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New high school will ease pressure cooker

Plans for this school, to open in August 2009, generate no knitted brows.

By BILL COATS
Published July 28, 2006

LUTZ - Eight years ago, public arguments over a high school in Lutz consumed 15 hours and generated a lawsuit. Then a developer snatched up the future campus and built a shopping center.

This week, Hillsborough County commissioners approved another site for a high school - one of Lutz's biggest zoning changes in years - without a syllable of criticism.

The difference: location.

The new high school will be nestled among Lutz's newest and biggest developments, between the Suncoast Parkway and pair of existing schools on Lutz-Lake Fern Road. The chosen site eight years ago was next to a country lane that had developed over the course of 70 years.

Tuesday's vote clears the way for the Hillsborough County School District to buy 78 acres for $5.4-million. The school is to open in August 2009.

"Ideally, we could do it before," said Cathy Valdes, the school system's chief facilities officer. "It takes two years to construct."

The school system needs the new high school to relieve crowding at other high schools in northwest Hillsborough. In Citrus Park, Sickles High is projected to open next week at 127 percent of capacity, with 2,800 students. Northdale's Gaither High is to begin classes at 108 percent.

The new school's architecture will be modeled after West Tampa's Middleton High, but with adjustments to accommodate the Lutz property, which includes cypress swamps.

"There's a lot of preliminary stuff that has to be done," Valdes said. "There are some constraints with the site."

The biggest uncertainty about the construction project is the status of the area's roads in 2009. Hillsborough County is studying how to widen Lutz-Lake Fern from the Suncoast to N Dale Mabry Highway, but has money only for intersection improvements along the road. State officials would like to add an interchange on the Suncoast next to the high school, but they need the Florida Legislature to approve financial changes.

The school system committed to build a six-lane entrance, including double turn lanes and traffic signals on Lutz-Lake Fern Road.

Before Tuesday's vote, Commissioner Ken Hagan asked whether the school district should be required to commit money to Lutz-Lake Fern's widening, which is estimated at $68-million.

Charles White, who leads a transportation review team among county planners, said Lutz-Lake Fern currently could accommodate the high school's traffic at two lanes. In the morning rush hour, most school traffic would approach from the east, while most morning commuters would be heading toward Dale Mabry from the west, White told commissioners.

However, Florida's Turnpike Enterprise, which runs the Suncoast, projected last year that an interchange at Lutz-Lake Fern would attract 5,000 drivers a morning by 2015, which would merge them into high school traffic. Without the interchange, those drivers would be commuting eastward, according to the study.

The closest neighborhood to the new high school will be VillaRosa, built in the last 10 years. As VillaRosa grew, the school system built McKitrick Elementary School and Martinez Middle School next door.

The homeowners president there, Sharon Calvo, emerged as a leading supporter of the high school and road improvements, forming a coalition of homeowner associations along Lutz-Lake Fern.

Soon after the high school plans were announced, Calvo appeared before commissioners to introduce her group and explain that Lutz-Lake Fern was a "unique little corridor" that was highly suburban, in contrast to semirural Lutz and Keystone areas.

"We are here to be a different voice than you have heard before," Calvo said.

Bill Coats can be reached at coats@sptimes.com or 813 269-5309.

[Last modified July 28, 2006, 06:26:05]