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Homes at the Preserve at Wilderness Lake, across the street from Land O'Lakes High, will cost from $110,000 to $500,000.
By JAMES THORNER
© St. Petersburg Times, published January 26, 2001
LAND O'LAKES -- A 590-acre ranch east of U.S. 41, once the property of the late judge and state Sen. Paul Revere Kickliter, will become a new subdivision called the Preserve at Wilderness Lake.
The developer is Lindell Properties, owned by St. Petersburg auto dealer Carl Lindell, the same person trying to develop a shopping center at the junction of Dale Mabry Highway and U.S. 41 in Land O'Lakes.
Homes in the 850-unit Preserve will cost between $110,000 for duplexes and $500,000 for top-of-the-line, custom-built houses. Builders will include Westfield Homes, Morrison Homes, Hannah Bartoletta Homes and Southern Crafted Homes.
Amenities held in common will include tennis courts, a swimming pool, gazebos, a clubhouse, a nature center and boating docks.
Ron Weisser, president of Lindell Properties, expects to begin selling lots this year. His market is people who want a house within easy commuting distance of Tampa down the Suncoast Parkway and Interstate 75.
"We plan to be a bedroom community," Weisser said.
The next step is creation of a community development district to pay for the neighborhood's water lines, roads, parks and other infrastructure. A hearing is scheduled for 6:30 p.m. on Feb. 13 in the old courthouse in Dade City.
The Preserve, across the street from Land O'Lakes High School, joins an increasingly cluttered central Pasco housing market.
North of the Lindell property is the Groves, an age-restricted golf-course community, the first of whose 750 homes are under construction.
To the south is 100 acres owned by the developers of Caliente, a proposed 350-home nudist resort that broke ground in November.
Northeast of the Preserve is the 8,000-acre Conner Ranch, earmarked for the biggest Pasco project of all, the 15,177-home Connerton New Town Development.
Weisser said his subdivision can compete in quality with any of his potential competitors. Seventy percent of his lots back up to lakes or conservation land, he said. "We have the most incredible home sites of them all."
The Preserve property is a former cattle ranch and orange grove bought in 1952 by Kickliter, who died in 1994 at the age of 89.
Kickliter's descendants decided to divest themselves of the property in 1999. The first proposed buyer was a Georgia developer with plans to turn the property into a subdivision called Bay Lake.
After the county rezoned the land to suit Bay Lake, Lindell acquired the project last year, upgrading the amenities to create the Preserve.