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Tam Bay Development can't work until Fairwinds Road is extended, but home builders can continue.
By JAMES THORNER, Times Staff Writer
© St. Petersburg Times, published March 7, 2002
Developers of Meadow Oaks community will have to idle their backhoes until they build a new entrance road for the neighborhood north of State Road 52.
Acting on complaints that construction traffic continually rumbles through the Sugar Creek neighborhood, Pasco County commissioners on Tuesday night ordered Tam Bay Development Co. to stop work on Meadow Oaks.
The county said Tam Bay violated a condition of Meadow Oaks' 1983 zoning approval by failing to extend Fairwinds Road to the east for use by construction traffic.
Instead, concrete mixers and other trucks continue to approach Meadow Oaks from the south via Sugarcreek Boulevard.
The commissioners' decision won't stop the trucks from rolling, however. The order binds only Tam Bay, which develops lots in Meadow Oaks but doesn't build homes.
Neighborhood builders such as Lennar Homes, Grandview Homes and Costa Homes are allowed to finish their part of Meadow Oaks, a retiree-dominated community expected to top out at 955 homes.
In the opinion of Sugar Creek resident Calvin Branche, that defeats the whole purpose of getting tough with Tam Bay.
Until Tam Bay decides to link Meadow Oaks with Fairwinds, trucks will continue to roar over Sugar Creek's brittle asphalt.
"The county should have required this to get done many, many years ago," Branche said Wednesday.