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From cows to cars . . . lots of cars

A road widening plan is in place, but may take a while.

By MICHAEL A. MOHAMMED
Published November 3, 2006

"I'm not looking forward to the holidays," Dunlap said. "Just getting to the Brandon mall is a major endeavor."

Rush hour at Big Bend Road and U.S. 301 makes it easy to see why: ars back up bumper-to-bumper during the long waits between green lights.

Dunlap, who heads the Citizens' Action Committee of Riverview, moved into a lakefront home near U.S. 301 nearly two decades ago. When her husband, Lee, retired four years ago from his job with U.S. Special Operations Command at MacDill Air Force Base, Riverview promised peace and quiet.

Sown in the boom years between 2001 and 2005, the area of Big-Bend Road and U.S. 301 has begun to bustle with sprawl. About 20 subdivisions, totalling about 21,000 homes, have either been built or are planned.

The stretch of U.S. 301 between Gibsonton Drive and Big Bend Road earned a failing grade in the county planners' 2006 road report card. This means that the number of cars that travel the road each day is substantially higher than the number it was designed to carry, resulting in gridlock.

"If you're not out there by 6:30, you're not going because it's bumper to bumper for as far as you can see," Dunlap said of her husband's former northbound morning commute.

Traffic and overcrowding come with Riverview's rapid growth, but plans are under way to relieve some of U.S. 301's congestion. The Florida Department of Transportation, Hillsborough County, and more than two dozen developers will pay to widen the highway from two lanes to six.

The stretch from Gibsonton Drive to County Road 672 will cost $107-million, about one-third of which will be paid by developers. The remaining money will come from a second wave of private funds as well as the state and county. The second phase of the project, from County Road 672 to State Road 674, will cost an additional $48-million, and efforts are under way to obtain additional private and state funding for that portion.

The deal, unprecedented in the state, allowed the DOT to undertake a project that, without private investment, would have taken 20 years to happen, said Ned Baier, manager of the Hillsborough County Transportation Division.

"This was a cooperative partnership between (DOT), county government and private development to finance infrastructure before development occurs," he said. "It's the way growth management is supposed to work."

But for those suffering in traffic on U.S. 301 now, relief won't come until construction ends sometime in 2010, according to a DOT report.

In the meantime, people may continue streaming into the area's new developments. The reason: a quirk in the development rules which gives builders three years after the start of home construction to finish road expansions and other required items.

For now, a housing slowdown may be the area's best hope for traffic relief.

"The market is cooling, and it's very possible that there will be less home construction on that corridor than was earlier anticipated," Baier said.

In other words, it won't get better but it might not get worse.

One upside is that the changes - new traffic lights, street lamps, turn lanes, a sidewalk, and on- and off-street bike paths - should make the road much safer, Baier said. From 2001 to 2004, there were 414 crashes, leading to 61 injuries and nine deaths, county figures show. The improvements should reduce those numbers significantly, he added.

Ron Proulx, who helped broker the U.S. 301 deal as former president of the Riverview Chamber of Commerce, takes a stoic attitude toward the traffic he'll have to endure until the widening finishes.

"We got what we wanted, and now we have to suffer through the change," he said.

Still, he added, people buying homes are hardly being hoodwinked about the traffic and development situation in Riverview; most people come knowing they will have to deal with headaches for the next few years.

"If you do your homework, you buy a house, you know what development is going to be happening," Proulx said. "If it occurs you shouldn't complain about it."

No cohesive community

A more vexing issue is the isolation of modern housing developments. For decades planners have argued that separate, walled subdivisions make it nearly impossible to form a cohesive community.

"Riverview will never be the same because it's not rural," Dunlap said. "It's cookie-cutter like everywhere else."

A 2004 Community Plan for Riverview done by the county Planning Commission noted several problems caused by undirected growth. The report's prediction: Without changes to current plans, Riverview "will have a greater number of smaller lots and disconnected subdivisions that focus inward with little regard for how they relate to surrounding areas."

And some say the Community Plan does little to force developers to address the consequences of sprawl. Its primary suggestion - creating "town centers" for shopping and recreation - requires builders to diverge from more profitable housing-only developments.

In fact, Baier, the county transportation planner, said that several of the larger new developments allow for commercial and office space.

Yet the shopping space will likely sit empty for several years until the new residents who can support new businesses arrive.

County planner Elaine Lund concedes that slowing the spread of residential developments is difficult.

Instead, she said, planners and residents need to accept the realities of sprawl and learn to work with it.

"It's not necessarily a bad thing," Lund said. "A lot of the communities that begin as what we think of as sprawl end up as their own communities."

Cashing in, moving out

Many landowners on U.S. 301 have seen their property values - and taxes - skyrocket.

Pastures surrounded U.S. 301 and Symmes Road when Joe Graves bought a 50-foot-wide plot for $4,000 in 1979.

He opened a farm stand called Basket Produce. Over the next two decades, he picked up three more 50-foot parcels.

Now, the land Graves accumulated for a total of $87,000 over 20 years is worth at least $557,459, according to county property records. Graves said real estate agents have offered to list it for as much as $1.5-million.

Graves, 67, paused from selling pumpkins to reflect on the changing landscape. Since the subdivisions started coming in about five years ago, business has more than doubled, he said.

Five years ago, he said, livestock caused more traffic than cars.

"Sometimes cows would get through the fences, and deputies had to get them out of the road," he said. "We've seen that half a dozen times."

For some of the people who moved here when Riverview was rural, the high property values and development squeeze are convincing them to sell their land and move somewhere else.

Graves said he isn't bothered too much by the change in Riverview's landscape - he plans to retire in Missouri, where he and his wife grew up, but will wait until the U.S. 301 widening is completed to get the most value for his land.

"It's our livelihood right now, but I could live with a million and a half," he said.

And while Dunlap still bemoans the changes in Riverview's landscape, she admits her property is worth much more than it once was-about $625,000, compared to the $152,500 she paid in 1988.

"The value of my property is phenomenal, so what can I say? We have done very well," she said.

Still, Dunlap and her husband have decided to stick it out, because he has a medical condition and his doctors are here. Instead of moving, they are renovating their house and being very choosy about when they drive.

"That's why I don't do breakfast meetings," she said.

Michael A. Mohammed can be reached at mmohammed@sptimes.com or (813) 226-3404.

By MICHAEL A. MOHAMMED

Times Staff Writer

Jan Dunlap drives as little as she can, especially when other people are on their way to work.

"I'm not looking forward to the holidays," Dunlap said. "Just getting to the [Brandon] mall is a major endeavor."

Rush hour at Big Bend Road and U.S. 301 makes it easy to see why: cars back up bumper-to-bumper during the long waits between green lights.

Dunlap, who heads the Citizens' Action Committee of Riverview, moved into a lakefront home near U.S. 301 nearly two decades ago. When her husband, Lee, retired four years ago from his job with U.S. Special Operations Command at MacDill Air Force Base, Riverview promised peace and quiet.

Sown in the boom years between 2001 and 2005, the area of Big-Bend Road and U.S. 301 has begun to bustle with sprawl. About 20 subdivisions, totalling about 21,000 homes, have either been built or are planned.

Road woes

The stretch of U.S. 301 between Gibsonton Drive and Big Bend Road earned a failing grade in the county planners' 2006 road report card. This means that the number of cars that travel the road each day is substantially higher than the number it was designed to carry, resulting in gridlock.

"If you're not out there by 6:30, you're not going because it's bumper to bumper for as far as you can see," Dunlap said of her husband's former northbound morning commute.

Traffic and overcrowding come with Riverview's rapid growth, but plans are under way to relieve some of U.S. 301's congestion. The Florida Department of Transportation, Hillsborough County, and more than two dozen developers will pay to widen the highway from two lanes to six.

The stretch from Gibsonton Drive to County Road 672 will cost $107 million, about one-third of which will be paid by developers. The remaining money will come from a second wave of private funds as well as the state and county. The second phase of the project, from County Road 672 to State Road 674 will cost an additional $48 million, and efforts are under way to obtain additional private and state funding for that portion.

The deal, unprecedented in the state, allowed FDOT to undertake a project that, without private investment, would have taken 20 years to happen, said Ned Baier, manager of the Hillsborough County Transportation Division.

"This was a cooperative partnership between [FDOT], county government and private development to finance infrastructure before development occurs," he said. "It's the way growth management is supposed to work."

But for those suffering in traffic on U.S. 301 now, relief won't come until construction ends sometime in 2010, according to an FDOT report.

In the meantime, people may continue streaming into the area's new developments. The reason: a quirk in the development rules which gives builders three years after the after the start of home construction to finish road expansions and other required items.

For now, a housing slowdown may be the area's best hope for traffic relief.

"The market is cooling, and it's very possible that there will be less home construction on that corridor than was earlier anticipated," Baier said.

In other words, it won't get better but it might not get worse.

One upside is that the changes -- new traffic lights, street lamps, turn lanes, a sidewalk, and on- and off-street bike paths -- should make the road much safer, Baier said. From 2001 to 2004, there were 414 crashes, leading to 61 injuries and 9 deaths, county figures show. The improvements should reduce those numbers significantly, he added.

Ron Proulx, who helped broker the U.S. 301 deal as former president of the Riverview Chamber of Commerce, takes a stoic attitude toward the traffic he'll have to endure until the widening finishes.

"We got what we wanted, and now we have to suffer through the change," he said.

Still, he added, people buying homes are hardly being hoodwinked about the traffic and development situation in Riverview; most people come knowing they will have to deal with headaches for the next few years.

"If you do your homework, you buy a house, you know what development is going to be happening," Proulx said. "If it occurs you shouldn't complain about it."

No cohesive community

A more vexing issue is the isolation of modern housing developments. For decades planners have argued that separate, walled subdivisions make it nearly impossible to form a cohesive community.

"Riverview will never be the same because it's not rural," Dunlap said. "It's cookie-cutter like everywhere else."

A 2004 Community Plan for Riverview done by the county Planning Commission noted several problems caused by undirected growth. The report's prediction: Without changes to current plans, Riverview "will have a greater number of smaller lots and disconnected subdivisions that focus inward with little regard for how they relate to surrounding areas."

And some say the Community Plan does little to force developers to address the consequences of sprawl. Its primary suggestion -- creating "town centers" for shopping and recreation -- requires builders to diverge from more profitable housing-only developments.

In fact, Baier, the county transportation planner, said that several of the larger new developments allow for commercial and office space.

Yet the shopping space will likely sit empty for several years until the new residents who can support new businesses arrive.

County planner Elaine Lund concedes that slowing the spread of residential developments is difficult.

Instead, she said, planners and residents need to accept the realities of sprawl and learn to work with it.

"It's not necessarily a bad thing," Lund said. "A lot of the communities that begin as what we think of as sprawl end up as their own communities."

Cashing in, moving out

Many landowners on U.S. 301 have seen their property values--and taxes--skyrocket.

Pastures surrounded U.S. 301 and Symmes Road when Joe Graves bought a 50-foot-wide plot for $4,000 in 1979.

He opened a farm stand called Basket Produce. Over the next two decades, he picked up three more 50-foot parcels.

Now, the land Graves accumulated for a total of $87,000 over 20 years is worth at least $557,459, according to county property records. Graves said real estate agents have offered to list it for as much as $1.5 million.

Graves, 67, paused from selling pumpkins, to reflect on the changing landscape. Since the subdivisions started coming in about five years ago, business has more than doubled, he said.

Five years ago, he said, livestock caused more traffic than cars.

"Sometimes cows would get through the fences, and deputies had to get them out of the road," he said. "We've seen that half a dozen times."

For some of the people who moved here when Riverview was rural, the high property values and development squeeze are convincing them to sell their land and move somewhere else.

Graves said he isn't bothered too much by the change in Riverview's landscape-he plans to retire in Missouri, where he and his wife grew up, but will wait until the U.S. 301 widening is completed to get the most value for his land.

"It's our livelihood right now, but I could live with a million and a half," he said.

And while Dunlap still bemoans the changes in Riverview's landscape, she admits her property is worth much more than it once was-about $625,000, compared to the $152,500 she paid in 1988.

"The value of my property is phenomenal, so what can I say? We have done very well," she said.

Still, Dunlap and her husband have decided to stick it out, because he has a medical condition and his doctors are here. Instead of moving, they are renovating their house and being very choosy about when they drive.

"That's why I don't do breakfast meetings," she said.

Michael A. Mohammed can be reached at mmohammed@sptimes.com or (813) 226-3404.

By the Numbers

Traffic on U.S. 301 2005 report

Each year, Hillsborough County assesses traffic volumes on its larger roads. Roads are rated based on the relationship between their capacity - how many cars they are designed to handle in a day - and the actual amount of traffic. Ratings range from A, or "free flow" to F, "forced or breakdown flow."

Current daily Current daily

Area capacity traffic Grade

Bloomingdale Ave. to Gibsonton Drive 50,000 vehicles 40,600 D

Gibsonton Drive to Big Bend Road 16,400 21,900 F

Big Bend Road to State Road 674 13,100 13,800 D

Projected capacity on U.S. 301

After widening to six lanes ends in 2010

Projected daily

Area capacity Grade

Gibsonton Drive to Symmes Road 48,520 vehicles C

Symmes Road to Big Bend Road 43,064 B

Big Bend Road to Apollo Beach Blvd. Extension 46,147 B

Apollo Beach Blvd. Extension to State Road 674 37,267 B

By the Numbers

Each year, Hillsborough County assesses traffic volumes on its larger roads. Roads are rated based on the relationship between their capacity -- how many cars they are designed to handle in a day -- and the actual amount of traffic. Ratings range from A, or "free flow" to F, "forced or breakdown flow."

TRAFFIC ON U.S. 301, 2005 report

Bloomingdale Avenue to Gibsonton Drive

Current Daily Capacity: 50,000 vehicles

Current Daily Traffic: 40,600

Grade: D

Gibsonton Drive to Big Bend Road:

Daily Capacity: 16,400

Daily Traffic: 21,900

Grade: F

Big Bend Road to State Road 674

Daily Capacity: 13,100

Daily Traffic: 13,800

Grade: D

[Last modified November 2, 2006, 08:45:57]