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Letter to the editor

Pridgen lines up 'green' support

Some environmentalists support La Entrada, on the old Sod Farm. Others say it's about a different green.

By PAUL SWIDER, Times Staff Writer
Published November 25, 2007

Call it a green-on-green dispute.

Grady Pridgen has support from several environmental organizations for increased density on his La Entrada development.

But not all greens see it the same way.

"I don't know what their rationale is," said environmentalist Jan Allyn, referring to groups like Tampa Bay Watch, the Pinellas Living Green Expo, the Florida Green Building Coalition and even Suncoast Sierra, of which she is a member. "It seems it's more of a gambit for him to get approval than a true philosophy."

Pridgen will take a fistful of support letters before Pinellas County commissioners Tuesday to try to get them to overturn the county's 3-year-old ruling that limits residential development on the 133 acres to less than 1,000 units.

Pridgen wants as many as 3,300 units but will settle for 2,495 to go along with retail, office and manufacturing on the old Sod Farm tucked along Interstate 275 south of 118th Avenue N.

"We're trying to make a model for the state," Pridgen said of what he says will be the nation's first carbon-neutral community with renewable energy use, mass transit, green roofs and porous pavement. "It doesn't make sense at lesser density."

The project is a hot topic of discussion among environmentalists. Some were skeptical of Pridgen but were swayed after seeing his presentation of a walkable, mixed-use development tying 10,000 to 20,000 jobs to workforce housing.

"He's quite impressive with his green knowledge, almost encyclopedic," said Cathy Harrelson, who was Sierra's liaison with Pridgen on the project. "This is a step forward, not the same old model."

County commissioners turned down the same request in 2004 because they feared that putting that many housing units near the county's landfill would eventually generate complaints that would limit its use. Pridgen says the industrial buildings he has built already, including ValPak's new headquarters, form a sufficient barrier, but county staffers say residential development is a threat to the greater population's waste-disposal needs.

Harrelson said planning for a landfill is backward thinking; the county should be thinking about recycling. She said supporting a major development seems "counterintuitive" for Sierra but La Entrada is the smart way to accommodate growth that will come anyway.

The project already has had its share of controversy beyond the density issue. In early 2006, then-state Rep. Frank Farkas tried to shepherd a bill through the Legislature that would have exempted the project from paying for traffic impacts. Farkas eventually dropped the plan.

Pridgen says traffic issues don't apply in this case because the work-live-play aspect of this development would actually reduce traffic in an area now congested by commuters who live elsewhere.

People like Allyn aren't buying it. She said taxpayers would end up footing the bill for infrastructure and even for lawsuits La Entrada residents would eventually file over the landfill. Pridgen has promised to include reference to the landfill in all deeds so buyers would be on notice.

Pridgen said people are already living closer to the landfill than his project, and they don't complain because what goes in is not foul-smelling garbage but ash from the waste-to-energy plant. He says it's odd to mix environmental arguments with the politics of possible neighbors' complaints.

Harrelson said Sierra's executive committee debated long and hard before endorsing the Pridgen plan. She said the upshot of discussions was that on the whole, this kind of development sets the trend.

"We can't just stand by the road with a protest sign," she said. "We need to work with developers."

But Allyn said it's all about money. She said if Pridgen were really green, he wouldn't have started the project by mowing down every living thing on the site.

Pridgen said that if all he wanted was profit, he could have had that years ago. After buying the land in 2002, he said he had offers from big-box retailers and could easily have cashed in with a power-center shopping complex.

"This is not about money," he said. "This is more about making a green development model work."

Paul Swider can be reached at pswider@sptimes.com or 892-2271.

By the numbers

La Entrada

133 acres

1.15 million square feet of manufacturing

1.3 million square feet of retail space

5.9 million square feet of office space

990-2,495 residential housing units (condos and apartments)

[Last modified November 24, 2007, 20:19:22]