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Developer gets green light on long-delayed plan

By DAN DEWITT
Published January 11, 2007

BROOKSVILLE - Gary Schraut has received permission to build the subdivision he first proposed nearly a year ago, a 184-lot "rural cluster" development on hay fields and woods in northern Hernando County.

Only one commissioner, Diane Rowden, objected to the plan, but she objected strongly, saying the clusters are just another name for placing dense development in the countryside.

"I think this opens up rural areas to urban sprawl," she said. "It's going to put us in a position where it will be very hard to deny proposals on other properties."

The County Commission had earlier approved adding a policy to the comprehensive plan allowing such developments in rural areas; the commission had also approved a cluster for 184 acres on County Road 491 that Schraut owns with a group of investors.

On Wednesday, it approved a comprehensive plan change to allow clustered development on an adjacent 251-acre parcel, which Schraut said will allow him to do what the new policy intends: conserve land.

Last year, he proposed the clusters as an alternative to the 10-acre parcels typically allowed in rural areas. The new policy allows denser development: For example he may now create 184 lots on his 435 acres, rather than 43. But each lot may cover only 1 acre, leaving about half the property undisturbed.

Having 435 acres to work with rather than 184, Schraut said, he will be able to move the houses farther back from the highway and preserve more than half the woods on the north side of the property that abuts the Citrus Tract of the Withlacoochee State Forest.

The state Department of Community Affairs, which reviews changes to local comprehensive plans, had earlier offered a long list of objections to the county's approval of the rural clusters. These were answered, in part, by changing the standards that would allow properties to qualify.

Answering Rowden's concerns that this pattern will spread, Schraut said after the meeting that he did not know of any other property in the county that meets the revised criteria for rural clusters.

* * *

In an unrelated action, the commission approved a 44-lot subdivision just east of Silverthorn, but without the access to the subdivision by golf cart that the developers had sought.

Don Lacey of Coastal Engineering Associates in Brooksville assured the commission this access would be minimal - a 15-foot-wide lane for "golf carts, not cars, and only for residents who are members of the Silverthorn golf course."

Residents didn't see it that way, calling the proposed cart path an "intrusion" and a "security breech."

"A 15-foot-wide cart path - that's a street," said one Silverthorn resident, Sandy Potter. She and other residents worried that the 40 acre property to the south would also be developed, meaning another subdivision would eventually have access to their community.

Lacey said after the meeting that the developer, Silverthorn Hills LLC, would continue with plans to build the project. The commission's action, however, made selling golf course memberships more difficult because residents of the new project will have to drive north on Jumper Loop and the south on Barclay Avenue to reach the course.

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

[Last modified January 10, 2007, 20:25:40]