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Growth in Lutz faces new hurdles
By JACKIE RIPLEY
© St. Petersburg Times, LUTZ -- Developers are warning of higher construction costs. But advocates of growth management are celebrating the end to a fast-track system that streamlined the permitting process for new development in and around Tampa. "It turned statewide sprawl loose at an accelerated pace," said Denise Layne of Lutz, adding that the program -- which expired on June 30 -- also enabled developers to bypass environmental protections. For the past five years the city and county, as well as four other Florida municipalities, were part of the so-called Sustainable Communities Demonstration Project. Created by the state Department of Community Affairs, the program gave local government greater autonomy over land-use issues that included developments of regional impact -- known as DRIs -- and amendments to the comprehensive land-use plan. The goal was to improve quality of life in designated areas that, for the most part, lie within the urban services area. In effect, the designation gave local government parity with state planning agencies in community planning. Opponents, though, say the project was ill-conceived. "New Tampa is a byproduct of sustainable communities, a plan that called for protection of wildlife, is walkable and has limited commercial (development)," said Layne, who is president of the Lutz Civic Association and member of a citizen advisory council helping to rewrite the statute. "It's laughable." Layne, who was instrumental in dismantling the statute, said that she believes in the concept of livable communities, but that any future legislation should include a way of evaluating the outcome. "I wasn't trying to kill the whole thing; it could be an excellent way of managing growth," Layne said. "The statute was not well thought out." Layne said that she hopes the Legislature will revive the concept, but that it will also give planners a chance to put a monitoring system in place. "You can't blueprint all over the state things that don't work," she said. The five-year project grew out of the Governor's Commission for a Sustainable South Florida, which established a strong partnership between state and local agencies to improve the quality of life there. Based on that model, the Legislature expanded the demonstration project in 1996. The hope was that these strengthened partnerships might help restore key ecosystems, achieve a more clean and healthy environment, limit urban sprawl, protect wildlife and natural areas, create quality communities with jobs, and generally advance a more efficient use of land. The Legislature opted not to renew the program after it expired this summer. As a result, since July 1, the Tampa Bay Regional Planning Council and the Department of Community Affairs have had full oversight over comprehensive plan amendments and DRIs. Because everything is again state-controlled, "there will be a longer time between when an application for a comp plan amendment is submitted to when it is approved," said John Healey, Hillsborough County principal planner. That delay could last two or three months, costing projects a sense of continuity. "For a project's owner, or contract purchaser paying for options, the interest is there to get it going as quickly as they can," said Lorraine Duffy, senior planner for the Planning Commission. Under the Sustainable Community designation, "it's fresh in everybody's mind what's going on, there's no big gap in time." And developers warn that long delays translate into higher home prices. "It won't make land and housing any less expensive," said Michael Dady, development manager with Terrabrook, the developer for Westchase. "It adds another layer of bureaucracy" and forces developers to "hire more lawyers who will have to spend more time in the regulatory process."
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