Week in Review

K-BAR DEAL PROGRESSES: To join the city of Tampa, owners of the K-Bar Ranch must build four new roads, including an east-west road through the middle of their New Tampa property, city transportation officials said Thursday. The roads are meant to provide traffic arteries for the 1,599 homes planned for the 2,280-acre property at the northern edge of Hillsborough County. The City Council is considering whether to annex K-Bar into the city.

K-Bar residents will use a new portion of Kinnan Road to connect with Cross Creek Boulevard, which will be widened to four lanes between Clay Gully Creek and the entrance to Arbor Greene. The new east-west road and Beardsley Drive extension will empty onto Morris Bridge Road, which borders the east end of K-Bar.

A fourth road, an extension of Meadow Pointe Boulevard, is expected to connect with State Road 56 and is contingent on the eastward extension of that thoroughfare by Pasco County and the Florida Department of Transportation.

As part of the annexation agreement, K-Bar owners would be required to give the city $900,000 up front. The city expects to collect an additional $2.5-million in transportation impact fees.

City Council member and mayoral candidate Bob Buckhorn expressed concern that the increase in cars would lead to gridlock along Morris Bridge Road. Morris Bridge is a two-lane road and widening it will be difficult because the land is part of a flood plain owned by the state and by the Southwest Florida Water Management District.

"We're going to end up with Morris Bridge being as congested as Bruce B. Downs," Buckhorn said.

Elton Smith, head of the transportation department, said Morris Bridge can handle the traffic but acknowledged that "it will get heavier."

The east-west road will not extend into Live Oak, the development adjacent to K-Bar on the west. A path cuts through Live Oak, but county planners did not require the owners to make it a public road.

GRAND HAMPTON COMPROMISE: The Sierra Club and the developer of Grand Hampton have settled their differences over building on 648-acres in New Tampa.

Nearly two years after the Sierra Club filed a lawsuit claiming that the 1,600 single- and multifamily home community with an 18-hole golf course would threaten a watershed and destroy wildlife, the developer dropped plans for the golf course.

Instead, Jacksonville-based LandMar Group will keep nearly 137 acres of protected conservation areas running mostly on the west side of the property. Other wetlands will be scattered throughout.

When the Sierra Club filed its lawsuit, the Toll Brothers of Pennsylvania planned to develop the site. But with the Toll Brothers wedded to the golf course, negotiations stalled and the LandMar Group, a subsidiary of the Duke Energy Corp., emerged with a different vision for the project.

Just south of the Pasco County line and west of Bruce B. Downs Boulevard, Grand Hampton joins Live Oak in pitching itself as an upscale residential community without a golf course.

NEW COACH AT ALONSO: For the second time in two years, Alonso has hired a coach with NFL experience. In May 2001, the new coach of the first-year Ravens was John Fontes, who had come from Minnesota where he coached the Vikings' linebackers. Last week, Ravens athletic director Lou Diaz announced that his new head coach is Mike Heldt, who played with the San Diego Chargers and Indianapolis Colts.

Heldt grew up in Tampa, graduated from Leto in 1986 and went to Notre Dame where he received All-America honors as a center. Diaz said Fontes (0-10) did a great job "making the kids believe in themselves even though they were getting beaten so badly. That was no easy task, but he pulled it off."

Fontes left Alonso in early March to take a position as an assistant at Central Florida.

WOMAN CHARGED WITH BOYFRIEND'S KILLING: Hillsborough County sheriff's deputies arrested a 27-year-old Tampa woman Monday after they say she killed her boyfriend during a domestic dispute. Authorities say Medina Drayton of 13056 Londondary Place, near the University of South Florida, stabbed 34-year-old William Hornsby in the chest last Sunday night. Deputies charged her with manslaughter.

Authorities said Drayton and Hornsby, who lived together at the Londondary residence, were fighting before 10 p.m. Sunday. They said Hornsby pulled Drayton's hair and beat her head on the kitchen counter. Drayton managed to escape, but instead of calling the police, she used a butcher knife to slice the tires of Hornsby's truck, authorities said. When she came back inside, the couple fought again and Drayton stabbed Hornsby, authorities said. He died at University Community Hospital.

Drayton and Hornsby had a history of violent confrontations. Deputies had arrested Hornsby twice on domestic battery charges, most recently in October 2001.

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