verified: October 18, 2026, by rereading the Market District plan, the 2026 Kinsale, Killarney and Kanturk lake reports, the Paddrick-Dutchess page and FY26 budget entry, A.J. Henry Park, StarMetro's Killearn route, the 2025 awards notice and the county appraiser and tax collector sites.