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Suncoast Parkway perks buyers' interest
By JEFFREY S. SOLOCHEK © St. Petersburg Times, published March 26, 2001 Slowly but surely, the Suncoast Parkway is beginning to fulfill its promise of bringing added growth to Hernando County. Since the toll road opened Feb. 4, interest and deals have spiked -- especially for residential projects -- real estate agents report. As buyers, commercial land speculators are taking a back seat to residential developers, the experts said, and the calls increasingly come from outside the immediate vicinity. "I get probably 50 percent more calls in the last couple of months than previously," said John Wickert of RE/MAX Advantage Realty in Spring Hill, which lists several properties near the Suncoast interchange at County Line Road. "The expressway made it a quick trip to Tampa and vice versa, and people are coming up here that haven't been here before." Commercial activity, on the other hand, is not as hot. "It's just not a major market. It's not a priority," said Dave Conn, a senior vice president at CB Commercial in Tampa, who represents large retailers, including Target and Staples. "There's no mall, no bull's-eye. It's a growing community, but the numbers aren't so big now that people are focused on it." Indeed, said Buddy Selph, owner of Tommie Dawson Realty in Brooksville, retail requires consumers. And they aren't here in significant numbers yet, he acknowledged. "As we get the next wave of residential development, I think that is going to encourage other commercial activity," Selph said. Selph and others predicted that the housing market will expand in fits and starts during the next two to five years. Restaurants, shops and jobs will follow. The jump-in calls for land now bode well for that busy future, they suggested. Sales at U.S. Home's Heritage Pines, an "active elder" community on the Pasco-Hernando county border near the parkway, have doubled from the same time a year ago, project manager John Mills said. Other conditions have had an impact on activity, Mills said, including a cold winter in the Northeast, good interest rates and the graying of baby boomers. The herding effect that occurs when a large developer settles in an area also could spur the market, he said. A subsidiary of energy giant Duke Power has announced it plans a 1,000-acre, 3,000-home development widely speculated to be at the northeast corner of U.S. 41 and Powell Road. Vacant land sales also have been strong during the first quarter of 2001, said Robert Buckner, owner of Robert A. Buckner & Associates, a Brooksville real estate company. "I'm not going to say that the parkway is the driving force, but I will say people talk about the parkway and ask where it is," Buckner said. "It definitely is a factor." Sales are pending on several lots that drew little attention before the Suncoast was proposed. "I'm negotiating on our single-family listing and our commercial listing" of more than 150 acres each on Anderson Snow Road just south of Spring Hill Drive, said Bruce Erhardt, a senior director of Cushman Wakefield in Tampa. "We're getting some interest in our office-industrial land as well. The opening of the Suncoast has really been the driving force behind all this." People are noticing that the commute to Tampa would be 30 to 45 minutes instead of an hour or longer, he said. That is a big difference, especially considering that homes are cheaper in Hernando than in the counties to the south. Connell McGeehan, a Realtor with Coldwell Banker McGeehan & Associates in Spring Hill, said he has a 20-acre tract on the north side of State Road 50 near the Suncoast Parkway under inspection by a potential buyer. Another 30-acre site near the parkway could close within a month and become residential soon after, Schraut said. "The larger tracts of 10-plus acres, their availability is shrinking rapidly," McGeehan said. New projects stand with incomplete ones, such as Silverthorn, GlenLakes and Seville, a 1,000-home subdivision near the Citrus County border that hasn't taken off yet. If the homes get filled at even one-third the rate of homes in New Tampa near Interstate 75, "it will be unlike anything Hernando has ever seen," said Erhardt, the Tampa seller. Retail probably will follow. Already, some "casual concept" restaurant chains are sniffing around the area, said Selph, the Brooksville real estate agent. Books-A-Million is looking at sites, too, he said. Olive Garden has options on a parcel along U.S. 19, Wickert of RE/MAX said, and Office Depot is dealing for a spot at the Coastal Way shopping center on State Road 50. The Office Depot project has a direct correlation to the parkway, he said. In time, Erhardt said, the parkway will become a retail node as residents in Silverthorn, Pristine Place and other nearby neighborhoods seek to shop closer to home. It could take years, however, before the big retailers take note, Conn said. The sour economy has slowed retail expansion, he noted, and several retailers, including Wal-Mart and Sears, already have at least one store in the market. A mall remains probably a decade away, Conn speculated, and some of the secondary retail stores such as PetSupermarket or Borders bookstores probably will not see the value in opening in the county yet. "The Suncoast opens the door to residential growth, and residential growth is really the key to retail," he said. Len Tria, a former county commissioner who now works for Coastal Engineering Associates in Brooksville, said that despite the activity, it is important to keep things in perspective. A 3-percent growth rate in Hernando County remains smaller than the same rate in larger Pasco County, he said, and Pasco is growing much faster. "We're not going to see a dramatic effect caused by the Suncoast Parkway until maybe five to eight years in the future," Tria predicted.
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