More suburban housing developments turn to the Internet to get community news out to thousands of residents.
By JAMES THORNER
Published May 5, 2004
WESLEY CHAPEL - At more than 3,000 homes and growing, Meadow Pointe finally has merged onto the information superhighway.
Making its premiere May 1, the Meadow Pointe Community Web site features news, gardening tips, a business directory and clubhouse schedules for residents of one of Pasco County's biggest neighborhoods.
Up to now, the neighborhood tried to keep residents up to date with a monthly mailed newsletter, but nothing beats the immediacy of an Internet site, site manager Bill Arfsten said.
"It's a better way to get information out faster," said Arfsten, who runs the clubhouse in the first phase of Meadow Pointe on County Line Road. "It can get updated daily if you want to."
The idea appears to make sense. Meadow Pointe's approximately 10,000 residents and large size make it almost a town unto itself.
And it's a prolific producer of news stories, most recently when residents defeated plans for a driveway cut on County Line Road to serve a proposed Walgreens drugstore and persuaded county officials to deny a permit for a gas station that wanted to open in the neighborhood.
In its first few days on the Internet, the site has logged nearly 1,000 hits.
Community Web sites are growing in popularity. Residents of Meadow Pointe's sister development, Oakstead in Land O'Lakes, started a Web site to share information.
Meadow Pointe and Oakstead were developed by Devco Development Corp. It is affiliated with neither neighborhood Web site. But elsewhere developers have led the way online.
Newland Communities, which expects to break ground in about two years on the 7,000-home Bexley Ranch project in Land O'Lakes, uses an intranet.
It's a private online network set up as an amenity for residents. It's supposed to breed neighborliness in the sometimes impersonal suburbs, where many residents are from out of state.
Meadow Pointe's site aims to do the same. One page advertises what it calls a Neighbors Match-up Service: people seeking walking, tennis, handball, swimming or golfing partners.
The site also contains plugs for clubhouse activities. Among them are yoga, swimming and karate classes, a scrapbook workshop and Club New Yorker for homesick Big Apple natives.
Meadow Pointe's site took three months to build and costs residents nothing. It's paid for by ads reached by clicking on the site's business directory. You can find numbers for pizza joints, banks, lawn cutters and real estate agents.
With so many residents computer literate, the day of Internet interconnectedness in Meadow Pointe has arrived, Arfsten said.
"We wanted to keep it simple and easy to use," Arfsten said. "Our job now is to get the word out."
- 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
