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Pulte Exits Wiregrass Ranch Project

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By KEVIN WIATROWSKI, The Tampa Tribune

Published: January 29, 2008

WESLEY CHAPEL - The developers of Wiregrass Ranch confirmed Monday that Pulte Home Corp. has pulled out as the massive project's master builder.

"We've had a divorce," said Don Porter, head of the family-owned company that four years ago set out to develop its 5,000-acre homestead in the heart of Wesley Chapel.

Plans for the ranch called for creating a city-sized project - complete with a hospital, shopping mall and government complex - that could become the downtown core of a sprawling area that lacks one. At the time, Pulte was tapped as the project's lead developer.

Pulte still owns more than 900 acres of the ranch, but is no longer responsible for the long-term development of roads and other infrastructure, said Scott Campbell, president of Pulte's Tampa division.

Pulte's pullout casts doubt on the future of the grid of public roads across Wiregrass that county officials saw as a way to improve traffic in the region. Those roads were to have been built by Pulte.

The lone road project still moving forward - the eastern extension of State Road 56 - is now the responsibility of Forest City Enterprises and Goodman Co., the two companies developing the Shops at Wiregrass mall at the junction of S.R. 56 and Bruce B. Downs Boulevard. Pulte was to have built the extension.

With the unraveling of its Wiregrass plans, Michigan-based Pulte has effectively vanished as an active builder in Pasco's housing market. Pulte recently sold off its Lakeside project in Hudson, where it holds a few home lots. It also sold off another project, Lake Hutto in Hillsborough County.

There are no plans to sell the Wiregrass property, Campbell said.

"As of Jan. 28, we're going to hold onto it," Campbell said. Pulte plans to seek rights from the county to one day build homes on the property, he added.

Pulte began rethinking its Wiregrass plans last summer, Campbell said. The decision was influenced, in part, by the years spent striking a deal with county and state regulators and also by more than $560 million in county-mandated improvements required of the project, he said.

County commissioners approved the Wiregrass Ranch deal by a 3-2 vote in July. The approval made Wiregrass the largest development ever approved in Pasco and the first time the county had agreed to help a developer build its roads. Pulte's decision to pull out of the project won't affect those approvals.

The vote came just as the housing market hit the skids.

"As the process went along, it did not make sense to us to continue to be the master builder," Campbell said.

Pulte's decision to step aside formally killed its plans to build an age-restricted golf community under its Del Webb subsidiary. That land was returned to the Porters in an August land swap for property on the western side of the ranch, Campbell said.

"The parcel we had envisioned for Del Webb still has age-restricted zoning, so someone could build an age-restricted community there," Campbell said.

At the moment, Pulte's Wiregrass holdings consist of two parcels - land designated for multifamily use near the Shops at Wiregrass mall under construction and a tract to the north originally designated for Pulte's DiVosta brand.

The DiVosta property contains the beginnings of Chancey Road's western end and the early stages of residential development. Work there stopped abruptly last summer, about the same time Pulte was having second thoughts about continuing with Wiregrass.

Campbell said the DiVosta property has no utilities or other infrastructure to maintain. The company has no plans to seed the bare ground with grass or take other measures to avoid erosion of the land, he said.

"There's nothing that needs to be done there to keep it viable," Campbell said.

In an interview with The Tampa Tribune last summer, Porter said his family was willing to wait out changes in the housing market, should a downturn come.

On Monday, Porter said he's seeking another company to develop the ranch.

"I would not be forthright if I said we aren't talking to people. We are," Porter said. "Some stuff I am not at liberty to give a lot of flesh to."

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

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