Florida is a destination for tourists worldwide, and Pasco County has worked hard to try and get a piece of the billions of dollars that industry creates each year.
Some residents have been concerned the county is not keeping up — not just in providing attractions to bring tourist money here, but also amenities like hotels for those tourists to stay in.
(Michael Hinman/Staff Photo)
County commissioner Kathryn Starkey invited residents to come out to Seven Oaks Elementary School in Wesley Chapel last week, where she joined members of the county’s staff to talk about everything from new recreational development, to roads, to taxes.
One highlighted project was the new 20-field baseball complex planned for the Wiregrass Ranch area, which could bring in thousands of young baseball players and their families each year. One resident attending the meeting was worried where the hotels, motels, and other short-term stay facilities were.
However, while the county can try and encourage hotel growth in the area, it’s still something totally left up to the private market, said Ed Caum, Pasco’s tourism manager.
“There are certain triggers out there to bring in developers, and that is when your current hotel stock is 72 percent full,” he said. Once finding vacancy starts to become a problem — or it’s projected to become a problem — developers feel more confident to build hotels, and will do just that.
And hotels may be needed soon. Based on how much room tax is collected from the county’s hotels, they are having the best year since 2008, Caum said. At the same time, the average room rate has climbed $6, suggesting demand is starting to outpace supply.
“I talked to two developers that are bringing in hotels,” Caum said. “One is 72 rooms, and another one we just talked about is 75 rooms. We will start to see that carrying on.”
Pasco already has a need for some more hotels, especially when tournaments come in. The upcoming Dick’s Sporting Goods Tournament of Champions lacrosse event will see about 55 percent of hotel rooms go to New Tampa, and out of Pasco.
“That’s about a $3.2 million impact to our area,” Caum said.
Tourism is a big component of Pasco’s future, officials said, and while the county’s niche might not be theme parks like Tampa or Orlando, it could come by way of sports. Besides the planned $70 million baseball complex, Wesley Chapel also is set to get a major ice skating facility that could not only provide a local amenity to residents, but draw in hockey players and other ice-dependent athletes from outside the area.
Yet tourism is not the only way the county is going to grow. More and more people are making Pasco home, and that’s evident by a number of major community project still planned — especially along the State Road 54/56 corridor.
“My new indicator for projects is (home) model centers,” said county planning and development director Richard Gehring. “In the last two months, we have permitted and processed 28 model centers. It gives you an idea of how much demand there is out there for new homes.”
Although the west side of Pasco remains the most populated, it’s also built out, so much of the new growth will spread elsewhere in the county — primarily along State Road 54, Gehring said. In fact, population here is expected to rise from the current 130,000 to more than 300,000 in the next two decades, and be Pasco’s new population center.
“You are going to hear us talk a lot about compact growth and walkable growth,” Gehring said. “There is going to be a lot of discussions about better roads, better transportation, more transit, and walkability.”
Pasco already is struggling with transportation now that nearly 500,000 people reside here. Without appropriate planning, it’s only going to get worse, Gehring said, especially if the county meets its current population projects of 850,000 to 900,000 by 2040.
At the same time, officials want to make sure there are good jobs nearby, and not force residents to travel to neighboring counties to find them.
“That is one of the things that we did on the 54/56 corridor,” Starkey said. “We are incentivizing industry to move into that corridor. We do that by giving a carrot, and those are our mobility fees.”
Starkey and other commissioners have created a model that rewards businesses that build in areas expected to become population centers, by reducing or waiving the fees the county charges to cover costs for roads, water lines and other infrastructure. Much of that infrastructure already exists in areas like the State Road 54/56 corridor, officials said, so such funds won’t be needed as much as they would in, say, the northern part of the county, which is far more rural.
“The engineers in the room will tell you that makes a really big difference for them,” county administrator Michele Baker said.
One of the key ingredients in finding success, however, will come from government leaders, and even residents, taking a broader look at the county, and not just specifically what’s best for their area, said Dennis Esber, the owner of Point to Point Printing in Land O’ Lakes, and a past president of the Central Pasco Chamber of Commerce.
“People forget that we have to worry about the county overall, and not just our area,” he said. “Yes, we want to hear about what’s going on in Land O’ Lakes and Wesley Chapel, but if this whole county doesn’t grow, then nobody is going to grow.”
October 1, 2014
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