DADE CITY – The Pasco County Planning Commission discussed a rezoning Nov. 7 that would allow the development of the Tall Timbers project in the Connected City.
But members weren’t ready to make a recommendation to county commissioners, opting to discuss the proposal more at their Dec. 12. meeting.
Xtreme Team 41 LLC in Tampa wants to develop 380 multi-family dwelling units consisting of front-loaded and rear-loaded townhomes and vertically mixed-use apartments on 38 acres on the north side of Tyndall Road.
The applicant also wants to designate 180,000 square feet for non-residential uses, such as offices and associated infrastructure.
Xtreme Team 41 is seeking to rezone the property from an Agricultural District to a Connected City Master Planned Unit Development District.
The Connected City is a new community under development in a special planning area generally located between Wesley Chapel and San Antonio, bordered by State Road 52 on the north, Overpass Road on the south, Interstate 75 on the west and Curley Road on the east.
Neighbors expressed concerns about flooding in the area that Xtreme Team 41 wants to develop.
Michael Pultorak, who lives nearby on Kenton Road, urged the planning commission to not recommend approval because he believes his home would be flooded if Tall Timbers was developed.
Nancy Hazelwood, who lives in rural Dade City, said she thought it might be “prudent at this time to put some applications on hold until we figure out where that flooding would go.”
Rodrigo Halveston, who lives on the south side of Dade City, said it seemed to him that building is being done on top of places that are used to drain water out “and you don’t think there’s any correlation.”
The other reason for the delay was that the applicant might not be able to accomplish objectives it had negotiated with Pasco County’s Department of Planning, Development and Economic Growth prior to the Nov. 7 hearing.
The applicant submitted a binding concept plan that indicates it wants a significant amount of the development to occur in the northwest and southwest corners of the property.
Planning commission member Jon Moody said it appeared to him that between 20% and 30% of the property are wetlands and that the majority of those wetlands are in the northwest and southwest corners of the property. It was also noted that floodplains are located in those areas.
Planning commission members also noted that the master plan the applicant had submitted with its rezoning request didn’t show what would happen to the wetlands if they were dredged or filled in so development could occur where they had once been located.
Florida’s Department of Environmental Protection requires permits to be granted by either that department or the Southwest Florida Water Management District to allow either the dredging or filling in of wetlands and other surface waters, according to its website.
“I’m not thinking someone’s going to be able to get a permit to blitz all of these wetlands,” Moody said.
Moody added that he was hesitant to grant an entitlement for something that may not actually be achieved.
Moody then asked why the non-residential uses and the vertical mixed-use apartments couldn’t be developed instead on an uplands portion of the property.
Chief Assistant County Attorney David Goldstein advised that moving the buildings elsewhere on the property would result in a substantive change in the binding concept plan. William Vermillion, a county planner, agreed that would be true.
This would cause the applicant to have to come back to the planning commission with a different plan, according to Vermillion.
Jamie Girardi, vice chairman of the planning commission, said there wasn’t anything written in the plan submitted to them on Nov. 7 “to stop this from a townhome project coming in, building out the townhomes, and then trying to negotiate the build out of the more difficult property.”
Planning commission members suggested county staff and the applicant work together to see if a more practicable application could be presented at the Dec. 12 meeting.
In other business on Nov. 7, the planning commission recommended county commissioners approve a proposed development agreement for the Watergrass MPUD. Changes in the development agreement, which are being requested by CKB Development LLC, include the donation of a 2.142-acre site to Pasco County for the construction of a library and the reduction of commercial/retail entitlements from 123,511 square feet to 100,000 square feet in order to add 200 age-restricted multi-family apartment units as a permitted use.
This item is the first amendment to a development agreement that was originally established and approved by commissioners on June 4, 2019.
Commissioners are scheduled to consider this agreement during their Dec. 10 meeting in New Port Richey.
