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'Exurb' is word for New River

A Wesley Chapel neighborhood is featured in a New York Times story about life outside the city.

By JAMES THORNER
Published August 16, 2005

WESLEY CHAPEL - Residents of Wesley Chapel: Did you know you lived in an "exurb"?

You know now. The New York Times says so.

Wesley Chapel, or more specifically the New River Township neighborhood north of State Road 54, shared the front page of this week's Sunday New York Times .

The first of a series of stories that aims to "examine life in America's most far-flung suburbs," the newspaper put New River, and by extension Pasco County, under the microscope.

The reporter dubbed the area an exurb, or a semirural residential community far outside a city. Hotly contested by politicians, exurbanites helped swing the election for George W. Bush last year.

New River fit the bill as an archetypal exurb, said Beat Kahli, the Swiss-born developer of New River interviewed extensively by the New York Times .

Economics, mainly cheaper land prices, encourages the flight far beyond the city centers. "In which downtown can you buy 2,000 acres? I don't think anywhere in the U.S.," Kahli says.

But if Kahli has his way, New River will be less exurb and more self-contained city . In five to 10 years, it could have thousands of homes and a town center that hums with commerce.

Aside from Kahli, The story also featured comments from a couple of Pasco families.

The author suggested New River residents are majority Republican, solidly middle class, ethnically varied and more religious than average.

And despite the relatively low crime of central Pasco, home buyers are supposedly security conscious, judging from builders' requests for built-in burglar alarms and double-bolted locks.

Like most community snapshots, the story has a limited shelf life. Pasco's rate of growth is such that it won't be long before you'll be able to remove the "ex' from the exurb.

[Last modified August 16, 2005, 01:29:18]