Some say community plan gutted

County Commissioners ignored Lutz and Keystone's wishes when they took development restrictions out of blueprints for those areas' futures, civic officials say.

By BILL COATS

© St. Petersburg Times, published May 14, 2000

Community plans for Lutz and Keystone have been endorsed by the Hillsborough County Commission, capping 18 months of community meetings.

Yet last week's 5-2 vote left civic leaders outraged. Their complaint: In tentatively approving the plans, commissioners removed new limits on commercial development. Several expressed fear of property-rights lawsuits.

Steve Morris, president of Keystone Civic Association, called it "a travesty."

"It became painfully clear that the development industry is controlling Hillsborough County and the county commissioners are merely shills to do the developers' work," Morris said afterward.

His Lutz counterpart, Denise Layne, was reduced to tears.

"You are dooming us to rezonings," she told the commission.

Commissioners showed their hands early to a packed house Wednesday night. That sparked a fractious public hearing, peppered with boos, cheers and angry exchanges between speakers and commissioners.

The two community plans included a wide range of rules to preserve the rural characteristics of the two areas as they become surrounded by suburbs. Before becoming law, the plans must be screened by Florida's growth-management agency, the Department of Community Affairs, then approved again by the County Commission.

Community steering committees worked throughout last year to develop the plans, and their broadest provisions sailed through community meetings and previous public hearings. Among other restrictions, they would block any widening of Gunn Highway and prohibit new subdivisions with masonry walls. On new lakefront lots, a buffer of native plants would have to be preserved.

But those proposals were scarcely discussed during a 41/2-hour hearing on the plans. Instead, the hot topic was new restrictions on commercial development.

Now, land near any major intersection in unincorporated Hillsborough can be considered for commercial rezonings. But under the Lutz community plan, that eligibility would have ended, except along stretches of U.S. 41 already near commercial property. In Keystone-Odessa, commercial potential would have been frozen everywhere but Fox's Corner and property already zoned commercial until those sites are built out.

Planners said zonings already are in place for more than 200,000 square feet of unbuilt commercial development in Keystone-Odessa and for more than 300,000 square feet in Lutz. Neither community plan would change any current zonings.

But numerous property owners sent lobbyists to argue for retaining the commercial potential.

Ethel Hammer represented owners of about 30 acres at the southeast corner of U.S. 41 and County Line Road in Lutz. She said the land is ideal for commercial development: It is on a six-lane highway facing commercial property on both Pasco County corners, with Pasco County on the verge of cutting a new east-west road beside it.

Judy James, representing the Builders Association of Greater Tampa, argued that the Keystone restriction would let one commercial developer, by postponing his own buildout, hold up development of any competing businesses.

That even swayed Warren Nelms, a board member of the Keystone Civic Association, who said the language needed rewording.

Lawyer Dan Molony said losing commercial potential from his family land at Van Dyke Road and the Suncoast Parkway "will constitute a taking," a legal term meaning the land would be so devalued that the family would deserve compensation from the county.

The county's staff attorneys assured commissioners that the commercial limits could be defended in court, noting they were a "legislative" decision. That means anyone suing must show that the government vote was so clearly unjust that it is not even "fairly debatable," one of the harshest standards of evidence.

But Commissioner Ronda Storms pointed to a private court reporter sitting in the front of the packed commission chamber.

"She records everything we say," said Storms, who then whispered into her microphone, "So we can get sued."

Storms warned that the county will have "a hundred different landowners come up here with a hundred different lawsuits and a hundred different ways for us to defend it."

Commissioner Jim Norman, whose district contains Lutz and Keystone, said, "I have a problem with property rights when somebody owns property on a six-lane highway and can't even ask to have it rezoned."

Lorraine Duffy, who helped formulate the community plans as planning manager for the county's Planning Commission, said the landowner could ask, but would have been opposed almost automatically by planners.

Such limits on rezonings have applied to all property in Hillsborough since 1989, when the county first adopted its long-range growth plan. For example, a farm may be zoned for one home per five acres but have the potential under the growth plan for rezoning to one home per acre. A rezoning attempt for more homes -- or apartments, stores or offices -- would be flatly opposed by staffers because of the plan limit.

Yet nearly any land is considered eligible for commercial rezoning if it's at the intersection of a major road. That eligibility would have been removed from several intersections in the Lutz and Keystone plans.

When the commissioners balked, they stressed that the legality of the provision should be made "airtight," in Storms' words, then reconsidered next year.

But Commissioner Jan Platt, who supported the new limits, said, "We may never see the commercial (limits) again."

After the Lutz vote, president Gaye Townsend of the environmentalist County Line Coalition said the commission was sanctioning retail projects in areas far from county utility lines.

"They're asking for trouble," she said. "They're going to promote something they don't have the ability to deliver."

Layne predicted a run of rezonings.

"I just feel like I've wasted a year and a half of my life," she said.

Meanwhile, the Keystone debate had begun. Some exchanges were so fiery that Jim Swain of Keystone assured commissioners that they were "good people."

"But good people make bad decisions and you've made a bad decision tonight," Swain said. "You've taken the heart and soul out of the Lutz plan, and I fear you're about to take the heart and soul out of the Keystone plan."

Soon, commissioners endorsed the Keystone plan. But as with Lutz, they removed the commercial limits.

-- Staff writer Jackie Ripley contributed to this report.

Back to North of Tampa

© St. Petersburg Times. All rights reserved.