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Cypress Creek ads polish image

By JAMES THORNER
Published September 11, 2005

LAND O'LAKES - A pretty young woman. A smiling, hugging couple enjoying Florida nature. A pair of hands caressed by a jet of pure water.

It's not a commercial for liquid soap but a campaign to polish the image of a proposed Pasco County mall two years before it's even built.

Attacked by environmentalists who object to its destruction of wetlands, Cypress Creek Town Center has placed three different ads in Pasco editions of the region's major newspapers.

The message from the developer, the Richard E. Jacobs Group, is the same: The 1.3-million-square-foot mall southwest of Interstate 75 and State Road 56 will perk up the economy without harming the environment.

"We are by nature a very quiet company. We try to maintain a low-key posture ... but we just felt there was a clear need to state our case," said Bill Fullington, Jacobs' vice president of marketing.

With a promise of thousands of jobs, millions in taxes and more than 100 stores, the open-air mall is scheduled to open in late 2007.

Early designs show a Main Street-style boulevard lined with awninged shop fronts, rich architectural detail, traffic circles and on-street parking.

But the mall's planned destruction of 55 acres of wetlands, and its proximity to a specially protected stream called Cypress Creek, has provoked environmental groups.

The Sierra Club and the Florida Public Interest Research Group have gone door-to-door to collect antimall signatures.

Environmentalists fear the loss of the wetlands, combined with pollutants running off shopping center asphalt, will pollute the creek. A tributary of the Hillsborough River,it supplies millions of gallons of Tampa's drinking water.

Jacobs promises not to discharge in the creek; it will hold potential pollutants such as motor oil in ponds. It was a method Pasco officials signed off on last year when rezoning the mall site.

The latest ad that ran in the St. Petersburg Times contained such an environmentally friendly message: "When it comes to Cypress Creek Town Center, promoting economic growth also means safeguarding our water supply."

The mall still needs a permit from the Southwest Florida Water Management District before it can touch wetlands. It's that permit environmentalists hope to deny the company.

The newspaper ads, produced by Roberts Communications of Tampa, are a way to introduce Jacobs to the community as ground-breaking day approaches in 2006, Fullington said.

For mall supporters, the campaign can't come soon enough. A competing shopping center 3 miles to the east, the Shops at Wiregrass, snagged two stores Jacobs had pursued: JCPenney and Dillard's.

Fullington promises similar tenant announcements from Jacobs in coming weeks. To crank up excitement further, the developer will also release detailed architectural renderings of the Cypress Creek mall.

[Last modified September 10, 2005, 09:32:05]