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Letter to the editor

Delay may help fine-tune plan for offices

But residents near the proposed Waterbridge project site say that it wouldn't fit into their neighborhood.

By RICHARD DANIELSON
Published June 7, 2005

PALM HARBOR - The developers of an office building proposed for 3.6 acres near the New Horizons Country Day School may seek a delay so they can work to make their plan more acceptable to the school, neighbors and Pinellas County.

Parents of children at the school have said the proposed Waterbridge office building would increase traffic around the school. The proposed development would be on an L-shaped piece of property that wraps around the school with entrances on both Belcher Road and Nebraska Avenue.

Neighbors say the project doesn't fit in with the area. Belcher and Nebraska are considered scenic corridors, they say, and should remain unchanged by commercial development.

"It's definitely inconsistent with the character and nature of the neighborhood," said Jeff Nelson, 36, who lives about 100 feet from the proposed project. "It's all homes in there on larger lots, and we don't want an office building in there."

The Pinellas County Commission is scheduled to hold a public hearing on the project on June 28, and the commission's staff has recommended denial.

On Monday, however, a land use consultant working with the developer, Waterbridge LLC, said there's a "pretty good chance" his clients will ask for the June 28 hearing to be postponed while they work on the plans.

"I think the use proposed can be cohesive, can be compatible," said Todd Pressman, who represents Waterbridge, which is owned by David Richardson and George Lutich.

The building would be well buffered and would be "quiet and nonimposing," developers said in their application to the county.

At a meeting last month, Pressman said the developers would agree to a maximum height of 35 feet for the building. He also said the building would not be a sterile glass structure, but would be designed to be in keeping with the residential character of the area.

Even with those conditions, "staff believes this would be an undesirable precedent" and could open the door to similar requests to the west on Nebraska Avenue or along Belcher Road, county planning director Brian Smith recently wrote in a report to the County Commission.

As of Monday, more than 100 people had written the county to oppose the project. More than two-thirds of them are parents with children at the New Horizons Country Day School.

In a letter to the county, New Horizons executive director Kim Trocin said the school worries that the Waterbridge project "will hurt our business." It also could increase traffic near the school's playground and could bring outsiders into contact with children, she said.

Not everyone, however, has a problem with the project. About a dozen neighbors have written the county to say they have no problem with Waterbridge's proposal.

[Last modified June 7, 2005, 02:15:48]