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Catalyst for a county

Four decades ago, two brothers' home-building vision dictated the speed and scope of Hernando's growth.

By MICHAEL KRUSE
Published April 29, 2007

ADVERTISEMENT [Times photo: Danny Ghitis] 2007: Spring Hill Drive shoots out from U.S. 19 in Spring Hill. In contrast to the Spring Hill of 1967, the modern-day community sprawls. [Photo courtesy of Deltona Corp.] Spring Hill in February 1967, two months before the formal opening. A divided Spring Hill Boulevard intersects a two-lane U.S. 19. Spring Hill turns 40 Profile: Joe and Eleanor Burghaze Profile: Tony Mosca Sr. Memories of early days: Plenty of nothing

SPRING HILL - On April 30, 1967, 40 years ago tomorrow, the home-building Mackle brothers and the Hernando County commissioners cut a red ribbon at the corner of two-lane U.S. 19 and just-cut Spring Hill Drive. The county's never been the same.

There is Hernando before Spring Hill.

There is Hernando after Spring Hill.

They are not the same place.

"Completely different worlds, " said Murray Grubbs, who was one of the commissioners there that day and still lives north of Brooksville.

When Spring Hill opened, it had 15, 000 acres and more than 32, 000 lots, and the people started to come because it was warm, sunny and affordable. They pretty much haven't stopped since. The effect of the opening of Spring Hill on Hernando as a whole cannot be overstated: It's changed the county politically, socially, demographically - all in just the last 40 years.

SunTrust/Nature Coast CEO Jim Kimbrough calls Spring Hill "the catalyst that ignited the growth."

"That was it, " said Derrill McAteer, banker, developer and former chairman of the Southwest Florida Water Management District board. "That was the beginning. There's no way you can deny that."

Hernando's population in 1970 was 17, 000. Now it's about 10 times that number.

The sand roads are parkways. The sand hills are strip malls.

Other things have contributed to that change, too, of course - the introduction of air conditioning in the 1950s, the completion of Interstate 75 from Tampa to Macon, Ga., in 1966, the freezes of Christmas 1983 and January 1985 that all but ended the major citrus industry in the county.

Florida's population went up 76 percent from 1970 to 1990. It more than quintupled in the last 50 years of the 20th century. Hernando, many say, was in the "path of progress" anyway, Spring Hill or not, and that's probably true, but this much is certain: The Mackles and their Deltona Corp. determined the shape, the scope and the speed at which the county started to grow.

They had more than 100 sales offices around the world, from New York, Detroit and Chicago to Frankfurt, Germany. They chartered DC-7s to fly down hundreds of Northerners at a time to tour Spring Hill and buy just-built houses on just-platted lots. They spent $1-million a year on marketing, with ads in Reader's Digest, all over in newspapers in the North, especially in the winter, and even in a paper as far away as Bangkok, Thailand.

There was nothing here.

Then there was something.

Then there was more.

The county's population in 1915, after all, was just over 6, 200. In 1950, it was still just under 6, 700. In 1967, the year Spring Hill started, it was 13, 100.

And in 1959, in what is currently considered the "census designated place" of Spring Hill, according to U.S. Census stats, there were 56 structures.

The county had no zoning laws. There was no planning department.

"Hernando County, " said Joe Mason, a longtime attorney in Brooksville, "was a sleepy little community that hadn't had much change in many, many years."

In came the Mackles.

Elliott, Robert and Frank Mackle Jr. had built some 25, 000 homes in Florida starting in the 1930s, and had been featured in Life, Newsweek, Business Week and Fortune. For Spring Hill, they bought 21, 400 acres, 15, 000 of which would be developed, for about $230 an acre.

At the time of the opening, Deltona Corp. had built 5 miles of roads, 15 model homes, an administrative building, a sales office and a water and sewage system and not much more.

In the middle of 1970, according to Kimbrough, he went with then-Hernando State Bank boss Alfred McKethan to lunch with Publix founder George Jenkins at the Holiday Inn across from Weeki Wachee. McKethan and Kimbrough made a pitch to try to get Jenkins to put a Publix near the intersection of 19 and Spring Hill Drive. Jenkins' response, according to Kimbrough: "Y'all are crazy." Publix didn't come to Spring Hill till 1980.

Dave Russell Sr. came in '81 from Jacksonville to see about starting a pool store. He rented an hour of time on a 4-seat Cessna out of the county airport and got up into the air and counted about 300 pools in Spring Hill - and then started counting the holes in the ground that were going to be pools in the yards of houses that weren't quite finished. He kept counting, and counting, and counting, and decided to move here to open his store.

The population was about 20, 000 in 1980 and almost 35, 000 five years later.

It was almost 70, 000 in 2000.

It was up past 85, 000 in 2005, and now, according to some estimates, it's approaching 100, 000.

Spring Hill is now roughly twice the size of Bradenton, Sarasota, Fort Myers and Ocala. It's bigger than Deltona. It's bigger than Daytona Beach. It's almost as big as Clearwater by now.

But back on April 30, 1967, when the Mackles and the county commissioners gathered on that sunny Sunday to cut that red ribbon, it was none of that.

Yet.

"We're right excited, " Spring Hill general manager Gaston Bridges told the Brooksville Sun-Journal.

"You know, " Bridges said, "we're going to have several thousand people living out here before long."

Times researcher Mary Mellstrom contributed to this report. Michael Kruse can be reached at mkruse@ sptimes.com or 352 848-1434.

[Last modified April 28, 2007, 19:23:06]