Plans for shopping centers will have to wait until Lake Patience Road is completed, county officials say.
By JAMES THORNER
Published October 19, 2003
LAND O'LAKES - Pasco County is putting the kibosh on a developer's upcoming plans to build shopping centers, and possibly a day care center, in the Oakstead neighborhood.
And the reason for the county's opposition might ring familiar to Oakstead residents: Lake Patience Road.
Oakstead, the 852-acre development north of State Road 54 in Land O'Lakes, is one of the fastest growing neighborhoods in Pasco County. The latest official home count is 459.
When the county rezoned land for Oakstead in 1999, it okayed 195,000 square feet of stores and businesses near the neighborhood entrance on SR 54 and 115,000 square feet near Oakstead Boulevard and Lake Patience Road.
Approval came with a condition that Oakstead developers now want waived: that developers extend Lake Patience Road and hook it to an existing stretch of Lake Patience that leads east to U.S. 41.
Devco Development Co. has completed its part of Lake Patience Road but the link-up isn't scheduled until 2006. Devco doesn't want to wait, but the county isn't likely to bend the rules, said Sam Steffey, Pasco's growth management administrator.
The county gave Oakstead a break in allowing so much commercial development in the first place, Steffey said. If Oakstead were rezoned today, it wouldn't have been so, he said.
Pasco's future land use maps, which dictate what development goes where, earmark Oakstead's land for residential development. The road requirement was a way to assure that cars could reach the stores without resorting to SR 54.
Devco President Don Buck was out of town and unavailable for comment. The company has yet to announce what stores or offices would fill the SR 54 commercial strips, though Buck has said he would like a day care center at Oakstead Boulevard and Lake Patience Road.
Lake Patience Road has dominated discussion in Oakstead for months, but for reasons other than shopping centers.
Hundreds of residents have signed petitions complaining that builders failed to disclose that Lake Patience would ultimately be a four-lane thoroughfare linking U.S. 41 with SR 54. Many assumed the road would remain a local street.
On the east side of Oakstead, Lake Patience dead-ends at a barricade near 28 acres reserved for a middle school. At the other end of the neighborhood, the road ends at the boundary of a future 1,599-home U.S. Home Corp. development.
Devco is unlikely to amend the zoning conditions to commercialize the property faster. Steffey's objections include scrawling the word "NO!" on Devco's typed application. A hearing on the matter could come as early as November.
The company's other option is to request to change the land use maps. But that process is slower: Pasco won't consider new land use changes until next year.
- James Thorner covers growth and development in Pasco County. He can be reached at 813 909-4613 or toll-free 1-800-333-7505, ext. 4613. His e-mail address is thorner@sptimes.com
