A developer wants to build townhomes on the site, but people in Forest Hills East don't want 92 new neighbors.
By BRIDGET HALL GRUMET
Published February 25, 2004
HOLIDAY - A gray pelican circled over the lake, then plunged into the rippling waters in search of an afternoon snack. A couple of herons and egrets watched from their nearby treed perch.
"Around 4 or 5 o'clock, they all start coming in," said Kathleen Taylor, nodding toward the birds gathering on the 71/2-acre peninsula just beyond her back yard. "That's when you throw out the bread crumbs."
"It would," she said, "make a beautiful wildlife sanctuary."
But a developer has other plans for this scrubby peninsula, which sits in a man-made lake surrounded by single-story homes in the Forest Hills East subdivision. KB Home wants to build 92 townhomes on the site, lining the perimeter of this quasi-island with two-story buildings that could be as much as 45 feet tall.
"It'll be an Alcatraz, that's what we're calling it," Taylor said.
The project's proper name is the Anclote Island Townhomes, named for the nearby Anclote River. A wispy sliver of land separates the river from the man-made lake, a former borrow pit that provided the fill for the surrounding homes about 30 years ago. Neighbors say the peninsula is basically a large heap of leftover dirt now rooted with trees.
With the peninsula originally vested for 170 apartments in the early 1980s, there's no question it can be developed, said Dan Aldridge, vice president of Jireh Inc., the management company for the property owner, Tarpon Springs eye surgeon Dr. James P. Gills.
"Dr. Gills purchased the property because it was vested for 170 multifamily units," Aldridge said. "He bought the land as well as the water and sewer rights and other things . . . that provided for the future development of that property."
Gills has a contract to sell the property, including the 71/2-acre peninsula and the surrounding 15-acre lake, to a Miami firm. Even with the vested rights, KB Home needs special approval from the county to build the proposed townhomes.
The county's Development Review Committee will decide Thursday whether to grant the developer two variances: permission to keep the road onto the peninsula private and exemptions from the county's lot size and setback requirements.
County planners are recommending denial.
"They (the developers) really have not shown any land-related hardship," the standard for getting a break from the county's rules, said Cindy Jolly, the county's development director.
For multifamily projects such as townhomes, the buildings must sit at least 15 feet from the edge of the lot, and the building cannot cover more than 55 percent of the lot, according to county codes.
But KB Home wants to carve the peninsula into 92 lots, each one just large enough for the footprint of a townhome. Each unit would sit 10 feet from the front of the lot, but it would have no setbacks from the other three sides of the lot because the townhomes would be built wall-to-wall.
Neighbors in Forest Hills East, the 252-home community surrounding the man-made lake, say the townhomes would be a bad fit with the neighborhood. It would mean extra traffic on their worn roads and extra homes on their decades-old sewer lines.
But the county granted the vested rights 20 years ago because the original developer created the roads and utility lines to handle the extra units, Aldridge said. Gills bought the land in 1984 from the developer, Robert Dreher, for $475,000, according to property appraiser records.
Although Taylor and others hold out hope the land could become a park, Aldridge said the idea is unlikely.
"I haven't spoken to him about it, but I'd be surprised Dr. Gills would want to invest hundreds of thousands of dollars in a piece of property to give it away," Aldridge said.
- Bridget Hall Grumet covers Pasco County government. She can be reached in west Pasco at 869-6244 or toll-free at 1-800-333-7505, ext. 6244. Her e-mail address is bhall@sptimes.com
If you go
The county's Development Review Committee will meet at 1:30 p.m. Thursday at the West Pasco Government Center, 7530 Little Road in New Port Richey.
