Hernando offers room to grow

[Times photo: Daniel Wallace] Trees frame a 7,000-yard championship golf course that is the cornerstone of Hernando Oaks. The development is on 626 acres south of Brooksville.

By JUDY STARK, Times Homes Editor
© St. Petersburg Times
published March 29, 2003

Major builders have not tapped into the spacious area to the north. But that's about to change.

Ron Dunston halted the golf cart and gazed at the 14th fairway, an expanse of emerald velvet that sloped down from a perfectly sculptured hill framed in ancient tall oak trees.

"Is this not gorgeous?" he said.

It's a developer's dream, a 7,000-yard Jerry Pate championship golf course carved out of old timberland owned by the Lykes family and the Ayers family trust just south of Brooksville in Hernando County. At dawn and twilight, he said, deer step out of the thick woods, turkeys gobble and beat their wings in mating rituals, and foxes and bobcats slink through the underbrush.

This 626-acre parcel is being developed as Hernando Oaks, a golf course community of 975 residences with a clubhouse, a pool, fitness facilities and tennis courts. Just outside its gates -- accessible to the public -- the developers plan two "town centers," clusters of commercial and retail space to which residents can ride their golf carts or bicycles.

Four local builders have bought all 192 lots in the first phase of development. Their models will be on display today through April 13 in the Parade of Homes sponsored by the Hernando Builders Association. (The parade will have 29 models; the others are at Pristine Place on Spring Hill Drive. See the box on Page 5F for details.)

Close to the action

"This is a step up for Hernando County, but it's not a step up for the market," said Dunston, whose company, Hernando Oaks Partners in Pensacola, has linked with TECO Properties to develop the $60-million project at U.S. 41 and Powell Road, a mile north of the Hernando-Pasco line.

Homes will sell from about $150,000 to $600,000, and "we don't have a model there that's under $200,000," he said. Last year the average price of new and resale homes in Hernando was $108,000.

Empty-nesters and retirees who want to live on a golf course are part of the project's target market, "but I believe more than 50 percent of the sales will be to young professionals out of the Tampa market," Dunston said.

And not just Tampa: Pinellas and even Pasco County, where potential buyers say "they want to get out of the rat race in the Pasco market," he said. "They don't want to be on the U.S. 19 corridor," and they complain that State Roads 54 and 52 are too crowded and busy, he said.

It may get crowded and busy outside the gates of Hernando Oaks. The Suncoast Parkway whisks traffic from Brooksville to the West Shore area of Tampa in 40 minutes or so at offpeak times, bringing Hernando County within a reasonable commuting distance of job centers. That opens the county to long-awaited residential development.

Just across U.S. 41, the LandMar Group of Jacksonville is developing a 1,600-acre residential project called Southern Hills Plantation with 999 homes initially. A few miles west, on Spring Hill Drive east of the Suncoast Parkway, Tampa developer Devco, creator of Meadow Pointe and Oakstead, both in Pasco County, plans a 1,250-home project on 515 acres called Sterling Hill.

Bring them on, Dunston says. "Competition and traffic breeds more competition and traffic," he said, and he hopes that all those residents will want to shop at the town centers on the fringes of Hernando Oaks.

Bringing in builders

LandMar has not announced its builders, though they likely will include national and regional as well as local ones. Devco will bring in some of the builders it has worked with at Oakstead and Meadow Pointe, including some national and regionally known.

That will be a change for Hernando County, where no national builders are active. The Hernando home building industry has traditionally involved local builders who do a lot of build-on-your-lot business rather than focusing on big subdivisions, as in the counties to the south.

The four builders in the first phase at Hernando Oaks are familiar in the local market -- Palmwood Builders, Royal Coachman, Windjammer and Alexander Custom Homes -- but their names may not be household words to potential buyers from Hillsborough and Pinellas, nor to those who see the development's ads in Links magazine, Golf Digest or Where to Retire. They will be on their marks to show that they can meet or exceed the demands of buyers who have certain expectations about upscale homes in a golf course community.

Dunston said that he talked with national builders, "but they all wanted to put a bulldozer on the lot and clean 'em off. I'm not going to cut down every tree to build a home." The local builders agreed to retain as many trees as possible. Dunston expects to bring in national builders later, when he can point to what the local builders have done and say, "See, you can save the trees when you build."

Homebuilding has picked up in the last few years in Hernando. After being flat for about a decade, the county issued 1,500 single-family permits in 2001 and 1,900 last year.

"In a couple of years you won't recognize Hernando County," Dunston said. "If the county allows developers to do premiere projects, you won't get lots of 100-acre and 200-acre tracts with lots of houses, no trees and no amenity base." He expects Hernando Oaks to sell out in five years.

If you go

WHAT: Hernando Parade of Homes, showcase of 29 new homes sponsored by the Hernando Builders Association.

WHEN: Today through April 13. Models are open 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Saturday and noon to 5 p.m. Sunday.

WHERE: At two subdivisions: Pristine Place, on Spring Hill Drive just west of the Suncoast Parkway, and Hernando Oaks, at U.S. 41 and Powell Drive (exit the Suncoast Parkway at Spring Hill Drive, go east to U.S. 41 and turn north to Powell Drive).

INFORMATION: Call the Hernando Builders Association during weekday business hours at (352) 596-1114.

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