[Times photos: Kinfay Moroti]
Large Key West-style mansions like this one are becoming a common sight in Ozona, where some waterfront homes top $1-million.

By ROBERT FARLEY, Times Staff Writer
© St. Petersburg Times
published September 29, 2002

OZONA -- Dave Jackson's palms are too blacked with grease and oil to shake hands.

It's probably too formal anyway for the mechanic. Until recently he could most often be found working on a car outside his small, one-man auto repair shop at Orange and Bay streets.

In many ways, Jackson's shop embodies the independent, Old Florida-feel of this coastal enclave. He repairs his neighbors' new Mercedes and old Buicks.

Neighbors stop by not only to talk cars and engines, but just to say hello and chat.

Lately, the talk has been about run-ins Jackson has had with fire inspectors and Pinellas County code enforcement officers. After 16 years of doing business at this corner, county officials told him he may need to get the property rezoned if he plans to keep working outdoors in his driveway.

And that friend's boat he was keeping under a canopy out back. That had to go.

Such is the new order in Ozona, Jackson said this week. The community is changing. More and more massive Key West-style houses are cropping amid the older, more modest ranch-style homes.

Jackson and many other longtime Ozona residents believe this influx of wealthy residents is behind what they perceive as a code enforcement crackdown in Ozona.

But code enforcement is just a symptom.

"We're getting into class division here," said Jackson, 53, who raised three children in Ozona. "It's disgusting."

The new "high rollers" in Ozona have certainly raised property values, he said.

"But I didn't come here for a quick buck," he said. "I came here for a dream."

'The flavor has changed'

You want to sell a home in Ozona, where some waterfront mansions go for more than $1-million, you better get an independent appraisal.

That's what Betty Becker, a real estate agent with Bremer-Bjurquist and a 20-year resident of Ozona, tells Ozona residents thinking of putting their houses on the market. It's because agents often underestimate the soaring value of homes there.

"It's definitely a surging market," she said. "It's a phenomenon."

Sure, it's a waterfront community, Becker said. And it has good schools. But Ozona has an intangible allure beyond that, she said.

"Ozona seems to have a value in itself," Becker said. "People just want to be in Ozona."

Some people are amazed at the prices homes now fetch, she said.

"If they don't understand the texture of what Ozona is about they laugh at you and say, "You want how much for this?' But people who want to be in Ozona don't flinch. They just say, "Okay.' "

There are consequences to the prosperity. Ozona is no longer the place to find a modest starter home. Those properties lie east of Alt. U.S. 19, she said.

There are other consequences, said longtime resident Jack Austin, 67, a retired New York City Fire Department captain. New neighbors who have developed the big houses on vacant lots usually drive by quickly in SUVs without waving, Austin observed.

"It used to be a lot more neighborly," Austin said.

Austin notes that his newest neighbor, who developed a huge home spanning three vacant lots, is a "grass person."

Like many longtime residents, Austin cultivates a less-manicured "Florida lawn," which includes little, if any, actual grass. Ozona's laid back, live-and-let-live attitude has been challenged by new residents who aren't thrilled with things like boats in their neighbors' front yards. And they don't hesitate to complain to county code enforcement about it.

Ozona is still a great place to live, Austin said, but "the flavor has changed."

Twenty years ago, Bob Noell searched coastal communities up and down Pinellas County before settling on a gulf-front lot in Ozona.

"Ozona is my kind of place," he said. "It's the kind of place everyone falls in love with and they want to move here. But once they move here, they try to change it so it's not at all what they fell in love with.

"I like it the way it is," Noell said, sitting on a wooden deck that provides a panoramic view of the Gulf of Mexico and of a dock with deep channel access. "The way it is, you find a mixture of poor people and wealthy people, working people and retirees."

Thankfully, he said, there is some resistance to the recent change. Many longtime residents plan to stay. There is still a sense of community worth clinging to, he said.

As if on cue, an elderly neighbor and friend rides a bicycle up to Noell's dock. Friends need not ask permission. The man casts a net about in the shallow water for mullet. After 15 minutes, he quietly gets back on his bike.

"Anything?" Noell calls from his deck.

"Two," the man says as he pedals off.

Noell remembers a neighbor who used to have chickens for years. The new neighbors who moved in didn't like the chickens and complained about them. The county said the chickens had to go.

"I think that was wrong," Noell said.

Diversity vs. deed restrictions

Twenty-seven years ago, Paul Petit, 71, knew he'd found his home the minute he passed the property at the north end of Orange Street.

"I saw these beautiful trees and this big old house and figured this is where I want to be," Petit said.

He later found out the house came attached to nearly five acres. He didn't really want such a large property. But he came to like it.

For 27 years, Paul Petit lived with his wife at his Old Florida-style home in Ozona. On Friday, he was gathering belongings to take to his new property.

The secluded back portion of the lot allowed him to cultivate his passion for tinkering with, repairing and trading old cars and what he describes as "junk."

It also proved a good place for local crabbers to store and repair their traps in the off-season. The crabbers paid him a little rent, offsetting his rising property taxes, and supplied him with a few stone crabs every once in a while. It was a great arrangement, Petit said.

The traps were kept in a thickly wooded area in the back of his property, not visible to surrounding property owners. A neighbor once complained about the smell, but Petit said he eliminated the problem with a special cleanser.

Other than that, no one ever complained about the traps, or anything else. That changed after Petit took up for his neighbor down the road, John Schestag. After a neighbor complained about Schestag's accumulating boats, tires and vehicles on his Orange Street property, the county's code enforcement officials stepped in. A fierce and ongoing 4-year legal battle ensued.

When Petit agreed to store some of Schestag's vehicles on his property temporarily, code enforcement officials said that was just moving an illegal practice from one end of Ozona to the other. While they were on Petit's property, code enforcement officials said they spotted 17 other violations. And the crab traps had to go too, they said. He got more than $1,000 in fines, but later cut a deal and paid $400 to clear the cases. But more violations followed.

Petit had had enough. He sold his property in April. He moved to a property "off in the woods" in New Port Richey.

"I don't want anything to do with Pinellas County government anymore," he said.

Petit sold his property to developer Carol Turk of Emerald Builders. Turk said she hopes to break ground in about a month and a half on a development of about a dozen single-family homes. Although she hasn't fixed on the pricing yet, she noted that in her two other developments -- Creekside off Belcher Road and Savannah Pointe off Keystone -- those homes sold in the $225,000 to $375,000 range.

But the detail that has caught the attention of many Ozona residents is Turk's plan to create deed restrictions for the development.

To some, a deed-restricted community in Ozona is almost laughable.

There are no other deed restricted communities in Ozona, said 18-year resident Terry Fortner. The beauty of Ozona is that the homes are not the same. There is a variety of economic backgrounds. "It makes for a wonderful, strong community," she said.

Mrs. Fortner and her husband Bob, the pastor at Unity Church of Palm Harbor, have long been active in the Ozona Village Improvement Society. The group meets monthly in the 102-year-old Ozona Village Hall. At meetings, residents usually join in a rousing version of God Bless America, (even before Sept. 11, 2001) and sometimes You Are My Sunshine.

Mrs. Fortner worries that the new wealth in Ozona threatens that community spirit. Neighbors don't speak to each other as much. They go to the county to complain rather than to neighbors. She worries that a deed-restricted community will further erode Ozona's character.

Turk said buyers these days demand deed restrictions to protect the value of their homes. "You can't have a subdivision anymore without a homeowners association," she said.

But Turk realizes Ozona is unique. In deference to that, the deed restrictions will be a little less restrictive than her other developments. For example, while boats will be prohibited from driveways, she said, they may be allowed in backyard sheds.

'A very crowded county'

As enormous homes continue to rise in Ozona, Mrs. Fortner said she worries that people like her may not be welcome there one day. With the prices the way they are, she said, she couldn't afford to move to Ozona today.

"They are kind of taking over, in a way," she said. "I am concerned that people like us who have been living here a long time are being pushed out."

Mrs. Fortner said she was horrified to hear what Dave Jackson has been going through at his auto shop. She even goes to him for advice on buying a new car.

"He provides a real service to the community," she said. "I am distressed he could be squeezed out. I hate the idea that we have to govern everything."

Bob Mortoro, administrator of code enforcement for the county, said there has been no crackdown on Ozona. Nor have the rules changed, he said.

What has changed, he said, is that Ozona, like all of Pinellas County, is getting built-out. People are building in places that used to be considered backwater areas. Isolated pockets that escaped notice before now do not.

"It has become a very crowded county," he said.

As for Jackson, he said, code enforcement came at the suggestion of fire inspectors. Jackson's commercial zoning classification allows an auto repair shop, Mortoro said (though a previous letter from a code enforcer suggested it did not). But, Mortoro said, if Jackson wants to continue to work outside, he will need a zoning variance.

Jackson said he has begrudgingly moved his work inside. He remains convinced there are other forces at play.

"Here you're going to have high-end houses," he said, pointing to Turk's planned deed-restricted subdivision across the street. Then he pointed to himself. "And here's this grease monkey."

Mortoro said the zoning for Jackson's property hasn't changed since 1963. If Jackson has operated outside for 16 years, "then he has lived on the edge all that time," Mortoro said.

"This," he said, "is the new Pinellas County, period."

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