New Pasco retirement community, more industry slated for Shady Hills
Jennifer Kerouac was back at the microphone at a Pasco County land-use hearing earlier this month, a familiar position for the Shady Hills area resident who has been working to raise her neighborhood’s profile with county leaders.
This time she was questioning the potential effects of the latest community-transforming development set for 557 acres as it was moving toward approval.
Known as the Greenfields/Del Webb River Reserve, applicant Parkway Hills LLC is seeking to build 21,000 square feet of offices, 32,000 square feet of commercial and retail space, 160,000 square feet for light industry, along with 40 townhomes, 435 apartments and a retirement community with 730 homes.
Kerouac said Shady Hills residents worry about losing the community’s character and quality of life. Barbara Wilhite, representing the developer, said the new development was going to be a far less intense use of the site than what could have been built under the property’s current land-use designations.
Stripped along both sides of Shady Hills Road east of the Suncoast Parkway, Wilhite said the developers were going to protect an ecological corridor to the east, would be building 8-foot-wide multiuse paths along the road and connecting to nearby schools, Crews Lake Park and the Suncoast Trail. She said the project would generate far less demand on those schools, with much of the housing area dedicated to older residents.
The auto traffic would also be less because fewer homes are planned than previously approved, she said.
Wilhite also talked up the quality of Del Webb retirement communities, showing a picture of the types of homes likely to be built there and also a rendering of the typical clubhouse, which the developer generally spends $13 million to $15 million to construct.
The same company involved in this project is also the land owner of industrial property on the west side of the Suncoast Parkway, Wilhite said. That industrial project, which was recently approved, will bring 300 acres of land into the county’s inventory of available industrial sites.
Those sites add to others along the west side of the Suncoast Parkway slated for industrial uses, including Gary Plastics, a project approved for development incentives last year. Those projects, along with the nearby county landfill and waste-to-energy plant in the same area of the county, helped to ignite the concern of Shady Hills residents, who have argued that the county has made their area a focal point for new development that was stretching existing infrastructure too thin.
The potential traffic on Shady Hills Road has been much of that focus. In addition to providing access to multiple schools in the area, the road carries legions of trucks related to those intense business and public service facilities. Without sidewalks along the road, that puts pedestrians at risk, Kerouac has said.
“The community is incredibly concerned,” she told planning commissioners. In recent months, those concerns convinced Kerouac and her neighbors to reestablish the Shady Hills Civic Association.
They have been promoting community education about planned construction projects and encouraging residents to get involved. That includes encouraging participation in public workshops the county is conducting in advance of updating its comprehensive plan, its development blueprint for the future.
“There are many things that we see evolving that are not the way we think it should be,” she said.
Planning Commissioner Jon Moody said agreements by this developer to put aside money for trails and safety improvements on Shady Hills Road should be a sign to her.
“This is how things start,” Moody said. “I would urge you to keep coming to these meetings. You are being heard.”
