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© St. Petersburg Times, published October 6, 2002
LAND O'LAKES -- Summer downpours have created weeks of wasted time for Pasco County's biggest industry: building and construction.
After three years of relatively weak rainfall, the Tampa Bay region has received a typical year's worth of rain in the first nine months of 2002. Good news for plants, wells and water-skiers. Mixed news for backhoes and bulldozers.
At Collier Commons, an unfinished shopping center at State Road 54 and Collier Parkway, crews have worked on-again, off-again schedules as repeated downpours leave mudholes and ponds across the 75-acre property.
To be anchored by a Publix and Walgreens, the shopping center is scheduled to open during the first three months of 2003.
Weather has helped knock the U.S. 41 widening project off schedule, too. Running 3.1 miles from Bell Lake to Tower roads, the project has lost 28 days to rain the past year. The original August completion date changed to one in late October.
The $10-million highway project includes widening the road from two lanes to six through the heart of Land O'Lakes. Cloudbursts tend to weaken road beds before asphalt trucks can drop their loads.
At Suncoast Crossings, the 700-acre project straddling both sides of the Suncoast Parkway at State Road 54, rain has set work back two to three weeks, developer Ken Morin said.
"In theory we're coming into our dry season," Morin said. "But there's lots of tropical activity out there."
One of Morin's business partners, Todd Taylor Residential Land Development, is developing 550 single family homes at Suncoast Crossings.
A mass of standing water covers part of the southwest corner of the parkway and SR 54. Fortunately for Morin, that part of Suncoast Crossings, to hold a giant shopping center, won't break ground until early next year.
Morin promises a supermarket and a home improvement center but has yet to announce specific tenants. Suncoast awaits a sufficient number of potential shoppers in up-and-coming housing developments such as Oakstead on SR 54.
Construction of Oakstead, which could have 1,200 homes, hasn't suffered much from weather, said Craig Weber, construction manager for Devco Developments. Most of road building and utility installation occurred in the pre-summer dry season.
But Devco's other central Pasco project, a 4,000-home expansion of Meadow Pointe in Wesley Chapel, has struggled with storms that leave the porous, sandy soil hard to handle.
"Sure we've been delayed," Weber said. "But we anticipated it."