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Builders At Odds On Road Projects

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By KEVIN WIATROWSKI

The Tampa Tribune

Published: August 14, 2008

SAN ANTONIO - The Pasco County development community's most famous shotgun marriage appears to be ending in a bitter divorce.

But that's not keeping county commissioners from urging the two sides - Cannon Ranch and Pasco Town Center - to continue working together.

Commissioners will meet with Cannon Ranch to continue ironing out a new deal at a special meeting at 10 a.m. Tuesday in New Port Richey.
Cannon Ranch officials have revised their original development deal with the county. Those changes include $77 million in road improvements - 13 times their original total - with widening of State Road 52 scheduled to start in December 2011. The developers also have cut their housing units by a third to lower their traffic load and want a three-year extension on their build-out date.
Cannon Ranch and Pasco Town Center are side-by-side on the south side of S.R. 52 just east of Interstate 75. They are vastly different projects - one a planned golf resort, the other a proposed retail-office complex - but they share a common problem: forebodings of gridlock at the nearby interchange.

"I do not want that intersection with 52 and I-75 to turn into the intersections we have at County Road 54 and I-75 and S.R. 56 and I-75," County Administrator John Gallagher said Tuesday as Cannon Ranch and Pasco Town Center vented their mutual frustrations to county commissioners.

State Requirements

For about nine months, the two developers have tried to reach a deal to widen S.R. 52 and add a looping access ramp to the northwest corner of the I-75 interchange. Both projects are likely to cost tens of millions of dollars and must be done to keep the interchange functioning, state transportation officials have said.

Under its development deal with the county, Cannon Ranch - also known as Bella Verde - was given the job of widening S.R. 52, a task it failed to accomplish on schedule as its prospects sank under the weight of the collapsing housing market.

Pasco Town Center will bring its final development deal to the county's Development Review Committee today. The Atlanta-based developers have been ordered to build the loop ramp that will link westbound S.R. 52 with southbound I-75 to offset their project's traffic impacts.

Westbound traffic - including tractor-trailers visiting the Flying J truck stop at the interchange's northeast corner - now must cross S.R. 52's eastbound lanes to go south on the interstate.

As Cannon Ranch's mandated roadwork languished last year, Pasco Town Center offered to swap projects. Town center attorney Donna Feldman argued the switch would improve S.R. 52 on a schedule that would benefit her project. Giving the golf resort responsibility for the loop road guaranteed the loop would be built by the 2017 deadline - after the market recovers and development resumes at Bella Verde, providing the funds to pay for the work, Feldman said.

Though Gallagher was open to the swap, Cannon Ranch's California-based developers declined to sign off.

"Our discussions have failed," Feldman told commissioners this week.
Cannon Ranch attorney Keith Bricklemyer told the county commissioners that his client had been hurt by its association with its neighbor.

"We were tied to Pasco Town Center for nine months," Bricklemyer said. "We have suffered nothing but headaches, heartaches and wallet aches ever since. We cannot be tied to a project that doesn't exist."

Bricklemyer told commissioners the continued delays were putting the project's financing at risk.

Feldman said Cannon Ranch's problems weren't entirely related to Pasco Town Center. She assured county officials her clients were open to working with their neighbors.

"At the end of the day, we are not trying to stand in the way of the Cannon Ranch project," Feldman said. "We're a commercial-retail project. We need their homes."

Join Them 'At The Hip'

The appeals and assurances by both developers did little to persuade commissioners to support them.

"Maybe the county should look at joining these two at the hip again," Commissioner Jack Mariano suggested, prompting Bricklemyer to shake his head from where he sat in the audience.

Commissioner Michael Cox noted that the two projects will have a wide-ranging impact despite the developers' desires to go it alone.

"I know the developers would prefer to look just at their property lines," Cox said. "But we need to look at the whole area."

Reporter Kevin Wiatrowski can be reached at (813) 948-4201 or kwiatrowski@tampatrib.com.

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