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New Port Richey will use the two-story display home to entice residents and developers, and to suggest improvement possibilities.
By MELIA BOWIE, Times Staff Writer
© St. Petersburg Times, published March 22, 2003
Want to see what New Port Richey's neighborhoods would look like with a face lift?
Local officials are here to help.
Not with blueprints and brochures, but with a two-story model home the city is building to show itself off.
The goal: Sell residents and developers on New Port Richey's potential.
The challenge: replacing a sea of small, concrete block homes -- many of which are valued at $60,000 or below, although the average home price is $83,000.
"We want to show that you can do this in New Port Richey," said redevelopment director Gerald Paradise. "You don't have to go to Trinity. You don't have to go to Longleaf."
Toward that end, the model home will be built on a 50-foot lot along Missouri Avenue this summer, complete with three bedrooms, two baths and a two-car garage. Lofts and porches are optional.
Tours of the 1,800-square-foot house, built in a Key West style, will be provided. Homes with the same design but a Spanish or cottage facade may follow.
Swift regulatory approval should be a cinch, staffers said.
The specs will be pre-approved and offered at a low cost to residents interested in copying them.
"It streamlines the building process quite a bit," Paradise said.
Local landscapers, builders, decorators and furniture suppliers will be invited to outfit parts of the home in exchange for free advertising and a showcase for their work.
"We hope to start construction in June or July," Paradise said of the model. "Hopefully it will be open in the fall."
With citywide revitalization efforts under way and hundreds of paint and fix-up grants being awarded, city officials are working to raise New Port Richey's cache and its tax base.
They are not alone.
A number of towns and cities across the state are hoping to cash in on a layout that has garnered millions for places such as Disney's Celebration.
A picturesque Main Street people can walk to, with quaint shops and businesses. Community gathering places.
Planners dub it "the new urbanism." It is tradition in New Port Richey.
Lately "you end up with a shopping center or a subdivision, not a community," said Paradise, adding leaders here are working to rebuild the city's downtown and residential areas together.
The idea of a city-owned model home, which he and others hope will spur neighborhood revitalization, came from Palm Beach via the Treasure Coast Regional Planning Council.
Until now "outside of the main town area in New Port Richey there aren't really any houses that have great architecture," said Bruce Frey, president of the Johnson-Frey-Turzak Group, which was hired to complete a $50,000 design of the house. Another $100,000 was allotted for construction.
The project is being funded by the Community Redevelopment Agency.
For residents, Paradise prices the homes at about $100,000 to $140,000.
The price does not include up to $5,000 in existing city grant money alloted for home renovations. But the figure does factor in lot price and demolition costs.
"With interest rates as low as they are people can do this," said Paradise, who also credited City Manager Gerald Seeber and Director of Development Services Fred Metcalf with honing the idea.
At some point, perhaps in a year, the model homes could be sold and the profits reinvested in the Community Redevelopment Agency. Another model in a different style would be built elsewhere -- this time on a lot bordering an alley or in a floodplain.
If the models prove successful, the city might look into buying clumps of scattered land for a townhome project that a developer would partner with the city to build.