And why not? The demand for residential is relentless. But planners say a county full of subdivisions would be a fiscal disaster.
By DAN DeWITT
Published October 31, 2004
A request for a change to the county's comprehensive plan may sound familiar.
Holland Springs Industrial Properties Inc. of Orlando - the owner of the 60 acres that are the subject of the request - asked to rezone 100 acres of nearby land earlier this year.
Holland Springs wants to market the smaller property, as it has the previous one, for homes. Both parcels are near the Hernando County Airport but separated from it by the Suncoast Parkway; both have been designated for industrial use for more than 20 years.
The properties share one other feature.
They are recent examples of a trend that disturbs county planners: More and more developers are interested in building houses on land that has been designated for industrial use.
"That is our future," Paul Weiczorek, the county's concurrency coordinator, said of the industrial land.
Anyone glancing at the county's future land use map might see what looks like plenty of available industrial land, Weiczorek said. But as the county nears its maximum capacity for new homes in 20, 30 or 40 years, and as the home building sector of the economy shrinks, the county will need a manufacturing base to pay taxes and provide jobs.
"As the county grows, we want to ensure that we have a balance in the tax base," Weiczorek said. "We also want to have land area available for the growth of jobs as more residents move here."
So the county must protect its industrial property from residential development, he said, just as it does its agricultural and natural land.
"We are finding that we have had a lot of pressure from real estate interests who are looking for large blocks of land for residential use."
Holland Springs' local representative, Alan Garman of Civil-Tech Consulting Engineers, said essentially the same thing, though from a different perspective.
"This is all market driven," Garman said.
Holland Springs bought thousands of acres from the Deltona Corp., the developer of Spring Hill, in the late 1970s, he said. Much of the property was intended for residential use, including the subdivisions Pristine Place, Village Van Gogh and Sterling Hills.
Holland Springs also owned 400 acres that have been zoned industrial and designated in the county's comprehensive growth plan as part of the planned development district that includes the airport.
Some of the industrial property, including parcels at Spring Hill Drive and Anderson Snow Road, has been sold for commercial development. The demand for most of the remainder is residential, not industrial.
"It's been zoned industrial since the early 1980s, and no one's using it," Garman said. "They've been approached by a lot more residential people than industrial people about purchasing this land."
Besides, he said, in many ways the land is now more suited for residential development than manufacturing. It is near existing subdivisions and can easily be served by roads, utilities and nearby Anderson Snow Park.
The 100-acre parcel where Holland Springs wants to build 428 homes is just across the parkway from the airport. The County Commission determined in April that the uses were incompatible, a decision the company appealed in Circuit Court. The case is pending.
The 60-acre parcel is farther from the airport, on the west side of Anderson Snow Road and next to houses in Spring Hill.
"We think Anderson Snow Road should be the dividing line," Garman said.
Rather than seek rezoning for the property, the company is asking for a change in the comprehensive plan. The County Commission is scheduled to hear the matter in January.
Garman also brought up a larger issue: that private developers of industrial property have difficulty competing against the Airport Industrial Park, which is essentially government-subsidized. The problem has been accentuated for Holland Springs, he said, because the parkway cut off direct access to air and rail transportation.
It is true that grants paid for some improvements at the airport, planners said. But when the federal government handed the airport over to local authorities after World War II, it stipulated that lease rates match those of private landlords, said Larry Jennings, the county's planning director.
Also, said Mike McHugh, the director of the county's Office of Business Development, companies can only lease, not buy, property at the airport. If some of the Holland Springs property could be developed into an industrial park with lots for sale, the park would not only find buyers, it would help the county's effort to attract industry, he said.
"We've had potential projects (at the airport) where it was corporate policy that the company own the land, and that killed the deal," McHugh said.
He also said he fielded an inquiry from a development company interested in building an industrial park with lots for sale and that he referred it to Holland Springs.
"That area is very viable" for industrial development, McHugh said, though he acknowledged that demand for industrial land is not as high as for residential property.
Exactly how much industrial land remains in the county is difficult to determine, Weiczorek said, because much of it is in so-called planned development districts, which allow for a combination of several uses.
The two largest of these districts cover about 4,000 acres each. One includes the Hernando County Airport and the surrounding property, including the parcels owned by Holland Springs; the other is on land south of State Road 50, on either side of Interstate 75.
Most of the recent inquiries about property in both districts have been from home builders, Weiczorek said.
If the residential developments were all allowed, he said, not only would it would mean less land for manufacturing, but more residents who probably would oppose expanding industrial uses to new areas.
"It's always difficult to go to a more intense use on a piece of property," he said.
Some members of the county Planning and Zoning Commission agree with Weiczorek, including Chairwoman Anna Liisa Covell.
"We are going to need these industrial spots to keep the economy going in Hernando County," Covell said.
Planning Commissioner Al Sevier, though, noted that the land on either side of Cobb Road and parcels owned by mining companies are zoned for manufacturing.
