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With planning, car dealers and residents can coexist

By C.T. BOWEN
Published January 30, 2005

The anger was overwhelming.

The new business proposed for the front of the neighborhood would be unsightly, bring excessive traffic, pollution and noise and devalue property. Neighbors hired a lawyer to argue their case. They marshaled the troops - more than 2,300 homes are inside the development. They wrote letters. They made telephone calls. They told their county commissioners not to let the new commerce set up shop.

The business, by the way, wasn't a slaughterhouse, exotic dance club or chemical manufacturing plant. It was a car dealership.

Wesley Chapel in 2005?

No, Hernando County in 1994.

Ten years before car dealerships emerged as the new Wal-Mart Supercenters - people hate them, supposedly, but, boy, do they shop there - Hernando County witnessed the case of Register Chevrolet.

Max Register wanted to move his car dealership from Brooksville to 10 acres along State Road 50. It fronted the Brookridge mobile home community, the sheer size of which makes it politically influential.

The Hernando County Commission agreed initially with the citizen opposition. The rezoning died on a 3-2 vote. However, the county resurrected it shortly afterward. Register met with the residents, promised to be a good neighbor and the commission reversed itself two months later. Register Chevrolet is now a business staple along the highway. Others followed. Within a mile is a Buick/Pontiac/GMC dealership and a Dodge/Chrysler/Jeep lot.

So, how do people feel now, more than a decade after the fight?

"People were upset at first, but they got used to it," Maxine Kolbe said.

She and her husband, Edward, moved to Brookridge the year before the dispute. Today, Edward is second vice president of the neighborhood association and is knowledgeable of problems within the community.

"We've never had complaints about noise," Edward Kolbe said. "The car dealer doesn't give you trouble. It's neat. The road is decent. We've never had a complaint about the lights."

Besides, said Kolbe, "our property values have gone up tremendously."

Don't attribute that to the Malibus and Impalas parked out front. But it is indicative that the auto dealer didn't depress home values, either, as residents in the well-manicured, deed-restricted community feared.

The episode provides a valuable lesson to central Pasco County, where residents are now concerned about eight planned dealerships in Land O'Lakes and Wesley Chapel.

The public should pay heed that car dealers didn't kill the neighborhood. Dealers should note that Register wasn't overbearing. He paid for a full-page newspaper advertisement informing people about his plans. He agreed to more than a dozen conditions that were more restrictive than what the county had on the books at the time.

Tuesday, Pasco County commissioners proposed new controls for the pending dealerships here, some of which are reminiscent of the big-box ordinance architectural and aesthetic guidelines.

According to the proposed ordinance, which still must be judged by the Citizens Ordinance Review Committee and be subjected to two public hearings, new car dealerships must:

Prohibit test drives on residential neighborhood streets.

Use lighting fixtures that do not illuminate beyond the dealership.

Turn off the lights, except security lighting, at 9 p.m.

Not use an outdoor public address system.

Install 3-foot tall landscape buffers atop the usual roadside berms.

Not use stages or other structures to elevate its inventory.

Provide a 75-foot-wide green space buffer.

The dealerships can't be outlawed. The current land-use categories, established in 1989, allow car sales on property designated for general commercial use. Controlling the businesses' appearances and some operations is the best alternative for the county.

"It's not perfect," said county attorney Bob Sumner, but the county "wanted quick action to deal with the current problems."

It worked in Hernando. It is worth a try here.

Reach C.T. Bowen at bowen@sptimes.com or at 727-869-6239.

[Last modified January 30, 2005, 00:10:19]