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At the center of change

Sharon Calvo has marshaled varying groups into one voice for a growing community.

By BILL COATS
Published April 29, 2005

LUTZ - Six months ago, the future of Lutz-Lake Fern Road looked like a one-way trip to gridlock. Nobody in government had any plans, or money, to do anything, unless you count the school system, which wanted to add a high school to the mess.

But now, Hillsborough County has a plan, and tentative funds, for widening part of Lutz-Lake Fern. The state is on the verge of fast-tracking an interchange at Lutz-Lake Fern and the Suncoast Parkway.

As government swung into action, the communities along Lutz-Lake Fern acquired more than a promise of renovations. They gained a new civic leader, Sharon Calvo.

Calvo, more than any other activist, has operated at the center of the changes, coordinating appeals among four arms of government. As president of the new Lutz-Lake Fern Communities Coalition, Calvo has emerged as the spokesperson for some 10,000 people living in big new developments along Lutz-Lake Fern.

"I was impressed," said Joanne Hurley, community relations coordinator for Florida's Turnpike Enterprise, the state agency that controls the Suncoast Parkway, after meeting with Calvo's coalition.

"She can keep the group on task, and she knows how to involve everyone in the process."

It was probably inevitable that someone would emerge in such a role. Northwest Hillsborough has two longstanding community-leadership groups, the Lutz and Keystone civic associations. Both are committed to preserving the area's rural aspects. But a swath of busy new suburbs has sprung up in western Lutz in the past 10 years, dominated by the master-planned communities of Cheval, VillaRosa and Heritage Harbor. It's so distinct from older Lutz that the Lutz Civic Association balked for years at representing it.

The increasing congestion along Lutz-Lake Fern arguably was the first unifying issue for the new developments. The high school was the second.

By then, Calvo's coalition had come together.

"We are here to be a different voice than you have heard before, as well as a new voice," Calvo said, introducing herself to the Hillsborough County Commission on Jan. 19.

A Connecticut native, Calvo married her husband, Carl, when she was 21. His career with Price Waterhouse and IBM, and later as a consultant, set the couple onto a life of frequent moves. Sharon Calvo worked as an insurance broker, then managed professional associations, then became a paralegal.

In Chicago, the Calvos consulted in corporate travel management. But Tampa Bay, where they had lived in 1987, beckoned.

"We were sitting in a pool with mai tais, on one of the seven days a year when you can do this in Chicago," Calvo recalled.

The mai tai discussion produced an agreement between the Calvos that they could maintain their careers almost anywhere.

"All we need is a good airport," Calvo said.

So she began house-hunting here and chose VillaRosa in 1999. It was more rural and parklike than North Pinellas, their 1987 home. "This felt like a little town," Calvo said.

Over six years, some 10 relatives and friends of the Calvos have moved to VillaRosa from around the country.

"I have a serious stake in VillaRosa," she said, smiling.

As Calvo arrived in VillaRosa, a new homeowners board was suffering a rugged transition from developer rule. By 2000, no board member sought re-election.

"There were no nominations," Calvo recalled. "The annual meeting was getting close. If there's no board members, an attorney starts doing your business at $300 an hour."

So Calvo, two years after moving in, decided to run. She visited Jim Decker, a next-door neighbor, and persuaded him to run. She visited Frank Pennimpede, the neighbor on the other side, and signed him on. All were elected, giving the cul de sac on Sunsplash Lane a majority vote over 900 homes.

The new board promptly chose Calvo as president, surprising her.

"I think she was born to be a leader," Decker said.

The board has raised fees and landscaping standards. It has forced a handful of indignant homeowners to remove storm doors, which violate VillaRosa's deed restrictions.

Decker said Calvo has been a master of detail.

"She was just on top of that stuff," he marveled. "She'd answer questions for the rest of us."

VillaRosa residents increasingly complained about Lutz-Lake Fern. Initially, Calvo said that wasn't a homeowners association problem. Then she heard from frustrated homeowner leaders in Heritage Harbor and Stillwater.

Hillsborough County had no money to improve Lutz-Lake Fern. Turnpike officials had foregone a Suncoast Parkway interchange there because Cheval residents in the early 1990s didn't want it. They planned to revisit the question about 2015.

But last August, the Hillsborough County School District proposed the new high school. Everyone wondered how an already failed road could handle the traffic of 2,500 students and teachers.

Denise Layne, president of the Lutz Civic Association, had formed the Lutz Transportation Task Force with other problems in mind. Calvo's group had joined. Layne moved high school traffic to the top of her agenda. But by January, Calvo's coalition grew impatient with the pace of the task force's discussions and spoke out on their own.

To government leaders, simply hearing consensus from fractious Lutz was significant. Cheval had opposed the interchange. The Lutz Civic Association had opposed road-widenings. Efforts to locate a high school in the late 1990s in Lutz's older areas failed after years of controversy.

Yet in western Lutz, Calvo's group signed up the support of two PTAs and every homeowners association, including both associations in Cheval, to support the high school and road improvements. A Jan. 19 public meeting on the high school produced no opponents.

Layne's task force persuaded turnpike officials to restudy Lutz-Lake Fern's traffic. When the study showed an interchange might be financially feasible, Calvo's group began lobbying state Rep. Kevin Ambler and legislators on appropriations committees.

Ambler said his fellow legislators "have been contacted by a number of folks on that coalition."

The Hillsborough County Commission responded to Calvo's requests, and its staff recommendations, by endorsing the interchange and taking the first steps toward widening Lutz-Lake Fern.

Improvements that looked impossible last year look likely now.

Calvo, 54, is pleased.

"This was it, if ever there was one - a case of the old cliche of the stars aligning," she said.

Last month, a board member of the Lutz Civic Association nominated Calvo to the board. She would be the group's first board member from one of the new developments. Calvo is mulling whether she has the time.

Layne, the civic association president since 1997, said Calvo has followed the footsteps of many others into leadership.

"We all start with our community, and then we begin to see the bigger picture of issues," Layne said. "God bless Sharon Calvo, because we need lots and lots more people like her."

- Bill Coats can be reached at 813 269-5309 or coats@sptimes.com

[Last modified April 28, 2005, 08:32:07]