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Gated wall plans hit a roadblock

Pasco County officials say plans for two gated communities will contribute to gridlock.

By JAMES THORNER
Published September 24, 2005

Nothing says Florida real estate quite like walled, gated communities. From humble trailer parks to luxurious seaside enclaves, Floridians are mad for masonry.

But are these symbols of safe and sound living on the way out in Pasco County?

Pasco administrators have frozen plans for a pair of gated communities proposed for Wesley Chapel's Wiregrass Ranch.

Their main objection: By walling themselves in with private streets, gated communities hinder traffic that needs to flow smoothly to keep the county's suburbs from becoming gridlocked.

DiVosta Homes and Del Webb Homes, both subsidiaries of housing giant Pulte Homes, want to build gated communities of thousands of homes northeast of State Road 56 and Bruce B. Downs Boulevard.

In August, citing traffic worries, Pasco administrators denied Pulte permission to build the first installment of those homes on the 5,000-acre ranch.

Pulte is appealing the decision to county commissioners at a meeting scheduled for early November.

If the county breaches the walls of the gated communities it would destroy the integrity of DiVosta's and Del Webb's projects, said Joel Tew, the attorney representing Wiregrass.

DiVosta builds semi-self-contained communities under the brand name VillageWalk. They feature guard houses that operate 24 hours a day. The Wiregrass VillageWalk would include canals, foot bridges and walking trails.

Del Webb builds golf course communities for people 55 and older. Webb wants its Wiregrass project to be largely sealed off except for cars visiting what's to be a public golf course.

"Public roads defeat your purpose to have private gated communities," Tew said. "Carried to its logical conclusion you couldn't build walled communities anymore."

Well, yes and no.

County administrators view the gated communities as giant blockages in a pipeline of planned roads south of State Road 54.

SR 56 and Chancey Road, both to be extended through Wiregrass, could be overwhelmed with traffic. The same fate could await a proposed north-south road called Porter Boulevard.

The source of the cars isn't just the 16,000 homes proposed for Wiregrass, a housing explosion that could draw tens of thousands of new residents. Wiregrass also comes with plans for mall-sized shopping centers and office parks packing as much floor space as a Tampa skyscraper.

As the county strives to lay out road networks to serve present and future suburbs, "very large walled communities" could become an endangered species, assistant county attorney David Goldstein said.

Walled communities are everywhere in Pasco, from gated trailer parks in Zephyrhills and New Port Richey to more luxurious neighborhoods like Wilderness Lake Preserve in Land O'Lakes and Lake Jovita near Dade City.

"If you're talking walled communities of the size Pulte is proposing, I suppose you could say, "Yes, they could be banned,"' Goldstein said.

New Tampa, years ahead of Wesley Chapel in the development game, has struggled without a proper road network, a tough thing to lay out among its numerous gated subdivisions.

That lack of infrastructure came home to roost last year when Hurricane Frances dumped 10 inches of rain.

The area's two main roads, Bruce B. Downs and Morris Bridge Road, were partly flooded. The result: traffic jams that stretched for miles.

Goldstein cited Trinity, in southwest Pasco, as an example of a project that's successfully steered a middle ground between private communities and public access.

Trinity Boulevard is a main thoroughfare serving Trinity, but developers provided an alternative route south of the boulevard called Robert Trent Jones Parkway.

Robert Trent Jones winds through several neighborhoods, included the restricted, seniors-only Heritage Springs golf course community.

"Joel made it sound like we're picking just on them," Goldstein said of Pulte's lawyer. "...The other developers weren't happy with building roads either, but they ended up doing it."

Attempts to bridge the differences between the county's and Pulte's position have failed so far. As a compromise, county planners suggested looping a road around one or more of the walled communities.

Pulte has been cool to the beltway idea, and will take its chances with an appeal to the county commissioners.

"The county commissioners seem to understand these things better than the county staff," Tew said.

[Last modified September 24, 2005, 01:00:22]