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Business and growth

Early mall plans focus on terrain

Cypress Creek Town Center plans call for removing wetlands and about 2,500 trees.

By JAMES THORNER
Published December 11, 2005

LAND O'LAKES - Trying to get a jump on its scheduled summer of 2006 groundbreaking, Cypress Creek Town Center turned in site plans last week for its proposed 1.3-million-square-foot mall at Interstate 75 and State Road 56.

But if you're looking for details about the mix of stores, the design of the buildings and the lay of the roads, you'll have to wait.

The Richard E. Jacobs Group's development blueprints deal almost exclusively with the environment: the wetlands, trees and earth to be displaced by the $200-million project.

The ecological sensitivity of the site, bounded on the south by Cypress Creek, requires the property developer get permits from the Southwest Florida Water Management District and the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

To build the open-air mall, Jacobs plans to remove about 55 acres of wetlands. Environmentalists consider the wetlands a buffer against motor oil and other pollutants washing into the creek from mall parking lots.

Cypress Creek, which feeds Tampa's drinking water supply, merits special protection as an Outstanding Florida Water. State law mandates water pollution be no higher after construction than before.

The mall's site plans, filed this week with Pasco County's development review office, include a "tree demolition plan" that pegged more than 1,000 oaks and 1,500 other trees on the 500 acres.

Maps show a cross-shaped mall with boxy anchor stores on each end of the cross beam and an 18-screen cinema at the top. In between the anchors are shops lining a mock Main Street with on-street parking, fountains and sidewalks.

Building construction approval awaits resolution of the environmental issues, though most of the wetlands due for removal would become parking lots, not stores.

The tentative opening date is fall 2007. That deadline assumes Jacobs receives the environmental permits by May or June and immediately embarks on what could be 18 months of construction.

Cypress Creek would be the first regional mall in central Pasco and New Tampa. Proponents cite the prospect of more than 100 stores, 4,000 jobs and $10-million a year in taxes.

[Last modified December 10, 2005, 10:13:05]