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A long road ahead
By BILL COATS, Times Staff Writer
LUTZ -- Transportation planners are proposing a new four-lane highway, roughly parallel to N Dale Mabry Highway, to handle traffic generated by future development. The road would be built largely by developers, with an east-west connection to the Veterans Expressway at N Dale Mabry Highway. It would run from Van Dyke Road to the Pasco County line east of Heritage Harbor. It's part of a package of proposed road improvements that are in the earliest stages of planning. The changes have been devised by Hillsborough County transportation planners working informally with a group of Lutz neighborhood leaders and landowners. They haven't completed their report or submitted the proposals to the county's road priority-setters. "We hope that people see this is a positive," said Tom Thomson, transportation director in the county's planning department. Steve Polzin, a transportation expert who represented the Lutz Civic Association on the committee, said the need for a north-south road was clear. "I think there was a recognition that you need that for internal circulation alone," Polzin said. Gerry Reno, who sharply criticizes how the road network may affect his neighborhood of Calusa Trace, nevertheless praised the overall plan. "We've seen this picture," said Reno, president of the Calusa Trace Master Association and one of the leaders working on the study. "We kind of think this makes sense in some regards." Thomson said a later draft of the proposals is to be sent to Reno and other committee members next month, then submitted to public officials such as county commissioners and the Metropolitan Planning Organization, which prioritizes Hillsborough's transportation needs. Flat-top humps
Reno and other local leaders began demanding a roads study in 2001, as Hillsborough County commissioners approved a medical complex at the southwest end of Calusa Trace Boulevard and 650 apartments just beyond the eastern end. Everyone knew Pasco County was approving thousands of new houses north of Lutz. And Idlewild Baptist Church was planning to build one of Florida's largest church complexes on Van Dyke, between Dale Mabry and Simmons. So commissioners directed Thomson's staff to work on a comprehensive plan for the area. First, county staffers projected how much traffic will increase on local roads by 2025. Dale Mabry, which currently handles about 26,000 trips a day north of Van Dyke, is projected to receive about 40,000 such trips by 2025. That would exceed the highway's capacity at four lanes. Two-lane Van Dyke, between the Veterans Expressway and Dale Mabry, already is over capacity at 20,000 trips a day. It's projected to have 27,000 daily trips in 2025. Thomson said planners were surprised at the low numbers projected east of Dale Mabry for many of Lutz's east-west roads. "It's our analysis that traffic is increasing over 20 years, but not beyond the capacity of those roadways," he said. Thomson noted that the model projected more than 20,000 additional east-west trips through Lutz by 2025, enough to justify a new four-lane road. But those trips will be scattered across County Line, Lutz-Lake Fern, Crystal Lake and Crenshaw Lake roads. "The demand is not quite what we perceived it to be," he said. The report proposes that residents nominate those roads for "traffic calming." Traditionally, such collector roads have been considered too busy for speed humps. However, Hillsborough County this year is implementing a program for such roads that will include slowing incentives such as "flat-top" humps accommodating speeds as high as 35. Transportation planners believe such speed controls can shoo drivers toward other roads, reducing traffic as much as 10 percent. Another change might thin traffic on the eastern end of Van Dyke. Thomson envisions that the new roads will take eastbound traffic off Van Dyke by converting a sharp curve into a right-turn intersection. "The way we're trying to design this is to interrupt Van Dyke as an east-west road," Thomson said. 'Up in arms' Two neighborhoods are sure to be disappointed that the study proposes no obstacles to a linkup of Calusa Trace Boulevard and Crystal Lake Road, creating the closest thing in Lutz to a direct east-west road between Dale Mabry and U.S. 41. Idlewild is building the link as a condition of its purchase three years ago of a future church campus. The road will serve the church, the apartment complex and a huge retail and office complex expected someday at the northeast corner of Dale Mabry and Van Dyke. Reno fears the new road will entice travelers between Lutz and Keystone to cut through Calusa Trace, which has no traffic lights. That will bring them down a road where children walk to Schwarzkopf Elementary School and a public park. Reno has lobbied the Florida Department of Transportation, which controls Dale Mabry, to engineer a median that would block the new road's traffic from entering Calusa Trace. Idlewild has embraced the idea, but hasn't yet raised the issue with the DOT. The DOT may be committed to a complete median opening by an 8-year-old legal agreement with Peter and Nick Geraci, the ranchers who own the land between Idlewild's property and Dale Mabry. "There's going to be a community coming up in arms in a little bit if we don't come up with some kind of consensus there," Reno said. At the other end of the connection, traffic is likely to mushroom along a shady lane of Crystal Lake Road, where residents have proposed to close the Idlewild-built road during quiet times at the church. But Thomson said that's unlikely. "Our goal is to interconnect roadways," he said. "If we're not making them as efficient as possible, we're not serving the public like we could." Another neighborhood may be cheered by the committee's plans. The proposed north-south road would bypass Sunlake Boulevard at Lutz-Lake Fern Road. Sunlake was designed decades ago as a major traffic artery running past the front yards of residents -- a neighborhood concept long since deemed unworkable. A neighborhood of homes, Sunlake Park, was built in Hillsborough, but the major artery wasn't. Yet it remains in Pasco County's plans, linking Hillsborough to a potentially huge shopping development at State Road 54, also on land owned by the Geraci brothers. "Whether we like it in Hillsborough County, Pasco County has identified this as a major road," Thomson said. Hillsborough has been negotiating with the Geracis for several years to detour the road around Sunlake Park. Both sides want to do it, but haven't agreed on details. "Right now, it's still just kind of hung up," said Pat Bean, deputy Hillsborough County administrator. Money questions Paying for the road work is a big question, especially where it involves tax dollars. "We hope that there are the resources and the will to find the solutions," said Polzin, the committee member. The Van Dyke widening could cost $20-million, excluding the costs of buying right of way. No funds are earmarked for it. The Dale Mabry widening is pegged at $4-million. About $1.5-million of that money has been identified -- after 2015. Developers would likely build the new roads, negotiated by county planners as conditions of their rezonings. Builders pay government impact fees on each project, and credits against those fees can be awarded for infrastructure such as roads. The new roads would cross land mostly owned by the Geracis. Paying for the roads doesn't particularly bother Peter Geraci, although costs would have to be negotiated. "Obviously, the developers are the ones that end up paying for most of the roads," Geraci said. That's likely to be worked out someday in a protracted rezoning. In Hillsborough County's long-range plans, Geraci's 330-acre parcel at the northeast corner of Dale Mabry and Van Dyke has the potential for about half the stores of a major mall, plus huge office buildings and apartment complexes. It likely is the most valuable undeveloped land in north Hillsborough County. But currently, it's zoned and taxed as a cow pasture. -- Bill Coats can be reached at (813) 269-5309 or coats@sptimes.com
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