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Center Complex Wins Rezoning Extension

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By KEVIN WIATROWSKI, The Tampa Tribune

Published: February 14, 2008

SAN ANTONIO - The developers of Pasco Town Center, the enormous retail-hotel-office complex proposed for the junction of State Road 52 and Interstate 75, won a two-month extension on a rezoning request Wednesday.

Planning commissioners delayed consideration of the Atlanta-based Shailendra Group's request for a rezoning that will allow them to turn the former McKendree family's 945-acre homestead into a mixed-use development.

The delay was needed to give the developers more time to strike a deal with the developers of Bella Verde, the golf course resort to the east, regarding who will make which improvements at the nearby interchange, said Ron Weaver, Pasco Town Center's attorney.

"We're trying to find a mutually agreeable solution on the transportation issues," Weaver said.
Transportation problems have tied the town center project in knots for months.
Outlet mall builder Chelsea Property Development Group of New Jersey announced in 2006 plans to build at the town center.

Asked Wednesday whether Chelsea was still involved in the project, Weaver declined to answer.

"We'll let them answer that," he said.

Chelsea officials didn't return calls for comment.

Shailendra spent about $11 million to buy the land. The developer still holds title to the property and, through Weaver, continues to promise big things for the project.

Plans for the project call for 2 million square feet of retail, 3.5 million square feet of office and light-industrial uses, 640 hotel rooms and 2,000 homes. The property is sandwiched between the interstate and McKendree Road just south of the Flying J truck stop.

That location has complicated the project's already complex negotiations over road improvements.

County officials originally demanded Shailendra build a large loop ramp in the northwest corner of the interchange to simplify traffic movement from S.R. 52 west to I-75 south.

The developers have balked at the cost of the $70 million project, suggesting instead that they take on the less expensive widening of S.R. 52 in front of their property - work that Bella Verde is committed to do but has never done.
Bella Verde plans have been put on hold because of an anemic housing market, leaving the California-based developer, New Cities LLC, without the cash needed to improve S.R. 52, attorney Donna Feldman told county officials last month. Feldman was hired to work out a transportation-improvements deal between Pasco Town Center and Bella Verde.

Reporter Kevin Wiatrowski can be reached at (813) 948-4201 or kwiatrowski

@tampatrib.com.

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