Originally Published: Apr 27, 2007
The Tampa Tribune
TAMPA - The battle over how Hillsborough County grows in the next 20 years is being waged between community activists who want to preserve rural areas and developers who say they must expand into those areas to keep housing prices affordable.
Thursday night, both sides pleaded their cases to the county commission during a public hearing on updating the comprehensive growth plan. Development of the plan will continue through next year.
Neither side seemed particularly happy with the proposed plan. Environmental and community groups are angry that the commission last month removed an element that would have encouraged higher-density growth around transportation corridors.
The City-County Planning Commission had recommended approval, but developers opposed it.
Bev Griffiths, chair of the Sierra Club Tampa Bay Group, said the focused-growth element would have supported "compact, contiguous development."
"Commissioners should not be bending to developers' wishes," Griffiths said.
The activists urged the commission to maintain the county's urban service area, where the county supplies sewer and water service. The county's Planning and Growth Management Department estimates the service area contains 15,500 acres that can be developed, enough to handle population projections through 2025.
Developers say much of that land is taken up with road right of ways and power line easements or is in tracts of 5 acres or less. Builders say they can make a profit on those small tracts only with high-density developments - putting more living units on an acre.
The plan calls for denser development, but makes it unprofitable by requiring sidewalks, landscaping and other amenities that eat up land, the developers said.
Developers said they also must deal with established neighborhoods that consistently oppose high-density developments.
"The plan says that we should build a variety of housing types to accommodate growth," said Jennifer Motsinger of the Tampa Bay Builders Association. "But when we ask for higher density or the ability to co-mingle single-family and multifamily, people immediately picture a 20-story building among a sea of suburban ranch homes."
Joseph Narkiewicz, executive vice president of the builders association, said the available building density in the urban service area is supposed to be four to 12 living units per acre. In reality, however, builders get only two units per acre because of the plan's inflexibility, developers said.
"When they start putting all those requirements into affordable housing projects, it's no longer affordable," Narkiewicz said.
The community activists did not try to hide their antigrowth sentiments. Many wore buttons supporting Hometown Democracy, a constitutional amendment that, if passed, would require voter approval of any changes to a county's comprehensive plan.
"We should not ask how many people are coming," said Mariella Smith, a Sierra Club member from Ruskin. "We ought to ask how many people can we afford to invite and where are we going to put them?"
Reporter Mike Salinero can be reached at (813) 259-8303 or msalinero@tampatrib.com.
|
