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The land's next crop

Thousands of ranchland acres are up for development. Property rights clash again with central planning and urban sprawl.

By MICHAEL VAN SICKLER
Published April 11, 2005

TAMPA - It's 7:30 a.m. on a recent Friday, and Robert Thomas has spent the last hour feeding his show horses, cracking jokes with his ranch hands and rounding up cattle.

"People call this work, but what better way to spend your day?" says Thomas, breaking into an easy grin. "This is a great way to live your life. It beats sitting down in some downtown office talking with lawyers."

But lately, talking with lawyers is how Thomas passes time. He meets with them to decide the fate of 17,000 acres of ranchland spread across Hillsborough, Hernando and Pasco counties. Three generations of the Thomas family have been sustained by this land through timber, cattle, phosphate, organic farming, citrus, spring water, sod and seed.

Now, Thomas says, the land is ripe for one last crop: thousands of single family homes.

If approved, the projects will be better than what typically gets built in suburbia, Thomas vows. Large chunks of land will be saved for wildlife habitat. The homes will be attractive, Thomas insists.

It is a well-worn script: A land-rich family with a rural heritage puts up a for-sale sign. If the price is right, the pastures, woods and furrows are soon replaced with large bedroom communities 30 minutes or an hour from the urban core, accessible only by automobiles.

Thomas says he's reluctant to sell. He says if he had to, he'd keep farming and ranching on land that has been in his family since the 1930s. But his property is next to the booming 'burbs of Pasco and New Tampa, so it's his right to develop what the market dictates, he says.

"It doesn't make sense not to accept the market forces that are coming to your door," the 49-year-old rancher says. "It's like standing in a field as a hurricane with 160 mph winds bears down on you. The forces are the forces - we don't have anything to do with it."

* * *

It has been more than 30 years since a bill died in the U.S. Congress that would have shifted land use regulation to federal agencies and away from local governments.

At the time, many said the legislation was the best bet to rein in sprawl. Instead, even though it was defeated, the push for federal regulation set off alarms among builders and large land owners, and sparked a property rights movement that has been instrumental in eliminating many of the regulations of land development that were passed in the 1960s and 1970s.

The resulting system of local control has been criticized for not doing enough to stop sprawl.

"The posture usually assumed by local governments in the U.S., waiting for property owners to come forward with rezoning requests, is not planning but reacting," said Reid Ewing, a research professor at the National Center for Smart Growth and associate professor of Urban Studies at the University of Maryland.

"When you don't have a centralized standard, developers have the opportunity to go to other jurisdictions and get better rules," said Adam Rome, a Penn State environmental history professor. "They play one city against another, one county against another, and the result is always less regulation."

During this same period, the percentage of tax dollars spent on land conservation declined. In Florida, about $300-million was spent 15 years ago to preserve environmentally sensitive lands. The state spends about that amount now, even though its budget doubled in that same time period, said Eric Draper, lobbyist for Audubon of Florida.

"We're a low-tax state and people don't want to put more money into land conservation," Draper said. "Meanwhile, it's getting tougher to save our land because it's getting more expensive and there's less of it to save every year."

Twenty-four states preserve farmland by financing "conservation easement" programs that typically pay landowners like Thomas not to develop their properties. Draper successfully lobbied the Legislature to adopt an easement program in 2001, but it was deprived of money, essentially making it powerless. This year, Draper is trying to get $58-million for it. He says it's a long shot.

Hillsborough County considered an easement program in 1998, but commissioners nixed the idea after complaints that it was a sweetheart deal for Thomas. At the time, Thomas had lobbied commissioners to help the Southwest Florida Water Management District buy the development rights of his 14,000-acre Two Rivers Ranch. The deal would have cost Hillsborough County about $6-million.

"In hindsight, it probably would have been a good deal to buy that conservation easement because it would have prevented development," Thomas says now. "But commissioners chose not to do that."

Two years later, commissioners did indeed approve an easement program. But in many cases, it was too late. Land prices had already started their climb, pushing many potential land buys out of reach, said Kurt Gremley, the county's coordinator of the Environmental Land Acquisition and Protection Program.

"The nature of real estate has changed dramatically," Gremley said. "If you haven't noticed, there's a lot of building going on. It takes a slump in the real estate market or land that is beyond the development horizon to make the land affordable."

According to the American Farmland Trust, 1.2-million acres of agricultural land is lost to development every year in the United States. In Florida, that's about 150,000 acres of farmland every year.

Development is claiming farms in Hillsborough County, which has a rich heritage in agriculture and still has the second-most farms of any county in Florida, with nearly 3,000.

For farmers, this isn't necessarily bad news.

"Lots of farmers have retirement plans that depend on selling out to developers," Rome said. "That's nothing new. They've been doing that since colonial times. The difference is that it's happening more often than it ever has."

Since 2001, Hillsborough County has lost more than 5,000 acres identified as cropland, or 30 percent of its total, according to property appraiser records. Nearly 25,000 acres of cow pastures have vanished since 2001, a 26 percent drop.

"You hear all the time that farmers are forced out of farming," said Stephen Gran, manager of agricultural industry development for Hillsborough County. "But the force is that they can get a lot out of their land for development, more than whatever they're getting for their crops. That profitability is too hard to pass up."

Consequently, land that served as a haven for wildlife is disappearing. Open space is becoming ever more scarce. And more and more of the countryside is paved over for bedroom communities.

"I'm amazed by how many people don't realize this is happening," said Ralph Heimlich, an agricultural policy consultant in Laurel, Md., and former deputy director at the U.S. Department of Agriculture. "Everybody wants to move out of the city and have plenty of green around them, and they all get out there, and there's no green left."

Meanwhile, lawmakers are making it easier for landowners to sell out. A bill gaining traction in Tallahassee this year would give local governments six months to act on a farmer's rezoning request of land with 75 percent of its perimeter bordered by development. If governments miss the deadline, then farmers automatically get a change in land use.

* * *

As a teen, Robert Thomas would party at a friend's home on weekends. They'd have late night bonfires without ever having to worry about complaints from neighbors. They were far away in the countryside, alone.

Thomas mentions this not to wax nostalgic about his formative years. He's bringing it up to stress how quickly development swallowed the landscape in northeastern Hillsborough County. It's hard to believe, but that rural outpost of Thomas' youth is now University Mall on Fowler Avenue.

With his own property overlooking the future site of 1,600-homes on what was K-Bar Ranch in New Tampa. Thomas says the time has arrived to develop his land.

"I never dreamed it would get here this fast," Thomas said. "But now that it's here, how are we going to fight it?"

That's not a question taken lightly by Thomas and his family, who have nurtured a reputation as responsible landowners.

"The Thomas family have been excellent land stewards," Draper said. "Because they've taken such excellent care of their property, the land is particularly valuable for wildlife."

Thomas' grandfather, Wayne, started buying up land in Hernando, Pasco and Hillsborough counties beginning in 1932. The family donated most of what became Hillsborough River State Park. And they've carefully managed the land that they do farm.

"Land management is an art form," Robert Thomas says. "When Mr. Wayne bought the land, it was an old thrown-away piece of timber property. We've built it up over the years. We've added value to the site. Instead of obliterating the property by planting one crop, we've diversified."

Because of this care, the land is ideal for residential neighborhoods, Thomas said.

"I wouldn't call what we're proposing to be subdivisions," Thomas said. "They're communities, more organic, where residents are assured a quality of life based on nature. We're starting with better raw material."

Still, the projects face a few obstacles, starting with government approvals.

Hernando County officials dispute Thomas' claim that he has a "historic right" to build 1,750 homes on 2,800 acres that is now designated rural by the county's comprehensive plan, which dictates growth.

In Pasco, his plan for more than 7,000 homes on 3,500 acres is so large it must go through a state approval process that's more comprehensive - and longer and costlier.

And in Hillsborough County, his efforts to build 1,200 homes on 1,800 acres is getting a cool reception so far by reviewing agencies because of concerns about the environment and sprawl.

But these agencies can only make recommendations. Ultimately it will be the county commissioners who will decide later this year. And Thomas says he isn't worried.

"I don't expect opposition except from those crackpots who want to grab headlines," he said.

Thomas said the plan to convert all of his land into homes will take place over at least 30 years. His 20-year-old son, Wayne, still plans to work on the ranch well into the future.

"I see this more as a change or a transformation, rather than a death of a way of life," Thomas said. "We're changing a working landscape into another type of landscape. All we're doing is moving into another crop."

--Michael Van Sickler can be reached at 813 226-3402 or mvansickler@sptimes.com

[Last modified April 11, 2005, 01:17:31]