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BILL COATSFixing the problems on Sunlake Boulevard won't be easy as political and planning roadblocks pop up at almost every turn.
LUTZ - Nothing's easy on Sunlake Boulevard.
Homeowners on the little street - which was a remote, peaceful dead-end for 35 years, then became an all-day dump-truck route - seemed finally to have a way to banish the trucks. But this week, a public meeting on a proposed truck detour turned into a hornets' nest of complaints.
Neighbors of the detour route complained that the same misery was being moved their way.
Homeowners 2 miles down Lutz-Lake Fern Road complained that the detour would worsen that road's backups.
And Lutz's most influential civic leader said the whole detour plan was too fraught with unanswered questions to approve. "There's just too much here that's just wide, wide open," complained Denise Layne, president of the Lutz Civic Association.
But none of those criticisms on Tuesday night may be enough to kill, or even delay, the detour plan, said Pat Bean, the deputy Hillsborough County administrator who has coordinated two and a half years of negotiations over the dump trucks.
"At this moment, we're still planning to go forward on Aug. 6," she said.
That's when the County Commission is to vote on the detour plan. Approval would force the trucks off Sunlake by next April and trigger a sequence of rezonings and a land exchange accommodating construction of the new road.
Much more is at stake than Sunlake's lost tranquility.
Despite the street's modest appearance, it was mapped decades ago as a major traffic artery stretching from Dale Mabry Highway in Lutz to State Road 52, halfway to Hernando County. Traffic planners have long since deemed such highways as unsuitable for close-up houses, but the future Sunlake extension never was remapped away from the 35 houses already facing the boulevard.
Hillsborough County allowed the dump trucks to roll six years ago in a staff oversight. They have carried more than 1-million cubic yards of dirt from excavations in Pasco County. Hillsborough officials tried stopping the trucks by pleading with Pasco, suing the excavation owners and broaching a deal to divert the trucks westward to Sierra Pines Boulevard. None of those moves worked.
Sunlake's residents succeeded in having speed humps installed, but those just shook more dust from the trucks.
Now, Centex Homes is planning a development of 859 houses north of Sunlake that would dramatically multiply the boulevard's traffic. In Pasco County, thousands more houses and apartments are expected, plus a major shopping mecca. That traffic, too, is aimed at Sunlake.
Building a detour moves the traffic away. It will pass to the west of the Sunlake Park neighborhood, skirting Amelia Circle, where Janett Tetrick lives. She was among 80 or more people who attended Tuesday's meeting at the Lutz Community Center.
"You've got 24 homes that are going to be impacted by all that extra traffic that's going to coming down there," she complained.
The county's answer: You will be shielded by many feet of berms and landscaping, which Sunlake doesn't have.
Other neighbors worried about forcing the traffic to turn on to Lutz-Lake Fern Road, instead of crossing it at Sunlake. In the morning rush hour, Lutz-Lake Fern backs up for miles west of Sunlake.
The county's answer: A right-turn lane, to be completed before September, should ease the backups at Lutz-Lake Fern and Sunlake. A traffic light, to be installed before January, should help more. But long-term, the detour road needs to continue across Lutz-Lake Fern and Dale Mabry, all the way to Van Dyke Road.
"You kind of have to get started in one step," said Tom Thomson, the county's chief traffic planner. "You get a little bit of it in place, and move on to the next step."
- Staff writer Bill Coats can be reached at 269-5309 or coats@sptimes.com