A thirsty region still gulps down development

MELONE E-mail: Click here Archive

© St. Petersburg Times
published July 30, 2002

To reach the Kings Point clubhouse from the parking lot, you have to cross a small footbridge over what appears to be a drainage ditch posing as a creek. The ditch is dry and full of grass.

Inside the sprawling clubhouse's dining room, retirees are gathered at small tables, sipping on coffee, talking over their day's plans. Several are waiting for a bus that will take them to shopping and the movies in Brandon.

This is their universe, a place where the golf cart is a perfectly legitimate means of transportation on the local streets. There is no sense here of being part of a battleground.

Kings Point is one of the sprawling retirement developments within Sun City Center, about 20 miles southeast of Tampa. And Sun City Center, along with Brandon, Riverview, Apollo Beach and Gibsonton, all in south Hillsborough County, are growing so fast they recently almost exceeded government rules on how much water they can use.

The Southwest Florida Water Management District threatened to fine the county for excessive usage. The county in return slapped down tough new restrictions. Unless your lawn is new, you simply can't water through August. This got some noses out of joint, including the wondrously theatrical county Commissioner Ronda Storms, who started talking like the county needed a building moratorium, even though she opposes one. She was just ticked off at the water board and wanted to generate as much noise as possible.

It worked. Last week, construction workers howling that their livelihoods were endangered filled the County Commission chambers, talking like they were angry and wounded -- while the real subject, water, was overlooked.

They aren't paying real close attention to the subject in south county, either. Elaine Brad, an official of the SouthShore Alliance, which represents local businesses, said Monday that although the alliance knows there need to be water alternatives, they haven't spent much time on what they should be.

This is the political backdrop for the lives of the people in Sun City Center, 5,000 acres carved out of farms and woodlands where the hammers fall and the drywall goes up each and every day on house and condo after house and condo.

The other necessary facilities retirement towns need are also appearing, namely assisted living facilities. A sign on a big lot declares a hospice will also soon be built.

Michael Manghisi and his wife, Charlotte Connelly, have lived in Kings Point for 12 years. They retired here from Los Angeles. They remember when the biggest news in Sun City Center was the opening of the Wal-Mart. They remember some of the open spaces.

But when you ask them if the increasing development has hurt how they feel about their adopted home, they say no, absolutely not.

But Charlotte -- her nickname is Charlie -- was quite willing to say a building moratorium might not be a bad idea, just so that the community can catch its breath and figure out what it wants next. They never stop building, she said.

Kings Point is one of two retirement developments being built by WCI Communities Inc.

The other is Sun City Center, which gives the town its name. Sixteen thousand people live in the two developments. When the two are built out, the population will double. The projects will take another eight to 10 years to finish, but eventually WCI will have built 14,000 retirement homes.

When it comes to a moratorium, I'm with Charlie Connelly, but people who think like us are talking to ourselves. Tampa Bay has never learned its growth lessons and never will. Builders like WCI Communities Inc. represent so much money and clout they are unstoppable, as are the elderly people willing to come so far for a piece of what they imagine will be paradise.

-- You can reach Mary Jo Melone at mjmelone@sptimes.com or (813) 226-3402.

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