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Cluster homes to cut sprawl?

That is what a developer proposes for his rural property with a plan to conserve a good chunk of it for nature, if he can get a rule change.

By DAN DeWITT
Published March 12, 2006

BROOKSVILLE - Even ardent advocates of preservation agree with Gary Schraut on one point:

The large-lot development consuming much of Hernando's countryside is a form of sprawl.

"It's the worst kind," said Vince Morris, a Florida Division of Forestry ecologist.

Allowing only one home on 10 acres means vast areas are used to accommodate a relatively small population. Just like smaller lots, these larger ones are "cleared . . . mowed and maintained," Morris said, killing gopher tortoises and ground-dwelling birds, and leaving the land almost worthless as wildlife habitat.

"It gives one family a chance to wreck 10 acres, which they inevitably do," Morris said.

Schraut, a Brooksville developer and real estate broker, is considered by some to be an enemy of the environment. But his proposal for "conservation subdivisions," which is due to come before the County Commission on Wednesday, has drawn wide support. That's because it addresses a county policy that was originally intended to preserve open space - allowing only one home for every 10 acres in most rural areas - and now seems to be destroying it.

But people who oppose the current policy don't agree with every part of Schraut's proposal. Some say the compensation he is seeking for preserving rural areas - the right to build more than four times as many houses as he would otherwise be allowed - is far too high.

Others say the clusters of homes on the edge of natural areas represent yet another variety of sprawl. The rule change Schraut is seeking would allow him to build a cluster of 78 houses on the southern edge of the Citrus Tract of the Withlacoochee State Forest, while preserving 40 acres of woods and 52 acres of pasture - half of his 184-acre parcel.

Morris asked how Schraut planned to keep the woods free of exotic weeds that could spread into the forest. He wondered how the residents would react when forestry workers set fire to the neighboring woods - a necessary maintenance practice.

"That whole area is part of a potential corridor of natural land to connect the (state forest) to the Chassahowitzka (National Wildlife Refuge)," Morris said.

"My thought is, it's not appropriate for development at all."

Schraut hopes to apply the new rules to his parcel off County Road 491 just south of the Citrus County line, and, in the near future, to an adjacent, 250-acre tract he has a contract to buy.

But his plans could apply to all the land the county comprehensive plan designates as rural - about one-third of the county. It would allow 1-acre lots on as much as half of a large rural tract in exchange for preserving the remainder.

Land would be graded on nine different criteria, including its environmental value, its proximity to existing preservation land, and its potential to be connected to these natural areas by horse or foot trails.

Schraut's property meets eight of these standards, qualifying it for the highest density - 0.425 units per acre, or a total of 78 lots, compared to the 18 he would be allowed by current development rules.

In the language of professional planners, these additional lots are called a "density bonus" and compensate landowners for providing the public benefits of clustered development.

That includes, in the case of Schraut's land, the preservation of the 40-acre woods. His plan would also allow the continued cultivation of a valuable hayfield on the property, thus fulfilling the comprehensive plan's goal of encouraging agriculture. By tucking most of the clustered homes well away from CR 491, he said, he would indefinitely preserve the uncluttered view of passing motorists.

None of this would be possible, he said, if the county allowed him fewer bonus lots - 55, for example, the number county planners originally proposed.

In an interview last month, Schraut said he bought the land last year for $2.2-million and estimates he could sell its 10-acre parcels for about $27,000, for a total of $5-million. The 55 1-acre lots would probably go for about $100,000, he said, or a total of $5.5-million.

That would not be enough to compensate for the additional cost of building a clustered development with paved roads and working through the more complex approval process it requires, he said.

"You have to make this economically feasible or there's not a developer in the world who's going to do it," Schraut said.

County planners are convinced that is true and now support the policy allowing the building of 78 lots on Schraut's property, said planner Jim King:

"We've listened to his comments because he's been very forthright about the economics of this."

But if Hernando adopts Schraut's plan, it could offer the most generous density bonuses in the state.

Counties throughout Florida, like Hernando, passed comprehensive plans nearly 20 years ago that allowed large lots in rural areas. If it sounded good at the time, the resulting pattern has since inspired an unflattering name, said Brian Beatty, a planner with Sarasota County: "It's called incremental sprawl."

"We've struggled with this notion for more than a decade," he said.

Sarasota, like other counties, has addressed this problem with a policy far more wide-ranging than the one Hernando is considering.

For example, in Sarasota it is possible to do what Morris suggested for Schraut's land - preserve all of it, while compensating the landowner for his loss of development rights.

Those rights can be transferred to other properties, and the more environmentally valuable the land is considered, the larger the bonus that can be placed on another property.

This can result in larger areas of preserved land and projects far bigger and more dense than any that would be allowed in rural Hernando County.

The owners of large tracts - 6,000 acres, for example - may accumulate density bonuses by clustering lots onto half of their land, by building units for affordable housing and by transferring rights from other preserved properties, said Matt Lewis, another Sarasota County planner.

Ultimately, these landowners could develop as many as 18,000 lots on the remaining 3,000 acres.

Clustering on individual lots, as Schraut is proposing, garners landowners far smaller bonuses. Take a 100-acre parcel in an area zoned for one unit per 10 acres, Lewis said. Confining the development to half the property would allow the developer to build twice as many lots - 20 - covering 2.5 acres each.

The formula in Alachua County is far more complex but would allow bonuses similar to Sarasota's and far less generous than those contemplated by Hernando.

But one essential question about these plans has yet to be answered. Because most of them are new, nobody knows whether they are economically feasible.

"It's more theory than reality in this state right now," said Charles Gauthier, formerly the head of local planning for the state Department of Community Affairs.

Keith Pritchett, who has adamantly opposed one of Schraut's developments, said the clustering proposal has some merit.

Pritchett and his wife, Kathy, live on 10 acres surrounded by similar-size properties on Griffin Road, southeast of Brooksville. Each surrounding property that is developed, he said, seems to destroy one more species of formerly common wildlife - eagles that had lived in the trees of one recently cleared lot, river otters on another.

Schraut, he said, "has a point."

But the counties that have struggled most with "incremental sprawl" are ones that already allow relatively dense development in rural areas. In most of Alachua, the standard rural density is one unit per 5 acres; in Santa Rosa County, much of the rural land may be developed in 1-acre lots.

In comparison, dividing an area into 10-acre lots does not seem like sprawl, Pritchett said.

"I still feel like we're out in the country. We've seen deer out in our yard, wild turkey, bobwhite quail - how long has it been since you've seen quail? We have an alligator that lays out in the lake," he said.

"Living on 10 acres, we get to enjoy all of that."

Dan DeWitt can be reached at 352 754-6116 or dewitt@sptimes.com

[Last modified March 12, 2006, 01:18:21]