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Off/beat

Buyer beware: Birdsong may become street roar

By JIM THORNER
Published April 24, 2005

You've scouted the school district, sized up the neighborhood, sampled the clubhouse amenities. Now you're ready to spend $225,000 on your new house.

Right?

Wrong.

Take a lesson from residents living near Lake Patience Road in Land O'Lakes: Make sure that quiet neighborhood street isn't destined to become the home stretch of the Daytona International Speedway.

Pasco County is all gung ho for asphalt these days. The new roads will speed us to shopping centers, schools and jobs in the big city.

So there's a good chance the street that dead ends at a cow pasture will soon become a major thoroughfare. Depending on your tolerance for noise and bustle, that could mean goodbye to domestic bliss.

The drone of traffic, the bouncing bass lines of overjuiced car stereos and the air-ripping vanity mufflers are enough to make some people pine for horses and buggies.

In Wesley Chapel and Land O'Lakes alone, the county is laying miles of new roads or extending old ones. Here's a short list: Ridge Road extension, Chancey Road extension, Collier Parkway, Overpass Road, Curley Road and Sunlake Boulevard.

Yet too many people buy houses without knowing that the music of engines will soon drown out the music of songbirds. Plenty of home sellers are happy to leave you ignorant.

A case in point: On a map at a sales center for a Land O'Lakes subdivision are rows of "SOLD" lots on a street identified as Ridge Road. The map portrays it as a neighborhood street, albeit wider than the others.

Here's what they omitted: A wider angle would have shown Ridge plunging into the heart of the planned 8,700-home Connerton community farther east and connecting to the Suncoast Parkway and New Port Richey to the west.

That part of the road hasn't been built yet, but Ridge is supposed to be a third major east-west highway in Pasco, complementing state roads 54 and 52. When apprised of that fact, a salesperson shrugged, "We don't know anything about that."

Collier Parkway is another road that should be on any buyer's watch list.

The county's got plans showing Collier breaching Hale Road and running straight into the heart of Connerton (Connerton's downtown will be where Collier intersects Ridge.)

The two-lane stretch of Collier that splits the Sable Ridge community in Land O'lakes is destined to become a three- or four-lane commuter route for thousands of homeowners. It's only a few years away.

If your property backs up to Collier you might want to rethink the open porch idea, unless you enjoy the scintillating sounds of the city.

Sometimes you can't blame home sellers for sticking you with a poor location. The county simply hasn't finalized its route. And sometimes buyer inattention is to blame.

In 1999, when 1,200-home Oakstead was approved north of SR 54, plans indicated that an isolated strip of Lake Patience Road in Oakstead would merge with a preexisting stretch to form a thoroughfare between U.S. 41 and the Suncoast Parkway.

But when the county held hearings on the road expansion in 2003, Oakstead homeowners were aghast. Concerned about thousands of cars skirting their privacy walls, about 500 Oakstead residents filled a petition. But it was too late to sidetrack plans already set in stone.

But it's not too late for many new home buyers. Note such roads as Sunlake Boulevard, Tower Road, Overpass Road and the Zephyrhills West Bypass. All promise to be heavily used commuter highways.

Of course, not everyone minds road noise. Some city people tolerate dins that would make their country cousins sandwich their heads in pillows. And with homes selling so fast, you can't always be picky about location.

But here's some words to the wise: Drive the streets in your prospective neighborhood. Research them. Find them on maps. Or regret it later.

[Last modified April 24, 2005, 01:03:20]