Curious get look at Connerton

The plan draws little praise, and one activist worries about the environmental impact of the development.

By JAMES THORNER

© St. Petersburg Times, published June 9, 2000

LAND O'LAKES -- Activists, neighbors, ranchers, real estate agents and curiousity seekers crammed the Land O'Lakes Community Center on Thursday night to catch their first detailed glimpse of Connerton New Town development.

But few in the standing-room-only crowd of more than 100 openly praised Connerton, a 30-year plan for the urbanization of a massive chunk in the rural heart of Pasco County.

After a 40-minute introduction to the project led by Doug Conner, whose family owns the 8,000-acre cattle ranch targeted for development, the audience let loose with a string of questions.

Clay Colson, the community activist who calls Connerton ground zero in his fight to combat overdevelopment in Pasco, complained of the threat to the water supply posed by the project's 15,177 homes, three golf courses and 1-million square feet of industry.

Colson said the sandy soil offers no buffer to pesticides and fertilizers seeping underground from the development.

Rhea Law, the attorney for the project, steered Colson to a team of experts the Conner family had assembled in another building at the community center.

"This (land) is no different than the rest of Pasco County," she told Colson. "It's no different than Hernando County."

Other audience members challenged the Conners to sell the land to the Southwest Florida Water Management District for $15-million to $20-million. The agency offered to buy the land, but the Conners rejected the undisclosed price as too low.

The question provoked a burst of applause from the crowd, some wearing the yellow T-shirts of Citizens for Sanity, the group founded by Colson.

"I do believe if the public wants to buy our property, the property owner has the right to get the money, what the property's worth," Conner said.

When challenged further about his refusal to sell to Swiftmud, Conner lost his cool for the first time of the evening.

"I'm not willing to sell my land for dirt cheap," he said angrily from the podium.

The team assembled by the Conners, including the lawyer, development expert Georgianne Ratliff and the project engineer, had earlier in the day attended a meeting of the county's Development Review Committee.

The committee, chaired by county administrator John Gallagher, spent two hours tackling Connerton's proposed development order in preparation for a June 20 hearing before the county commissioners.

Failing to get through the 36-page document, the committee will revisit Connerton next Thursday.

The importance of Connerton, which is proposed as a self-sufficient community with a hospital, a community college campus and several public schools, wasn't lost on Gallagher.

"This is something that is going to live beyond all our careers," Gallagher told his colleagues.

As for the opposition from the public, Conner said he expects more of the same treatment at the county commissioners meeting.

"I very seldom have heard anybody get up to the microphone and say, "That's a good idea. I think they ought to do it,' " he said.

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