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Linebaugh golf range told to pack

The county wants the land where Ace Golf Range sits. The business owner says there's plenty of room for rubbish and recreation.

By JACKIE RIPLEY
Published April 3, 2005

TOWN 'N COUNTRY - Building your dreams on top of a garbage heap may not be the most prudent business move, especially when you build on borrowed time.

Just ask Bill Place, who leases part of a closed landfill from Hillsborough County for a golf driving range.

"We have to be out by next June," said Place, the owner of Ace Golf Range on W Linebaugh Avenue.

But it's not because of unpopularity - business at the range took off better than a 300-yard drive.

The problem is the county, which owns the former landfill. It wants to double the size of its waste processing station, and it needs the land where the golf range sits.

"It's really growing in that portion of the county," said Daryl Smith, director of the county's solid-waste department. "When you experience that kind of growth, you have growth in the amount of garbage."

Smith said the county needs the 15 acres on the northeast corner of the site, where the range sits, to queue up traffic. Otherwise, he said, traffic jams on Linebaugh will continue.

The old Northwest Landfill near the corner of Linebaugh and Wilsky Boulevard is being used as a trash and yard debris facility. The landfill operated until the late 1970s, accepting mostly yard waste and construction debris. Today, a small part of the former dump holds a yard waste disposal site and a solid waste transfer station, where garbage trucks dump their loads into larger carriers.

Smith said the new $17-million facility "may or may not" be built on the golf range property, but that "there is no way we can complete our project without" the land.

And that bodes poorly for Place, who signed his seven-year lease six years ago with the hope that a golf range and transfer station could co-exist.

"People like to have recreation and they'd like to have more," said Place, who pays the county $20,000 a year to lease his 15 acres.

He says the county has enough room on the 160-acre site to reconfigure its expansion project in a way that would accommodate its needs and his. And he's rallying community support to that end.

"We need to keep and expand recreation while locating waste processing to more appropriate areas of the landfill," wrote Countryway Homeowners Association president James Kannard.

The Town 'N Country Alliance, meanwhile, wants the county's plans for the property to add to the appeal of Linebaugh, not detract from it.

"Linebaugh is the gateway to Westchase and Countryway," said Bill Browne, Town 'N Country Alliance president.

Place has solicited help from Hillsborough County Commissioner Kathy Castor. She has scheduled a discussion of the proposal during the board's regular meeting April 20.

Jackie Ripley can be reached at 813 269-5308 or ripley@sptimes.com

[Last modified April 2, 2005, 10:10:05]