Squeezing citrus

Citrus groves are being bulldozed for more lucrative developments, leaving behind only the names, such as Citrus Park and Orange Grove Drive.

[Times photo: Fraser Hale] Leslie "Pete" Dennison, 73, remembers when groves - not roads and houses- dominated the scenery.

CITRUS PARK - Stand where Gunn Highway meets Sheldon Road and imagine this: a half-century ago, a kid could still ride a horse to school.

Karen Rafferty would cross acres upon acres of orange groves on her way to Citrus Park Elementary School. In north Hillsborough County, citrus trees outnumbered the people.

"I would ride 3, 4, 5 miles when I got home from school," said the 60-year-old Rafferty, now of Keystone. "My mother had one of those old steam engine bells. She used to ring it for me, letting me know it was time to come eat dinner. The groves had all these banana spiders and I'd go gunning through those groves and come out, spider webs all in my hair. Those were the good ol' days."

Much as she might want to, Rafferty could never retrace her steps. The big groves are gone in Citrus Park, replaced by Sickles High School, a Publix supermarket and a whole lot of houses. The same goes for Lutz, Keystone and Carrollwood, all bursting with homes and buildings.

Years ago, large groves could be found in Sulphur Springs and Seminole Heights. But citrus fell victim to freezes, hard economics, Florida's rising population and the inevitable bulldozer.

A more ubiquitous symbol of Florida's bounty would be hard to find. People long ago looked to the state as a land of perpetual sun and good times, and found those qualities in the bright, sweet, round orange.

Hillsborough was a major player in Central Florida's huge citrus industry. By the turn of the century, trains could deliver fresh oranges to Florida processors and to bedazzled consumers around the country. On vast tracts that later became subdivisions, people planted and waited for money to grow on trees.

"Imagine going into a store in Fargo, North Dakota, and being bombarded by these images of perpetual happiness, always pastel colors signalling Indian River oranges, Frostproof grapefuit," said University of South Florida professor Gary Mormino, an expert in Florida history. "Even the names, these were just happy names."

One reason for north Hillsborough's popularity was its abundance of lakes. They keep the air warmer. On a cold night, that could mean the difference between a disastrous freeze and survival.

Citrus sustained some of the area's leading families, such as the Bearsses of Carrollwood and the Newbergers of Lutz. It put food on the table of people who managed the groves and picked the trees. Even a small grower could earn a tidy profit because production costs were low and prices were good.

But a series of disastrous freezes, particularly in the 1980s, crushed those old assumptions. Sensing an opportunity, developers dangled big bucks in front of grove owners, who went for the easy money and an end to the pressure.

These are the twilight years for citrus groves, which now fetch hundreds of thousands of dollars per lot in places. Although orange production remains close to 1980 levels, the amount of orange grove acreage in Hillsborough has dropped by 10,600 acres to about 22,000 total, according to the Florida Agricultural Statistics Service.

Groves are becoming relics. In many places only the names remain, on streets like Orange Grove and Citrus Park drives. Most people don't know where the old groves used to be, even if they're living in one. Montreux, Settlers Point, Keystone Shores: the list goes on and on.

"The way we're going, we'll have to take the citrus out of Citrus Park," said former grove owner and local historian Henry Binder. "We'll have to call it "Park."'

The decline of king grove is in sharp focus in Keystone, a community that has tried harder than most to preserve a rural flavor. Exclusive homes are popping up amid the orange trees, highlighting an uneasy compromise: the subdivisions may be good for property values, but the loss of groves erodes the quality of life.

People who weren't born in Keystone bought homes here for a cleaner, quieter lifestyle.

"In the spring, you can't believe the blossoms," said Bill Lee, who moved here from Michigan in the late 1970s. Across his street, Donna Lu Drive, dozens of acres of orange groves hide busy Gunn Highway and soften the sounds of passing cars.

Up the road a bit, a luxury subdivision called Dolce Vita is taking shape behind a stately wrought-iron gate off Gunn. As a child visiting the area, Lee, 43, would filch oranges from the grove that once stood there. One tree had the biggest navel oranges he's ever seen. Not far away was another grove, now the exclusive Keystone Shores neighborhood.

Lee looks across his street and accepts the impending loss of the groves with a resigned shrug. The Hillsborough School District, which says Keystone needs an elementary school for its growing population, hopes to open a 20-acre site there in August 2005.

At least he'll have a little more time to enjoy the view. For the residents of Wayne Road, it's already too late.

The Hill property just south of Tarpon Springs Road always was among the nicest orange groves, said neighbor Steve Morris. Now it's being developed for a luxury subdivision.

Residents are caught in an ongoing test of wills with the developer and the owners, who include Tampa lawyer and former grower Lewis Hill.

The issues are fairly typical: fencing and lighting. One of the complaints, according to Morris, former president of the Keystone Civic Association, is that the proposed brick-column-and-wrought-iron fencing would make the subdivision too visible. Neighbors argued for a thick ring of orange trees around the property's perimeter, but lost, he said.

Few developers consciously design their projects around the nature handed to them, says Jeff Sole, policy director for the American Planning Association. But there's a growing movement to combine housing and preservation.

"People become attached to things they don't necessarily control, and the loss is surprising to them," he said, quoting the old Joni Mitchell lyric: They paved paradise and put up a parking lot.

"When we moved out here, the orange grove was one of the nicest, cleanest in the northwest here," Morris said. "In spring, you'd just be hit with the orange blossoms. It was "ohhhh ...' Now we're going to be hit with the gasoline fumes.

"It's sad when you keep getting developers ... and the first thing they do is sanitize it," Morris said. "You're killing the driving force that makes you want to move out there in the first place."

Hill will miss his grove, where he spent countless hours in the fields over the years. On cold winter nights, he joined workers lighting tires to keep the grove from freezing over.

"I just liked being out there," he said.

But faced with rising costs and an aggressive virus called tristeza, the operation stopped being practical, he said.

Competition and costs are killing local growers, said Marty Bearss, grandson of a first-generation orange grove owner who settled off Lake Magdalene in the mid-1890s.

Bearss' father, Paul, once owned and tended hundreds of acres stretching into Keystone. The younger Bearss hangs on by selling his oranges retail at a shaded roadside stand off Bearss Avenue.

South American countries, particularly Brazil, jumped into the American market after disastrous freezes created severe shortages, said Bearss, who refers to himself as "land rich, cash poor." The Brazilians' low labor costs allow them to sell cheap oranges for the huge frozen concentrate market.

John Jackson, a longtime citrus agent for the Lake County Extension Service, has watched the decline of Central Florida's citrus industry. He concurs with Bearss' sobering numbers.

In the late 1970s, growers spent about $200 an acre, including labor and fertilizer, but were earning up to $1,500 an acre, Jackson said. Nowadays, per-acre costs are $800 to $900 and growers make about that because prices have dropped.

"I think basically growers now are breaking even or making very little money," he said.

Unlike many others, Hill stuck with oranges after the freezes. He replanted, continuing to see profit opportunities in navels, for eating, and Valencias, for concentrate.

But the writing was on the wall. Hill rezoned the property years ago to make way for development.

Land prices in Keystone have exploded, and Hill expects to do well from the lot sales. The money will go into a trust "for the benefit of my kids," he said.

The 2002 harvest was the last.

"We held on to the grove as long we felt we could," he said.

The fading glory of the area's citrus industry is written all over Leslie "Pete" Dennison's face, which is scarred from the skin cancers he contracted working in the sun for 60 years.

A witness to the devastating freezes and the steady sell-off of the groves, the 73-year-old Dennison remembers when groves - not roads and houses - dominated the scenery. They were tough times but fun, he said. Now, with his equally burly son, Mike, he oversees several hundred acres for CeeBee's Citrus, one of the few remaining operations in Keystone.

"We used to take care of 4,500 acres," many of them in Hillsborough, Dennison said. "Now we're down to about 200. We stay in business by doing everything. If someone wants a horse pasture mowed, "Where is it?'," they ask.

CeeBee's, a 285-acre operation off Boy Scout Road, is a rarity: it's expanding and trying to tap into specialty Internet sales, manager Brent Harmon said. While an exclusive development is going in to the north - on former orange fields - CeeBee's keeps adding acreage.

"We're about the only people I can find that are planting new trees," Harmon said.

Marty Bearss forges on because he can still make a living selling his oranges and other retail fruits. But most landowners choose to cash in.

Over on Donna Lu Drive, Bill Lee is just waiting for the day when the bulldozers arrive.

"It's going to be a shame when it's gone," he said.

- Josh Zimmer covers Keystone/Odessa, University North and Citrus Park. He can be reached at 269-5314 or zimmer@sptimes.com

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