Northpinellas: Where Florida stands still

Tall pine trees rustle softly in the breeze. Birds sing, their chirps and calls overlapping. At water's edge, small waves gently lap a concrete seawall.

Around a small bend on a shady dirt path, a Brahman bull named Ferdinand -- a vestige of the McMullen family's cowherding days -- squarely looks at a group of visitors, then leads his harem of cows away.

Overhead, an egret perched on a tall tree watches a large nest across a placid lagoon. A fox squirrel scampers on another tree.

This is a snapshot of wildlife at the 88-acre McMullen property, the largest piece of undeveloped gulffront land in Pinellas County. It also helps explain why the County Commission might be willing to buy the land for $21.4-million, or about $3-million more than what the county's appraisers say the property is worth.

To some, it's worth it.

"It would be a sin to let this be developed," County Commissioner Susan Latvala said.

The county has been negotiating with the McMullen family for years but this week is the closest the two sides have come to agreeing on a price. On Tuesday, commissioners gave preliminary approval to buying the property off U.S. Alt. 19.

The alternative could be that the family sells the property to a developer who would carve the land into waterfront lots that could accommodate large yachts. The property has about a mile of waterfront land.

There would be a lot of money in that venture, said Jim Helinger Jr., an attorney for the family. But that's not what the McMullens, a pioneer family in the area, want. They would rather the land be preserved, he said.

"If they were to develop this thing, the yield would absolutely blow you away," Helinger said. "You put any price you wanted to, especially on the gulffront lots, and somebody would buy them. I promise you."

But development most likely would drive away the land's rich wildlife.

The tract is home to gopher tortoises, Sherman's fox squirrels, eagles and "just about every kind of wading bird," said John Tarapani, the real estate broker working on the deal.

Not to mention Ferdinand the bull and the other 20 or so cows, which are owned by the McMullens and freely roam the land.

"The amount of wildlife out here is just incredible," Tarapani said.

The cacophonous traffic on Alt. 19, where an average of almost 21,000 cars and trucks a day rumble by, is at least a half-mile away from the land's waterfront.

"The songbirds are speaking for themselves," Tarapani said Thursday afternoon as he stood near a rickety dock that leads to a quiet lagoon. "If you sat here and watched, how many egrets and other birds do you see flying around?"

A lot.

Every few minutes, Tarapani points to an osprey or heron.

"At low tide, there are just hundreds of wading birds," Tarapani said.

For now, the county says the property, if purchased, most likely would become an extension of the county's adjacent 72-acre Wall Springs Park. Though it is too early to discuss specifics, the McMullen property could be used to complement the passive park, which is a trail head for the Pinellas Trail.

The McMullen property could be used to house an environmental education center for "hands-on, in-the-woods type of programs," said Liz Warren, the county's parks director.

"There are so few places in Pinellas, with the exception of our wonderful park system, that mimic old Florida," Warren said. "When I toured the (McMullen) property, it was like going back in time."

And there's no question about the demand for parks in Pinellas. The county's parks get more than 16-million visitors each year, which is more than what the state's parks system gets, Warren said.

The county's high numbers are probably an outgrowth of the fact that Pinellas is the most densely populated county in the state, and sometimes residents just need to escape the concrete.

"There is not a lot of land left that is pristine and untouched, and when you have the opportunity to protect land, especially when it's neighboring an existing park, it provides more opportunity to enjoy passive recreation," Warren said. "People are looking for places to have picnics and go boating."

In March, the McMullen family withdrew its rezoning application for the property as part of a proposal to put 231 homes on the property. The withdrawal gave the county's staff time to continue negotiating free from the immediate threat of development.

At the time, more than 250 people wrote letters in opposition to the proposed development plan, and another 2,000 people signed a petition in opposition.

"The public is going to be upset if we don't buy this," Latvala said. "It's incredibly important to our county and to the people who live here."

Put Latvala on that list, too.

She lives about a mile south of the McMullen property, and though she's never been on the land, she's seen it plenty of times from the water when she goes boating and fishing.

"It is an incredibly beautiful, untouched piece of land," Latvala said. "The real beauty and the thing that needs to be preserved is this is the last big piece of waterfront property. My vision for the county is not that it becomes asphalted over completely, and we have already done a pretty good job of that."

-- Ed Quioco can be reached at (727) 445-4183 or quioco@sptimes.com.

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