Residents to developers: Enough's enough

By JAMES THORNER

© St. Petersburg Times, published February 16, 2000

LAND O'LAKES -- Pasco County: where growth is God, developers are the priesthood and property rights are sacred.

But heresy is eating away at what many once considered a pro-growth consensus in Pasco.

As urbanization increases -- clogging intersections, razing orange groves, overloading schools -- the enemies of development-at-any-cost have mobilized.

Citizens for Sanity, a group formed last summer to protest a 1,200-home development called Oakstead in Land O'Lakes, has expanded that fight into a countywide slow-growth crusade.

The group has gone so far as to challenge sacred writ itself: the county's comprehensive land use plan.

In the southeastern corner of the county, Save Our Springs continues its David-and-Goliath struggle with Perrier.

The group notched its first victory against the Swiss conglomerate last year, when state regulators recommended denying Perrier permission to siphon six times more water from Crystal Springs for its Zephyrhills Spring Water brand.

Peter Gottschalk, a Pasco planning commissioner who opposes development more than his colleagues, said citizens movements are trying to change the definition of property rights in Pasco.

"When we talk about property rights, we have to give equal weight to the rights of the little people whose property will be affected by these projects," Gottschalk said.

It's those sort of statements that leave some developers longing for the relatively low-cost, low-tax, low-hassle Pasco of old.

Illustrative of the change is the case of Don Buck, president of Devco Development Corp., the company behind Oakstead, a proposed 841-acre development west of U.S. 41.

Buck's company is developing the 4,500-home Meadow Pointe neighborhood on Bruce B. Downs Boulevard with scant opposition. Last year Meadow Pointe sold more houses (about 450) than any other development in the Tampa Bay region.

So when Citizens for Sanity lambasted Oakstead, which Buck considered a near-clone of Meadow Pointe, Buck was taken aback. In December, protesters sued to overturn Oakstead's rezoning, which county commissioners approved in September.

For a developer, protesters are always part of the landscape, Buck said. Whether Citizens for Sanity will be a lasting force in anti-development circles remains to be seen, he said.

"The radical groups tend not to last long because people see through their arguments," Buck said. "The more thoughtful groups tend to stay around and influence a county's comprehensive plan."

Citizens for Sanity is also involved in a second legal action, challenging the county's comprehensive plan before a state administrative law judge.

In a similar situation to Buck's are Nick and Peter Geraci, who own about 800 acres south of State Road 54 between Odessa and Land O'Lakes.

In the Geracis' view, protesters' demands that Pasco limit urban sprawl and protect wildlife in development zones threaten their livelihood. So they've intervened on the side of Pasco to defend the comprehensive plan at an April hearing.

The brothers have labored for years to develop a mall at Dale Mabry Highway and Van Dyke Road. Hillsborough County has blocked their plans, and the dispute has moved to federal court.

The Geracis fear a similar skepticism toward development may infect Pasco, making it harder to convert their green fields into greenbacks.

"We feel like Citizens for Sanity are not trained planners," Peter Geraci said. "I feel like Pasco County government is run well.

"The thing that irritates me is I think they filed that lawsuit as a means to harass Pasco County."

But Clay Colson of Citizens for Sanity said the Geracis refuse to grasp the difference between property rights and development rights.

"Development rights are not the same as property rights. The Geracis can use their land as they see fit as long as the local authority approves the usage," Colson said.

"The problem is, they speculated on land and now they think their speculation may not pay off," Colson added. "Sorry about that. That's tough."

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