Northpinellas: Oldsmar deftly dodges conflict on apartments

When a developers' controversial proposal to build apartments for low- and moderate-income people came before the Oldsmar City Council last week, the hearing promised to be a fiasco.

But that's not what happened.

Instead, everyone involved was careful to behave in an appropriate manner, even though the crowd was large and emotions were high.

And the city, with a pretty slick maneuver, managed to dodge an immediate lawsuit by the developer's attorneys.

Not bad for a night's work.

The Wilson Co. of Tampa wants to build its rental apartment complex on 27 wooded acres off Forest Lakes Boulevard in north Oldsmar. The land is being sold by the Diocese of St. Petersburg.

The proposal outraged residents of the nearby subdivisions along Forest Lakes Boulevard, who had hoped that the acreage would stay wooded, but at most be developed with only a church or religious school. They flooded the city with demands that the project be voted down, arguing that the property is not an appropriate location for apartments and the project would overload schools, roads and city services. They even obtained campaign promises from three people who were candidates in the March city election to oppose the project if they were elected. And they were elected, in no small measure because of the votes of Forest Lakes residents.

Those promises were some of several problems that confronted a nervous-looking City Council when last week's meeting convened. The council was obligated by law to conduct a quasi-judicial, or courtlike, hearing before the vote. In such a hearing, the elected body must make a decision based only on the evidence presented.

But a majority of the five-member City Council -- newly elected members Mayor Jerry Beverland, Marcelo Caruso and Don Bohr -- had indicated long before the hearing that they were opposed to the project. And the Wilson Co.'s attorney was contending that his client couldn't obtain a fair hearing before such a biased group.

If the council voted no, it was risking a lawsuit with potentially enormous damages. The city staff already had informed the council that the apartment project met zoning and land-use requirements.

Yet on the hearing night, opponents of the project turned out en masse, expecting their elected representatives to vote no. It was standing room only in the stuffy council chambers and dozens more people stood outside in a City Hall parking lot listening to the meeting through a loudspeaker system. The pressure was on.

The City Council wisely allowed its attorney, Tom Trask, to guide it step by step through the quasi-judicial hearing process. Trask did a good job of making sure that his council members stayed out of trouble.

The opponents of the project, organized as the Oldsmar Citizen's Re-zoning Committee, did an admirable amount of research on the issues and presented a focused and professional case before the council. Residents who spoke against the project were measured in their remarks, and there were none of the catcalls and outrageous accusations that sometimes mar such exercises in democracy.

The council solved its problems on that night by not giving anyone what they wanted.

The vote was 3-2 in favor of the apartment project after Bohr did what had to be done and voted with the other two council members, David Tilki and Brian Michaels.

That seemed like a victory for the Wilson Co., but it wasn't. The city staff had provided the council a way out, recommending the council approve the project, but with a condition: Before the company could build, it had to give the city a certain amount of upland from its site to add to dedicated parkland the city owns to the north. The developer can't donate the upland from the site and still have enough left to build its project.

Whether the Wilson Co. will find a way to provide the demanded parkland and build the much-needed affordable housing or eventually will sue, the city bought itself some time and, on that night, some credibility for controlling a messy situation.

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