Analysis by Joel Provenzano
Over the previous a number of months (and for years earlier than that), we’ve written rather a lot about Pasco County’s so-called “Linked Metropolis,” a “particular land use plan” established the State of Florida in 2015 that already is rising the dimensions of the Wesley Chapel space by 1000’s of residences and thousands and thousands of sq. toes of business makes use of.
However, not solely is the Linked Metropolis not alone in Pasco in having a particular land use plan, there may be one other such plan — first established in 2008, and carried out by Pasco in 2009, or six years earlier than the state helped Pasco create the Linked Metropolis.
This particular land use plan is named The Villages of Pasadena Hills (VOPH), however most Wesley Chapel residents know little or no (if something) about this big, 20,000+-acre (see high map on this web page) land use plan that features 13 deliberate villages designated by letters A-M (map under).
“Pasadena Hills” is definitely its personal “Census Designated Place” — with a 2010 inhabitants of greater than 7,000 individuals — a few of whom are situated in Wesley Chapel.
The Wesley Chapel residents in that quantity reside primarily presently within the 1,162 residences within the Watergrass neighborhood north and south of Overpass Rd. and east of Curley Rd., but in addition within the smaller Oak Creek neighborhood, which is simply south of Watergrass on the Wesley Chapel (west) broad of Handcart Rd.
However, plenty of these present VOPH residents reside east of Handcart Rd. in Zephyrhills, together with within the communities of Stonebridge, Hidden Creek and Silverado. The northern boundary of VOPH additionally touches S.R. 52 and features a portion of San Antonio and extends to south of the included city of St. Leo.
The one neighborhood in VOPH that presently has houses being constructed is Vida’s Method, which we first informed you about a number of months in the past. This Pulte Properties neighborhood presently has its 305-home Section 1 in growth, with roughly 300 extra in Section 2, in VOPH Villages L&M (close to the underside of the underside map, proper), however there may be much more to return.
However, The place?
Among the many deliberate communities coming quickly to VOPH are two Lennar developments in Village F, one referred to as Twinflowers, with 129 single-family (SF) houses and 60 townhomes, and the opposite referred to as Acacia Fields, with 204 SF houses. Each of those new subdivisions are situated off the prevailing Tyndall Rd., which is within the VOPH plan to be expanded and linked from Curley Rd. on the west aspect and east to Handcart Rd.
Additionally on the point of construct in Village F is Magnolia Island by Properties by WestBay, on the north aspect of Kiefer Rd., which is also deliberate to increase from Curley Rd. to Handcart Rd. Magnolia Island is deliberate to incorporate 269 SF and 120 townhomes.
Two extra communities are on the point of construct in VOPH. One is Chapel Manor by KB Properties, which can be 146 SF houses situated east of Handcart Rd. in Village G, which can have Zephyrhills addresses.
Additionally to be situated in unincorporated Zephyrhills can be Pasadena Ridge, by Properties by WestBay, which can construct one other 579 SF houses in Villages G&H.
In all, that makes 2,112 house websites to be added in VOPH within the close to future and all of those new communities — besides Section 1 of Vida’s Method — had been simply finalized over the summer time. Many extra communities are being proposed and/or are going by the allowing part in VOPH, which has entitlements for 41,987 complete residential items, 2,260,000 sq. ft. of business entitlements and 500,000 sq. ft. of workplace entitlements. Amongst these extra developments are:
Harvest Hills South, which is situated in Village H, is proposed to incorporate round 300 houses, each SF and townhomes, close to Prospect and Handcart Rds.
Depue East MPUD, situated in Village L, is deliberate for 931 acres and will embody as much as 1,700 single-family houses, 300 townhomes, 300 flats, and 20,000 sq. ft. of business house.
There is also an as-yet-unnamed MPUD proposed for Villages J, Okay, & G, involving 614 residential items, together with 175 townhomes and SF houses, situated between Kiefer Rd. and Overpass Rd., west of Handcart Rd.
There additionally was a rezoning final 12 months in Village B, with plans for 796 dwelling items and 75,000 sq. toes of non-residential use to be developed on 101 acres of property, however we had no additional phrase on when this presumably neighborhood would possibly start constructing.
We weren’t in a position to get affirmation of all of those deliberate developments from District 1 Pasco County Commissioner Ron Oakley, whose district consists of all of VOPH, so we will’t say for certain that are solely proposed and that are for sure shifting ahead.
The entire potential residential and business developments are anticipated to be divided up amongst all 13 villages — that are themselves divided into 4 “Village Kind” classes, as follows:
Kind 1 — Villages D&G — With 9,516 complete residential unit entitlements and 1,320,000 sq. ft. of business and workplace entitlements between them, the Kind 1 villages are the “most city” of the villages.
Kind 2A — Villages A,C,I&J — With 11,030 complete residential unit entitlements and 960,000 sq. ft. of business and workplace entitlements between them, the Kind 2A villages include the entire remaining workplace and far of the remaining business entitlements not included within the Kind 1 villages.
Kind 2B — Villages B,F,H,L&M — With 17,621 residential unit entitlements and 400,000 sq. ft. of business entitlements between them, the Kind 2B villages include a lot of the remaining business entitlements not included within the Kind 1 and Kind 2A villages.
Kind 3 — Villages E&Okay — With 3,820 residential unit entitlements and 80,000 sq. ft. of business entitlements between them, the Kind 3 villages solely include “neighborhood business” entitlements.
It’s additionally necessary to notice that roughly 1/3 of VOPH (7,000+ acres) is to be retained and designated as a “Countryside Space,” which is land that can be required to stay rural in character, and can’t be redeveloped in any substantial manner. This “Countryside” space is indicated by the purple slashes on the underside map on pg. 6 that reach from the jap finish of Village I north to the east aspect of Village A, all in unincorporated Zephyrhills. However once more, that is the plan. It stays to be seen if Pasco will enable the plan to be altered.
However, Can It All Work?
In case you learn (as I’ve) all the 50-page doc serving because the “blueprint” for the event of VOPH, it’s clear that the intent of the state and county when this particular land use plan was established was to create one thing higher than the everyday Pasco County neighborhood — one with a number of modes of transportation, walkability and many parks and inexperienced areas, together with a deliberate 140+-acre “Superpark” that, because it seems (as we reported in a earlier subject) most likely isn’t going to finish up as a serious park web site, as a result of points with the property put aside for it.
In line with that doc, the objective of the Pasadena Hills Space Plan is to “Set up a long-term imaginative and prescient for the way forward for Pasco County that can improve the livability of the Pasadena Hills space and that can combine Future Land Use plans and insurance policies with a grasp transportation community” in a fashion that can present:
• A “good development” method to accommodate extra development and new growth in a sustainable kind.
• Lengthy-term mobility.
• A logical extension of city makes use of that efficiently transitions to present patterns of rural growth.
• The capital building of companies and services to serve the brand new land use kind.
The doc additionally talks in regards to the “Planning Framework” that Pasco is meant to make use of “to create a planning framework and implementation technique that can improve the livability of Pasco County and protect its pure, cultural, and bodily assets.
Among the many planning rules described within the plan are:
• Plan for the logical extension of city growth in a extra sustainable kind.
• Present for a wide range of land makes use of and life to assist residents of various ages, incomes, and household sizes, together with housing that’s reasonably priced to residents of Pasco County.
• Cut back vehicle journeys and journey lengths.
• Create effectivity in planning and provision of infrastructure.
• Allocate growth prices appropriately.
• Protect and defend present rural enclaves.
• Protect and defend areas that exhibit present patterns of rural growth alongside Fort King Street.
• Protect environmental techniques and purposeful open areas. That every one sounds nice on paper, however the concern right here, because it all the time appears to be in Pasco County, is that the individuals who personal the land — with most of the households of the property homeowners having owned their land for many years — can be incentivized, whether or not by the county, builders or (often) each, to desert the very clear rules set out within the VOPH blueprint as a way to maximize profitability for the property homeowners and tax base for the county.
Contemplating simply how rural the overwhelming majority of the property in VOPH presently is, it’s form of exhausting to think about any kind of “City Core” wherever in these 1000’s of acres, a lot much less one which can be served by an precise working roadway community — particularly based mostly on how overrun with site visitors the roadways serving a lot of the present master-planned communities all through the county appear to be.
Within the 2065 Future Transportation Map proven above, the roadways in orange — which embody Curley Rd., Overpass Rd., U.S. Hwy. 301 and most of Clinton Ave./S.R. 52 are all deliberate to be expanded to 6 lanes. The roadways in blue — together with New River Blvd., Kiefer Rd., what now we have been calling the Zephyrhills Bypass (which presently ends on the jap finish of the Chapel Commons neighborhood), Handcart Rd. and the eastward extension of Eiland Blvd. (from east of Handcart Rd.) are all deliberate to be four-laned. And, the entire roadways proven in purple on this map — a few of which exist already in some kind whereas others don’t in any respect but — are all deliberate as two-lane roadways criss-crossing VOPH.
Talking of these enhancements, remaining plans had been lately accomplished by the county to increase Handcart Rd north from the place it presently ends at Prospect Rd, via Villages C & D, to attach as much as SR 52. This extension will function a major spine for the proposed neighborhood of Harvest Hills.
After all, all of those enhancements are deliberate by 2065 — 40 years from now — and whereas most of the deliberate two-lane roadways are prone to be developer-built roads, now we have no manner of figuring out how quickly any of those enhancements can be in place.
All these of you who reside in Epperson, Watergrass, Bridgewater, Chapel Pines, Chapel Crossings, and so forth., or have children attending any of the colleges alongside Curley Rd. or on Wells Rd. know is that the site visitors on Curley Rd. and S.R. 54 already is brutal and isn’t prone to get higher anytime quickly.
And, talking of faculties, whereas Metro Growth informed us for our earlier story that the Kirkland Ranch Okay-8 Faculty, the Kirkland Ranch Academy of Innovation highschool and the Innovation Preparatory Academy Okay-8 college are all situated simply contained in the border of the Linked Metropolis, all of them look like in VOPH, as is Watergrass Elementary (in addition to the longer term Pasco Public Library in Watergrass.
And, though the VOPH “particular land use plan” requires as many as seven college websites inside the VOPH boundaries — and we’re assuming the 4 beforehand talked about faculties are a part of that complete, for the reason that pan was initially authorised 16 years in the past — just one extra college web site has to this point been proposed in VOPH.
That proposed college, which was solely added to the Pasco Faculty District’s plan in June of this 12 months, is on the very northern tip of Village B, at S.R. 52 in San Antonio. Whether or not that faculty can be an elementary, center or highschool or a Okay-8 college has not but been decided.
To be continued.
