The Pasco County Commission wants the community to have another chance to hear about proposed changes at Saddlebrook Resort, in Wesley Chapel, and to have the opportunity to weigh in on them.
The county board voted to continue the request to the public hearings portion of its Feb. 7 meeting, in Dade City.
In the interim, though, it directed its staff to arrange for the issue to go before the Pasco County Planning Commission for another hearing on Jan. 5, before returning to the county board in February for a vote on the request.
Both meetings will begin at 1:30 p.m., and be held in the board chambers at the Historic Pasco County Courthouse, at 37918 Meridian Ave., in downtown Dade City.
Jack Mariano, the newly elected chairman of the Pasco County Commission, urged his colleagues to send the issue to the planning board for a hearing, to ensure that the community has an opportunity to hear the proposed plans and to voice any concerns.
The applicant did hold community meetings within Saddlebrook, but those were organized by individual homeowner associations, said Barbara Wilhite, the applicant’s attorney.
Mariano said he wants anyone who is interested to be able to hear the same presentation and he wants that to happen before it reaches the board for a decision.
Based on documents in the planning board’s Sept. 22 agenda packet, the request calls for amending the county’s future land use map on about 420.5 acres on a site that is south of State Road 54, east of Service Road.
Saddlebrook has an existing master-planned unit development (MPUD), which has existing entitlements, development and infrastructure.
But a substantial modification has been requested to add acreage to the existing MPUD and to convert one existing golf course and the driving range into commercial/retail, multifamily, single-family, dorm rooms, clubhouse and restaurant uses, according to documents in the planning board’s Sept. 22 agenda packet.
Saddlebrook Resort includes a hotel, spa, tennis and golf complex that opened in 1981 and is home to Saddlebrook Tennis Academy, Saddlebrook Golf Academy, Saddlebrook Preparatory School and two 18-hole, Arnold-Palmer designed golf courses.
Saddlebrook currently contains a number of different uses including commercial/office, multi-family, single-family, recreational and hotel/convention center uses.
The proposed use calls for converting the area that is the golf driving range into the town center for Saddlebrook, the background materials say.
The request must gain approvals from the county board, to clear the way for the proposed project.
At the initial planning board meeting, the request had been included on the consent agenda — meaning it could be approved without discussion, but planning board member Jon Moody pulled the item for discussion.
Moody doesn’t believe that large-scale projects should be included on the consent agenda.
He also expressed concerns about the county’s public notice requirements for such requests.
“My particular concern in Saddlebrook is that a great number of the property owners, adjacent to the golf course, to which this comp plan amendment applies, live out of state, many of them live out of country, so they didn’t see the sign posted,” Moody said during the planning board meeting.
Mariano said the planning board needs to take up the issue again because “I don’t feel that the planning commission got a good hearing,” he said.
Wilhite said her client had a series of public hearings and has been listening.
“We have been making changes,” she said.
But Mariano said: “The Planning Commission, I feel, needs to hear a complete presentation.”
“I think it should be all at once, everybody hearing the same thing,” he said.
Mariano said he knows that Saddlebrook residents want more communication.
“They feel that their voices weren’t heard from the get-go,” Mariano said.
Wilhite responded: “We have been making changes. We have been listening,” she said. “I’m very confident that the things that my client is doing, that we’ll have a lot of buy-in, actually, as we go forward.”
Published December 14, 2022
