While at least one City Council member is enthusiastic about the idea, county officials are skeptical about its wisdom.
By DAN DeWITT
Published April 29, 2004
BROOKSVILLE - Levitt & Sons LLC, whose postwar developments became synonymous with the spread of suburbia, plans a 900-home project in Brooksville that will extend south to Powell Road.
The company is buying 411 acres for the subdivision, called Cascades, from LandMar Group LLC, the builders of Southern Hills Plantation. At LandMar's request, the property has already been annexed into the city and designated for residential development on the city's newly approved Comprehensive Plan.
Council member Ernie Wever is ready to welcome the company.
"Good for the whole area. Good company. They've got a good reputation," Wever said.
Others have questions.
Jerry Greif, the county's chief planner, said Levitt's road plan violates an agreement with the county for the LandMar property.
And the houses Levitt plans, he said, are not as large or as expensive as those in Southern Hills and may not bring as much tax income as the company promised when it sought annexation.
"Now that it's not quite so upscale, what will that do to the bottom line?" Greif asked.
The proposal also renewed a longstanding concern among some Hernando County officials that Brooksville is quickly expanding with little thought to good planning.
This is especially true, County Commissioner Diane Rowden said, in light of word that the city has discussed annexing the 448-acre Milk-A-Way Farms, just north of the city, for residential development.
"They are not managing development, they are being managed by development," Rowden said.
Levitt, founded in 1929, is "America's oldest homebuilder," according to the company's Web site. It became nationally known in the late 1940s, when it built the first of 17,000 homes in Levittown, on Long Island, N.Y. It later built another Levittown outside Philadelphia.
Criticism of the company - and the pattern of mass-produced housing it established - soon followed, including a Levitt-inspired folk song, Little Boxes, about houses "all made of ticky tacky."
"We needed those homes then," said Commissioner Mary Aiken, who is originally from New Jersey. "I don't know about this. It sounds heavy, and maybe unnecessary."
Harry Sleek, a senior vice president, said the company's history "is something we're very proud of." But the reputation for building rudimentary, identical houses, is outdated, he said.
The least expensive homes in Cascades will cost about $150,000 and some will be priced at around $300,000. The company will sell them exclusively to retirees, he said.
Don Lacey of Coastal Engineering Associates Inc., which is representing the company, compared Cascades to other retirement projects in the county, including Timber Pines and Wellington.
The development will not have a golf course, according to the plans submitted, but it will offer a fitness center and clubhouse.
One other feature is essential, Sleek said.
"We have to have a private, gated community for what we do," Sleek said.
That is a possible obstacle with the city and the county. The city's comprehensive plan calls for a collector road to run through the LandMar property, from Powell to the State Road 50 truck bypass. So does an agreement the city reached with the county last year to settle a lawsuit over the Southern Hills project.
The City Council discussed the matter at its meeting on March 15 and did not rule out - or commit to - the idea of allowing Levitt to make the road private, Anderson said.
Lacey said a transportation study, paid for by LandMar, showed the north-south road would not be needed by 2030. But a memo written by City Manager Richard Anderson on the matter noted that more than 6,000 people will live on the 1,600-acre annexation.
"Obviously if/when that occurs, a north-south road between the truck route and Powell will be needed in addition to U.S. 41," Anderson wrote; the memo also discussed alternate routes for the road.
Greif said the agreement with Brooksville gives the county the right to object to plans for the LandMar property - as its staffers have done in discussions with Levitt - but not to make decisions on land use.
"I don't know what our options are. I don't want to do any saber-rattling, but I assume we have a legal recourse," Greif said.
Brooksville's Vice Mayor Joe Bernardini said he wished the city had taken his advice and sought more outside advice when it wrote its development agreement with LandMar. Because the city designated the entire property as residential on its future land use map, it has little grounds to negotiate with the developer, he said.
The property is still zoned for agriculture, and the city's Planning and Zoning Commission will begin discussing a change for residential use next week.
And generally, Bernardini said, the city should not be in as much of a rush to allow this project as it was for Southern Hills.
"I just hope the developers don't see the city as a patsy, because we're so eager for development and that's kind of the way it appears to me," Bernardini said.
- Dan DeWitt can be reached at 352 754-6116. Send e-mail to dewitt@sptimes.com
