Development Heads For Hills Of Hernando
By NEIL
JOHNSON
njohnson@tbo.com
BROOKSVILLE - On a rainy February morning three years ago, a marching band
and a cannonade of confetti lit the fuse for the next explosion of growth
in Hernando County.
As politicians
christened the new Suncoast Parkway that stitched Hillsborough, Pasco and
Hernando counties with 31 miles of asphalt, developers were looking at
pastures and forests and seeing houses and golf courses.
The toll road
that extended the Veterans Expressway in Tampa to State Road 50 put
Hernando within commuting range for people who want to earn paychecks in
Tampa and sleep someplace less crowded and less expensive.
A county known
for its quaint mermaid show at Weeki Wachee, a collection of houses
selling all things Christmas and the bucolic town of Brooksville is
becoming a bedroom community for urban areas to the south.
Developers are
racing to supply those bedrooms.
Since the $507
million parkway opened, the county has approved plans for more than 6,800
homes, with room for thousands more.
Many will be
near Brooksville, the county seat in central Hernando once isolated from
growth.
It has been
two decades since Hernando County, in the heart of what is promoted as the
Nature Coast, saw such a burst of development.
During the
boom-boom 1980s, retirees flocked to the low-cost houses and sprawling
subdivisions that mushroomed along U.S. 19 and made the county one of the
fastest-growing in the nation. Population rose from 44,469 in 1980 to
130,802 in 2000.
At the peak of
growth, housing permits averaged 3,348 a year, reaching 3,785 in 1986. It
didn't last.
The economy
slowed and so did growth. By 1995, housing permits had plummeted to 1,236.
Then came the
parkway in 2001.
Permits topped
2,000 for the first time since 1990 and by last year were just shy of
3,000.
The county
population has grown nearly 15,000 — about 11 percent — to 145,793 since
the parkway opened.
Today's
newcomers are moving into such 1980s-era subdivisions as Spring Hill,
still the giant of the developments. It has 10,000 of its original 33,000
lots free to build on.
This new crop
of houses in older developments will be the real problem, not the coming
round of new developments, county Commissioner Diane Rowden said.
During the
1980s binge, there was little control over growth or requirements for
developers to put in sewers, roads and parkland.
"They gave
away the store," Rowden said.
New homes
going up will force the county to add collector and feeder roads and,
eventually, sewer, water and pavement with no way to make long-vanished
developers pay.
Homeowners in
the older neighborhoods and taxpayers will get the bill.
For new
developments, Rowden said, the county can require developers to put in
roads and even pay for road and utility improvements outside the
development.
Different
Demographics
The numbers of
new houses and people filling them may approach the 1980s level, but this
phase will be different.
About nine of
every 10 newcomers during the 1980s were retirees. This wave likely will
be an even mix of retirees and working families.
Ronald Dunston,
project manager for Hernando Oaks, can tell that from the people asking
about his 975-unit development.
"What we
expect is about 50 percent professionals and entrepreneurs from the Pasco
and Hillsborough market and 50 percent what we call younger retirees," he
said. "And that's about what we are seeing."
The families
will put more demand on roads, schools and recreation than retirees.
Another major
difference will be where new developments will be concentrated.
Developers are
looking at the area around Brooksville, not just to the west.
Hernando Oaks,
the one new development that has hit the building stage, is about three
miles south of town.
Almost
directly east is Southern Hills Plantation, with 999 planned homes that
will be annexed into the city. That development has enough land for 2,000
more homes.
Northeast of
Brooksville is Majestic Oaks, where 650 homes are planned.
To the north,
three dormant developments could add 1,000 homes.
These surround
a city of about 7,260 residents that grew by fewer than 1,700 people from
1980 to 2002.
Brooksville
planners expect the city to grow by 4,000 or 5,000 people during the next
10 to 20 years, Community Development Director Bill Geiger said.
The newcomers,
most without the deep roots of Brooksville's current population, surely
will transform a city that has no movie theater, a vacant Burger King that
has gone out of business twice and offers Rogers' Christmas House Village
at the east end of town as a major attraction.
"It will
definitely change the political face of Brooksville," city Councilman Joe
Bernardini said.
Small Southern
Town
Brooksville's
downtown, with an early 1900s courthouse, oak canopies, brick streets and
a statue of a Confederate soldier, could be a postcard for the old Deep
South.
But downtown
is not the city's commercial center.
Major
retailers such as Publix and Winn-Dixie, Walgreens and Eckerd are to the
south end of the city along U.S. 41.
The city's
heart is struggling to become a day-trip destination of specialty shops,
antique dealers, boutiques and cozy restaurants where lunch is a verb.
The
restaurants now mainly feed courthouse employees, government workers and
lawyers with downtown offices. Parking can be a problem.
There is no
consensus on what the residential growth will mean to downtown.
Evelyn Duncan,
head of Brooksville Again, the downtown merchants association, and owner
of Antique Sampler Mall, hopes it will mean more life and business.
"We're looking
forward to a lot more traffic," she said. "The more shops, the better for
us."
Any flood of
shoppers will be too late for The Purple Cow, a gift and antique store on
Main Street that closed this month.
Her husband's
death and a city streetscape renovation project that spanned the Christmas
shopping season was enough for owner Doris de Sylva.
She said she
thinks the pastoral core of downtown will remain, but there has not been
enough business to keep her going.
"We tried,"
she said.
Not everyone
believes the growth will help efforts to make downtown a place for antique
hunters to spend their afternoons and greenbacks.
Real estate
agent Harry Timmons Sr. said downtown will continue to evolve into
businesses that don't rely on buyers strolling the newly gussied-up
sidewalks. He foresees offices for professionals, not retail stores.
"I don't think
that's going to change," Timmons said.
He predicts
Home Depots, Targets, chain restaurants and other retailers will build
farther south along U.S. 41, closer to the biggest developments.
That worries
Bernardini. If the large grocery and drugstores move farther out, more
vacant shops could join the empty Kash n' Karry and Kmart at the edge of
the city.
"We have to be
sure something's done with the vacant stores left behind," he said.
And somehow
downtown must retain its ambience and flavor.
"That's what
I'd like to keep," Bernardini said.
A Safer Place
Gloria Trott,
24, became a Spring Hill resident in January, moving from Riverview in
southern Hillsborough when she married Frank Trott, who has lived in
Spring Hill since 1981.
"It's
different," she said. "It's hard to get used to."
Moving to
Spring Hill isn't a step from an urban to a rural life. Coming from tiny
Riverview, it's the other way around.
"I get lost
all the time," she said of driving around the roughly 25 square miles of
the original subdivision.
But the
schools are better for her stepdaughter, Shenna, 15, Trott said.
"A lot of bad
stuff happens to those kids [in Riverview]. It's safer and a better
education here," she said.
Frank Trott,
39, has watched the county grow for more than 20 years, maybe grow too
much.
"It's getting
close to a city," he said. "And I don't like cities."
They will work
together on his landscape business and save money. When things become too
crowded, it will be time to move.
"We're
thinking about Colorado," he said.
Schools Will
Grow
The people the
Suncoast Parkway is leading to Hernando County are bringing children,
straining a school system that five years ago had 2 percent to 3 percent
student population growth.
"Now we're
looking at 6 percent to 8 percent," said Heather Martin, director of
planning for the school district.
The county
built three schools in the past 10 years. In the next 10, it will need to
add six more. About 10,000 new students are expected to arrive by 2014,
pushing enrollment to almost 30,000.
Those
estimates may be on the low side. This school year there were 240 more
middle school students than expected.
By next school
year, the county will have 180 portable classrooms at its 19 schools, up
from about 140 this year.
On March 9,
Hernando voters approved a half-cent sales tax to pay part of the $200
million price tag for school construction. But the $60 million to $70
million the tax is expected to raise will still leave property taxpayers
with a huge bill.
"They're
paying for [growth] now and I don't see that changing," Martin said.
Just as a
squeezed balloon bulges in another direction, growing population to the
south is shoving toward Hernando.
"Two main
factors are at work here," said Marvin Rose, who has published a monthly
report on housing in the Tampa Bay area for 25 years. "One is growth of
the Tampa Bay area as a whole. The second is the Suncoast Parkway has
benefited Hernando County more than any other."
"Land prices
have gone up so dramatically in Hillsborough and Pasco; Hernando County
looks attractive," Rose said.
But the cheap
land is becoming less cheap. "Acreage prices have virtually doubled and
doubled again," Timmons said.
"I've been
here over 30 years and 25 of those, acreage was $4,000 to $5,000 an acre,"
the real estate agent said. "Now you can't buy property in eastern
Hernando County for less than $10,000 an acre — if you can find it."
In 2003, the
average market value of a single-family house in Hernando was $94,560,
slightly below the average $97,716 in Pasco.
Hillsborough's
average value was $184,035.
Taking It As
It Comes
About six
miles east of Brooksville, in the Spring Lake area of rolling hills, horse
farms and orange groves, land prices in the past two or three years
reached $14,000 an acre. Nearly every parcel seems to have a for-sale
sign.
There isn't
one in front of Boyette's Grove, an odd mix of a working grove,
old-Florida style gift shop and a children's petting zoo.
Kathy Oleson's
family has owned the shop and 100 acres of grove since the early 1960s.
She sees the growth as nothing to get excited about.
"Twenty or 25
years ago, New Tampa was like this," she said. "It's been growing since
the '60s."
She's
philosophical about the changes to come.
"Whether
something is lost or gained, depends on how you feel."
There are no
plans to cash in right away and convert the family land to development.
"This is going to be something for my children to think about," Oleson
said.
The growth
rolling over the county is not universally welcome. Nor is the impact of
the Suncoast Parkway on a county that attracts people seeking open space,
horseback rides in the Withlacoochee State Forest or exploration of
coastal marshes in state and federal wildlife preserves.
"It's a
boondoggle," said Arlene Erdrich, who founded the Coalition for Anti-Urban
Sprawl and the Environment in an unsuccessful fight against a Wal-Mart
Supercenter built near Spring Hill on U.S. 19.
"It's just a
way of getting a road through so developers could build along that road,"
she said.
Developments
are sprawling along the county's main roads with no control, she said,
putting concrete and asphalt over a county that was open and natural when
she moved there in 1983.
"You'd think
they'd look at what happened to the east coast of Florida," she said.
"Calling this the Nature Coast is laughable."
