The building pace in the 37-year-old community is rising as home buyers are attracted to its location, prices and urban potential.
By DAN DeWITT
Published April 4, 2004
[Times photo: Daniel Wallace]
Scott Royston, 18, bottom, helps hold a hose pumping concrete to Luis Garcia, 24, top, as they fill in block walls at a home being built on Lansfield Street in Spring Hill on Thursday.
SPRING HILL - Compared to Karen Biraghi's old home, Istachatta Acres, Spring Hill seems pleasantly urban.
Fox Chapel Middle School, which her 13-year-old daughter attends, is a short drive away. Next year, when the girl starts going to Springstead High School, she will be able to walk. Stores, hairdressers and restaurants are all nearby.
And unlike some residents of Spring Hill, who moved there to escape cities, Biraghi likes seeing neighbors when she walks out her front door.
"Having neighbors doesn't bother me at all. Even if those woods were gone, it wouldn't bother me," she said, pointing across the street to three vacant lots, all marked with "for sale" signs. "I've seen woods all my life."
Biraghi, who moved into a new house on Greynolds Avenue in January, is among thousands of newcomers who have made 37-year-old Spring Hill the hottest real estate location in the county.
Though many residents are dismayed at increasing traffic and disappearing wooded lots, planners say the filling-in of Spring Hill is almost entirely beneficial. Because roads, water lines, fire stations and parks have already been built, providing services in Spring Hill is far less expensive than replicating them to serve new subdivisions.
Developing the remaining lots in Spring Hill will cause less environmental damage than carving out a fresh development. And the more people who live in Spring Hill, the greater the likelihood that the west side of the county will acquire the quality it has long been criticized for lacking - the sense of a cohesive, bustling community.
It already has that feeling to Biraghi, though she admits her standards for urban services are pretty low.
"For me," she said, "having somebody deliver a pizza is like a Christmas present."
Community seen as a refuge
When people speak of Spring Hill, they are referring to the unincorporated developed area that covers most of southwestern Hernando County. But when planners talk about the recent interest in Spring Hill, they are speaking of the 33,000-home planned community opened by the Deltona Corp. in 1967.
Sales there stagnated in the 1980s and '90s as buyers passed it over for newer subdivisions such as Timber Pines, Seven Hills and Silverthorn, which offered more and better facilities - golf courses, clubhouses and fitness centers.
Between 1991 and 2002, only about 400 homes were built in Spring Hill annually, said David Miles, the county's demographics planner. Six years ago, the development was still 37 percent empty and lots were selling for as little as $5,000.
Some developers predicted Spring Hill would never fill up. They said buyers would not risk undermining the value of new homes by building them in neighborhoods developed 20 or 30 years earlier.
But that is exactly what is happening now, mostly because of the Suncoast Parkway.
The opening of the parkway has brought Tampa within a reasonable commuting distance of Spring Hill and attracted younger, working people to the more affordable houses there, said Carol Brown, a sales consultant with Adams Homes, which built Biraghi's home and several others in the neighborhood.
Quarter-acre lots in Spring Hill commonly sell for between $10,000 and $15,000, according to Hernando County property records. That is much less than the price in some nearby subdivisions, said Brown, whose family is having a house built in Spring Hill.
The low lot prices allow her company to offer houses costing between $115,000 and $167,000. That is many times the cost of the original homes in Spring Hill, but cheap compared to housing in Tampa or suburban New York, where Brown and her family previously lived.
"It's feasible to sell a house where you're paying $8,000 to $9,000 in property taxes, and come down here with $100,000 in your hands. That leaves you with a mortgage of $30,000 or $40,000," Brown said. "How can you beat that with a stick?"
Many buyers do not want to pay for amenities, such as golf courses, that they don't plan to use, she said. Others see Spring Hill, where most of the deed restrictions have expired, as a refuge from the interference of property owners associations. Buyers perceive Spring Hill as safe, Brown added; stores and other services are convenient, and local roads are mostly uncongested.
One other reason Spring Hill is adding so many more new houses than other subdivisions is that it has more lots. With the exception of Royal Highlands - which is also growing, but more slowly - Spring Hill dwarfs any other nearby development. Even after nearly four decades, it has about 9,000 lots available, though that now represents fewer than a third of the original number.
Still, the recent growth spurt is remarkable, especially considering the community's age, Miles said.
County statistics show that 751 houses were built in Spring Hill in 2002. Though more up-to-date statistics are not exact, Miles said, they suggest the subdivision added about 1,100 homes in the last 12 months.
"The pace is definitely jumping," Miles said. "We would expect building to slow down over the years, and now just the opposite has happened."
"Build, build, build'
There are clearly two generations of houses in some Spring Hill neighborhoods.
Greynolds has a row of three houses completed in January. All are painted tones far more subdued than the greens and corals once popular in Spring Hill.
And though the new houses are small by modern standards, they are considerably larger than the neighborhood's first generation of homes, which were built in the 1980s.
The owners of the older homes did not expect the vacant lots to remain that way forever. But they wish they had.
Georgia Cook, whose house on Greynolds is 17 years old, pointed out that most of the lots are being purchased by builders, not individuals.
The county "is letting the builders come in and more or less build, build, build," she said.
While she spoke, several cars passed.
"It's just getting really congested," she said.
Her neighbor, Bill Costales, said he doesn't mind seeing the new houses in the neighborhood, "but I'd rather see trees."
The growth of Spring Hill is bringing increased traffic on the county's roads - traffic that is often blamed on new developments, county Commissioner Diane Rowden said at a recent planning workshop.
And development in Spring Hill is not without consequences, said Jim King of the Hernando County Planning Department.
"We're fixing to spend a ton of money to five-lane that section of Mariner," King said, referring to the remaining stretch of Mariner Boulevard, north of Northcliffe Boulevard, that has not been widened.
Also, he said, as the population grows, the county will need to build schools, upgrade parks and resurface neighborhood roads.
Among the flaws of the original Spring Hill, planners say, were substandard roads and a lack of sidewalks and sewers. When the community is completely developed, about 30,000 of its homes will be served by septic tanks.
That would not be allowed in such a densely developed subdivision now, said Utilities Department director Kay Adams. Still, septic tanks have not proved to have any adverse effects there, she said; the increased nitrogen levels in the county's springs are due to fertilizer, not septic runoff.
"I've heard people say it is lurking out there, but it is not showing up (in the springs)," Adams said. "Septic tanks are not necessarily bad."
Spring Hill does have a water system, which becomes cheaper for the county and residents to maintain as Spring Hill develops.
"Any time you have compact development, you're going to get more utilization of infrastructure, more connections on the water system, more revenue generated," said Jerry Greif, the county's chief planner.
And despite Spring Hill's flaws, the Deltona Corp. was more forward-looking than most developers of its era, said Paul Wieczorek of the county Planning Department.
"I think the design, over time, has proven to be a complete community," he said.
Developing urban services
Deltona set aside land for a variety of public uses. Though the school sites are all occupied, Wieczorek said, Spring Hill still has several remaining undeveloped park sites.
The state Department of Community Affairs discourages building gates and walls around subdivisions. And even though Spring Hill's road system can sometimes resemble a maze, the development was built with an open street design with few obstructions.
The state also advocates shopping nodes, which Spring Hill has, rather than strips. And the commercial areas are, in most cases, convenient enough to neighborhoods to limit traffic on main roads.
As Spring Hill continues to attract more people, it will at least move toward one definition of an urban area: more chain stores and restaurants, including the brands some residents are clamoring for, King said.
"There's no question: The more people you get in a community, the more it can support in the way of urban services," he said.
At least one group has even higher hopes for developing the urban potential of Spring Hill.
A citizens committee formed to advise the county on the updating of its comprehensive plan has proposed creating urban centers in several locations across the county, including one at Mariner and Northcliffe boulevards, which the Deltona Corp. originally envisioned as Spring Hill's hub.
The committee suggested a mix of commercial and high-density residential development, walkways, bike paths and bus stops.
"The majority of members supported designating areas for . . . town centers where higher density could support a broader mix of uses and alternate transportation modes," the report said.
An overall rebuilding of the area is unlikely, partly because several conventional shopping centers have already been built near the intersection, Wieczorek said.
But some of the suggestions could be implemented - encouraging the building of apartments near the intersection, especially in areas already zoned for them; connecting the existing plazas and nearby neighborhoods with sidewalks and bike paths; and installing landscaping and street designs that would define the area as a community center.
"I think we're talking about improving pedestrian facilities, making aesthetic improvements, and trying to create some sort of individual identity for that area," Wieczorek said.
- Dan DeWitt can be reached at 352 754-6116. Send e-mail to dewitt@sptimes.com
