The Pasco County Planning Commission has recommended approval of a rezoning to allow more than 1,400 residential units, and nearly 117,000 square feet of commercial and office uses on a site on State Road 52.
Specifically, the rezoning would allow 953 single-family detached units, 119 single-family attached units, 336 multifamily units and 116,882 square feet of commercial/office uses on 493 acres.
The site is within the Central Pasco Employment Village, an area designated by the Pasco County Commission years ago to create a coordinated vision among a group of landowners.
The plan envisions a mixed-use employment village on more than 2,400 acres, located along the south side of State Road 52, roughly between Collier Parkway Extension and Bellamy Brothers Boulevard. The employment village is expected to contain commercial, residential and industrial uses.
Attorney Joel Tew represented Lennar Homes, applicant/developer, and the Swope family entities, which own the land.
Tew reminded the planning board: “You’ll recall that last summer, we completed a plan amendment that updated and modified the CPEV (Central Pasco Employment Village) overall master plan for the entire acreage that has the 20 or so multiple landowners.”
During that plan amendment process, Tew said, his client was strongly encouraged to entertain an entitlement exchange with another property owner.
“We relocated a large quantity of industrial, corporate office entitlements that were in the center of the overall plan, we relocated that to the eastern part, so they would be adjacent to the existing Southworth site, where the Amazon facility was being contemplated.
“So, we have now been able to better concentrate the large employment areas in, say, the eastern third of CPEV, and then we moved the residential to the center.
“That did two things. Obviously, you got the critical mass for the employment that (the Pasco Economic Development Council Inc.) EDC was looking for on the eastern end. It’s closer to Bellamy Brothers Boulevard, where they had existing sewer/water and infrastructure.
“We’re here to now rezone the Swope parcel to memorialize, primarily, the residential entitlements that were traded for, together with this quantity of support commercial/office that’s being retained in that center part.
“We’re doing exactly what we promised you and the board, a year ago, we would do,” Tew said,
“To our knowledge, as of today, we now have no objections from any of the other stakeholders in CPEV,” Tew said.
Achieving that consensus was not easy, given the number of owners involved in CPEV, he said. But he speculated the harmony among owners may stem from the Swope family’s willingness to take considerably less entitlement than the methodology would allow.
He explained that Heidt Design came up with a methodology and a chart for assigning entitlements, based on net developable acreage and the different levels of density or intensity that the master plan assigned to parcels.
Tew told the planning board: “Swope is only asking you to zone about 25% of the multifamily that they would have been entitled to, under that methodology. So, they’re leaving a large number of multifamily units, in the pot.
“They had high density residential on virtually all of their acreage, so they could have taken a lot more,” Tew explained.
The planning board unanimously recommended approval of the rezoning request, which now goes to the Pasco County Commission for final approval.
As an aside, Tew told the planning board that “there’s very high interest in the portion of CPEV that has industrial entitlements. I think we’re going to get a lot of action there,” Tew said.
He also noted that he represents Pasco Town Center, at Interstate 75 and State Road 52, which has modified a pending master-planned unit development to increase entitlements to 4 million square feet.
“The market believes that you have arrived, that Pasco County has arrived on the industrial and office employment jobs,” Tew said.
Requests coming before the planning board for new mixed-use projects and apartment developments along State Road 52 signal the growing interest in the area.
One significant project that plans to set up shop on State Road 52 is Amazon, which intends to build a 517,220-square-foot facility, on a site at State Road 52 and Bellamy Brothers Boulevard.
The $150 million Amazon Robotic Sortation Center (ARSC) is being built at Eagle Industrial Park, a 127-acre property that was identified as part of the Pasco EDC Ready Sites Program. It is expected to employ 500 workers.
Meanwhile, further to the west, the new Angeline mixed-use community — being billed as a wellness-themed community — is planned on thousands of acres, east of the Suncoast Parkway and south of State Road 52.
Within that community, Moffitt Cancer Center plans to have a Pasco campus that will include a massive research and corporate innovation district.
Site entitlements for Moffitt’s project, which encompass 24 million square feet, include plans for a hospital, research and development space, office, manufacturing, laboratories, pharmacies, educational facility/university, hotel, and commercial space.
The multiyear, multiphase project is expected to create 14,500 jobs.
Published May 04, 2022
