Spring Hill’s future stirs in Sterling
SPRING HILL – “Escape to Perfection!” reads one advertisement for Sterling Hill, the new 1,250-home subdivision straddling Elgin Boulevard. “Enjoy your family in a quiet countryside park-like setting.” “Awaken your senses at Sterling Hill, a community that has it all!” reads another. Sterling Hill is likely the last subdivision of its size that will be built within the sprawling, ill-defined borders of Spring Hill, a patchwork of a community founded on the sandhills of western Hernando County nearly 40 years ago. In those four decades, critics of suburban sprawl around the country have enjoyed a measure of vindication. As predicted, suburbanites became increasingly reliant on the automobile, with its attendant ills: skyrocketing road costs, a dearth of pedestrian life, rising oil prices and steadily worsening air pollution. Regardless, the brisk sales at Sterling Hill prove suburbia’s durable allure. With 521 new home starts, it was the fourth-fastest growing community in the Tampa Bay area in the third quarter of 2005, according to the Houston firm Metrostudy. Slowly, on land that was scrub two years ago, the signs of a new community emerge. Even as they replant yards and replace light fixtures, newly minted neighbors have begun to make their mark. New faces, new prioritiesBehind Sterling Hill’s high stucco walls bordering Elgin Boulevard, houses are going up as fast as building permits win approval, said Angela Deaton, sales manager for Grant Homes, one of eight builders that bought parcels in the 514-acre subdivision from Devco Development Corp. in Tampa. Grant planned 241 homes in two phases and opened a model home in January 2005. Even as prices have increased, more than half have sold. During one rush, Deaton signed 15 contracts in one day. Outside the plush appointments of Grant’s model home, Sterling Hill is a moonscape of tire tracks, half-built homes and rust-colored dirt. Hammering and grinding machines punctuate an otherwise peaceful afternoon. Contractors have emblazoned “Help Wanted” signs on their trucks, desperate for workers to build the houses as fast as they are sold. Deaton said she spends half her day on the phone with eager buyers in Virginia, California and Massachusetts, updating them on the progress of their permits. The few occupied houses stand out, with neat landscaping, cars in the driveway or jaunty garden flags fluttering next to newly planted shrubs. These newcomers are younger and wealthier than Spring Hill’s traditional residents, Deaton said. They are a mix of commuters from Tampa, families moving in from out of state and a smattering of well-heeled retirees. The residents followed the new Suncoast Parkway from Tampa – some driven north by the rising prices closer to the city. And they want more: more schools, more roads, more stores, a stark contrast to some longtime residents who think Hernando County is becoming overdeveloped. “Build it up,” said Sterling Hill resident Eve Senica. “If you don’t have progress you might as well be living in the horse and buggy age.” In the mornings, Senica takes her daughter to Challenger K-8 School of Science and Mathematics on the other side of busy Elgin Boulevard. On the way, she eyes the houses cropping up along her street, hoping for new neighbors and friends for her daughter. Recently separated from her husband, Senica moved to Sterling Hill from Pasco County after she and her former husband sold a three-story house on 10 acres. She had lived in Spring Hill as a teenager until shortly after her marriage, and moved back looking for a mix of the pastoral peace she enjoyed on her Pasco property with shopping and schools nearby. “When I moved (to Spring Hill), I was 18,” Senica said. “There was not much here. A few gas stations, and that was it. And now there’s so much.” But not enough. For real shopping, she drives an hour to International Plaza in Tampa, she said. Suburbia, for better or worseSterling Hill bears all the hallmarks of a traditional subdivision: curlicued streets feeding a collector road, single-family homes on individual lots and no commercial development. It has some nods to progress, such as sidewalks and restrictions that assure that neighboring houses will not be the same color or model. It is textbook sprawl – and enormously popular. “People still want their neighborhood, they still want their home, they still want their yards,” said local developer Gary Schraut. “They are buying into a lifestyle,” he added. “It’s the middle-class dream. You have a house, a picket fence, your neighbors. And there’s nothing wrong with that.” Louis Marquet sees it differently. A planner in the new urbanist mode, Marquet prefers built “places” like the Villages and Celebration to subdivisions like Sterling Hill. “Places” have a thriving street life, with mom-and-pop stores built into a mix of apartments, townhomes and single-family homes. Homebuyers continue to buy into traditional subdivisions because they have little other choice, he says. “Everyone criticizes sprawl,” said Marquet, executive vice president of Leyland Alliance, a New York new urbanist design firm. “What they’re really criticizing is the traffic of all these little streets and cul-de-sacs. They’re criticizing how far they have to go to find milk or services.” Marquet, like other new urbanists, is convinced that well-designed places will outperform traditional subdivisions in the marketplace. Ask any suburbanite where he or she would like to spend a long weekend, Marquet said, and the answer is typically the type of place new urbanism tries to replicate: Savannah, Ga.; Key West; Charleston, S.C. While traditional developers of subdivisions such as Sterling Hill remain wary that drastic change will hurt sales, some developers have begun incorporating “town centers” in new subdivisions, a small concession to new urbanism, Marquet said. “In our time, place-making will have a higher value than making a buck on cul-de-sacs,” he said. Affluence comes standardThe Deltona Corp. billed the original Spring Hill as a self-contained community including churches, stores and parks, sold as an affordable alternative to blighted cities. But suburbia is not as affordable as it once was. Sterling Hill’s homes range in price from the $200s to the high $400s, built for families that need “optional first-floor bonus rooms,” service entrances and master retreats. Marble countertops come standard. The model names aim for a certain cachet: deep-rooted affluence and class by Grant Homes’ Cambridge and Devonshire models; the breezy wealth of port towns like Windward Homes’ Sanibel, Newport and Savannah; the lush woodlands invoked by Avatar Homes’ the Sandpine, the Hickory, the Laurel and the Spruce, a four-bedroom, three-bathroom, two-story house with a three-car garage. Armando Coral and his wife, Merideth Rossetti-Coral, moved from Massachusetts with their 17-month old daughter to be closer to Rossetti-Coral’s mother. They sold their home in Auburn, Mass., and flew to Tampa. From the airport, they began driving north looking for houses in their price range. “I like that this is all residential. It feels safe,” Rossetti-Coral said recently, busying herself repainting her dining room. They couldn’t see their neighbors from their last house, and they wanted to duplicate that sense of privacy, said Coral, 43, a real estate agent. Similarly priced homes in Pasco were built on smaller lots and bunched too tightly together. But they quickly discovered that, like Senica, they would have to drive an hour for the shops they wanted, and that local jobs paid far less than in Massachusetts, where Rossetti-Coral, 34, had been a teacher. They described their former house as rural, but still only 15 minutes from two large malls, and a half-hour from Boston. The couple moved in Halloween weekend. By Thanksgiving, Rossetti-Coral had already outfitted the kitchen with antiqued nickel fixtures and replaced the ceiling fan in the living room. The building of the Suncoast Parkway paved the way for younger, more affluent residents like the Corals. In his 1956 bestseller The Organization Man , William Whyte predicted that suburbia would become “the most important single market in the country.” Suburbanites would set the trend for “dungarees, vodka martinis, outdoor barbecues, functional furniture,” Whyte predicted. A stroll through Target confirms his predictions: Mossimo stonewashed jeans for $27.99, a stainless steel and red leather cocktail set for $13.99, a Coleman Road Trip Sport Grill, $149.99. The new population represents a market with the potential to change the face of Spring Hill and the county, attracting new and different businesses, said Schraut, the local developer. Forerunners of that trend include the recent expansion of Target on U.S. 19 and the addition of a Lowe’s in Brooksville. Schraut predicts that higher-end commercial development will soon begin moving to the county. Constructing a heritageSterling Hill shares its name with a custom bookbinder in Waterbury, Vt., an active adult community in Exeter, N.H., and a New Jersey mine known as the “Fluorescent Capital of the World” for the many bright minerals found there. Closer to home, “Sterling” is John Toborg’s mother’s maiden name, which he swears had nothing to do with the name of the Spring Hill subdivision. Toborg is the landscape architect for Devco Development, the Tampa firm responsible for Sterling Hill. He gave Sterling Hill the limited sense of place it has: its name, its trees, its logo. “Sterling was clean, clear, and I already had a color palette floating around in my head as far as the logo and the letterhead and the signage, which was charcoal gray and stone, and the color sterling silver goes along with that,” Toborg said. The hilly landscape gave him the rest of the name. The Indiana native surrounds himself with atlases, maps and encyclopedias, trolling for street names and monickers for Sterling Hill’s gated villages: Haverhill, Brackenwood, Brightstone Place, Edgemere, Amersham Isles, Arbor Glades, Covey Run, Glen Burne. For the landscape, Toborg picked native plants that will thrive in the sandy soil, like Bahai sod and sand pines. He planted Shumard and live oaks, Drake elms, sweet gums and Leyland cypress. He predicts that some of his trees will be uprooted by the new owners, who will try to make the place their own by planting trees and sod native to Northern states. Apart from Toborg’s efforts, heritage at Sterling Hill must be built from scratch. Instead of all the things that lend a place its genius – folk tales, celebrations, monuments, art, landmarks – one of the builders describes Sterling Hill as a “large-scale planned community designed for a multitude of buyer profiles.” For the time being, until the Corals get some more neighbors, they focus on the interior of the house. Rossetti-Coral outfitted a modish hot-pink, black and white bathroom for her daughter and decorated the playroom. Like Senica, they watch through the windows for new neighbors. They already know Joe and Georgia Fatigato, a semiretired couple from Illinois who moved in up the street and quickly replanted their front yard with small palm trees. From there, Joe Fatigato, 63, points out “For Sale” signs in front of completed homes. “They call it spec buying,” Fatigato said. Investors, betting on swiftly rising prices, have a house built just to turn around and sell it. Despite the construction around them, the Fatigatos hosted their family for Thanksgiving, and the Corals likewise spent the holiday in their new home. By Christmas, two families had moved in. “We were thinking to have a small party after New Year’s Eve, to invite the neighbors,” Armando Coral said. “The neighbors can meet each other and talk. Somebody has to start it.” Bookmark This Post
Operation Home Delivery: ‘Home in a box’ to be built in TampaHammer in hand, Florida Realtors® will go to work Oct. 5 to frame the walls on a house in Tampa, which will soon become home to a family in the Gulf Coast region as part of the Realtor-Habitat Partnership for Gulf Coast Recovery program, also known as Operation Home Delivery. Click HERE to read the full story. ***As always, the latest in Real Estate News as it pertains to Spring Hill Real Estate, Brooksville Real Estate, Weeki Wachee Real Estate, Hernando Beach North Real Estate, Hernando Beach South Real Estate, and Hudson Beach Real Estate. – Brought to you by Hernando Luxury Homes, Your Luxury Real Estate Leader in Hernando County, Florida and Pasco County, Florida.   Bookmark This Post
New home sales rise by largest amount in 5 monthsSales of new homes posted the biggest increase in five months in August, raising hopes that the steep slide in the housing industry may be leveling off. Sales of new single-family homes increased by 4.1 percent — far better than the 3 percent decline economists had expected. Click HERE to read the full story. ***As always, the latest in Real Estate News as it pertains to Spring Hill Real Estate, Brooksville Real Estate, Weeki Wachee Real Estate, Hernando Beach North Real Estate, Hernando Beach South Real Estate, and Hudson Beach Real Estate. – Brought to you by Hernando Luxury Homes, Your Luxury Real Estate Leader in Hernando County, Florida and Pasco County, Florida.  Bookmark This Post
Leaders might double road impact feeThe fee for a single-family detatched home is now just under $4,000. The proposal would raise the fee to $8,000. Other proposed increases could raise the total for a new home by 60 percent. By CHUIN-WEI YAP and DAVID DeCAMP County officials are thinking of doubling road impact fees. The proposed move, combined with other proposed fee increases, would raise total impact fees from $12,000 per home now to $19,000. The road impact fee increase will be proposed in a draft report due to be completed Friday. Road impact fees vary widely, depending on the home or business, but the benchmark indicator is a single-family detached home, currently $3,928. The proposal is to increase the fee to $8,000. “We’re talking about doubling it,” said Michele Baker, the county’s administrator for engineering services. “That’s mostly because construction costs have doubled in the last two years.” The news of the latest proposed increase comes a day after commissioners added $3,000 to impact fees for parks, water and sewer services and law enforcement projects. If the road impact fee recommendation also comes to pass, this means new residents face $19,000 in impact fees overall – a nearly 60 percent increase. Impact fees vary widely from county to county, depending on how built-out it is and what types of services are charged. A broad comparison: Pasco currently charges $12,000 on a single-family home. Hernando County charges $9,200. Pinellas County charges $2,100. In Pasco, the proposed road impact fee increase also is blamed on an expected $7-million shortfall in revenue next fiscal year, largely because of the decline in residential growth this year. Sales have dropped 15 percent to 75 percent among builders, said Alex Mourtakos, president of the Pasco Building Association. Revenue from road impact fees went from $29-million in 2004-05 to $37-million in the current fiscal year but is expected to fall to $30-million in 2006-07, said Manny Lajmiri of Pasco’s Metropolitan Planning Organization. The county also has reduced its list of planned road projects because it reflects many outdated schedules. “None of those dates can really be depended on,” Baker said. Projects to be dropped include the Moon Lake Road widening, the completion of the Ridge Road extension to the Suncoast Parkway and improvements to Power Line Road and Clinton Avenue in the Dade City area. Baker said these projects would be reworked into a longer-range road improvement plan. “This is staff’s first cut at it,” Baker said. “(County Administrator John) Gallagher has seen it, and he doesn’t like it. He wants the projects done more quickly.” The report on road fee revisions, by Tindale-Oliver & Associates of Tampa, will be presented to Gallagher and key county staff members before it makes its way to county commissioners. The report also will include recommendations to phase in the changes over a period of years – possibly six – and to index future increases to some form of market indicator, Baker said. “We could be looking at adoption by the end of the calendar year,” Baker said. Since the burden of impact fee hikes fall on new consumers, the report also includes recommendations on reduced fee schedules to preserve some semblance of affordable housing in Pasco, Baker said. Mourtakos said the fee hikes are so new that the association has not had time to discuss whether to challenge the increases. “It would be foolhardy for me to sit here and not say the people who are agreeing to build houses will pass on the cost to the consumer,” Mourtakos said. Times staff writer Will Van Sant contributed to this report. ***As always, the latest in Real Estate News as it pertains to Spring Hill Real Estate, Brooksville Real Estate, Weeki Wachee Real Estate, Hernando Beach North Real Estate, Hernando Beach South Real Estate, and Hudson Beach Real Estate. – Brought to you by Hernando Luxury Homes, Your Luxury Real Estate Leader in Hernando County, Florida and Pasco County, Florida. Bookmark This Post
Developer keeps trying for ‘clusters’He proposes a change to allow more density on environmentally valuable land if only half of the property is used. ——————————————————————————– BROOKSVILLE – Developer Gary Schraut, who last month talked about abandoning his plans to build “clustered” developments in rural areas, said Monday that he is pushing ahead with his projects. He got some help from the county Planning and Zoning Commission, which backed his plan to build a clustered development on 251 acres of farmland in northern Hernando. This came despite the objections of county planners and a letter from the state Department of Community Affairs, which said the clustered pattern that Schraut proposed would contribute to sprawl. The Brooksville developer said the opposite is true. The policy allows only one house on every 10 acres, meaning a few homeowners consume vast tracts of the county’s countryside. He wants to change the comprehensive plan to allow owners of environmentally valuable land to build dense clusters of homes on about half of the land if they agree to preserve the other half. Schraut and fellow investors own two parcels, covering 435 acres on County Road 491 in northern Hernando. With his proposed change to the comprehensive plan, they would divide this property into 184 1-acre lots instead of the 43 lots currently allowed. The county had previously agreed to forward this idea to the Department of Community Affairs for review, as well as Schraut’s plan to apply it to the first of the two parcels, covering 184 acres. But in its letter to the county in June, the department said the change to the comprehensive plan had not shown the need for more development in rural areas. It said the rules defining the program were vague and that the cluster policy “appears to be inconsistent with and inferior to the current standards.” Until these issues are cleared up, the planning department said in a memo written for Monday’s meeting, “it is premature to consider any additional parcels” for rural clustering. That means, because of state policy on submitting changes to the comprehensive plan, the county would not be able to submit the plan for the 251-acre parcel until next year. Schraut, who said last month that it would cost him too much to prepare additional studies that the department asked for, now said he is trying to answer its objections. He may be able to do so in the next month, he said, and the delay in submitting the second parcel would cause a problem: He would have approval for one parcel and not the other. That would force him to develop the two parcels separately. That, in turn, would make it impossible for him to save the views from County Road 491 and the most environmentally significant land on the property, an oak hammock. This argument convinced Commissioner Robert Widmar, who argued that the planning commission should recommend that the plan for the 251-acre parcel be forwarded for the state’s review along with Schraut’s other property. “I don’t have a problem with sending it up,” Widmar said. “They pass or fail together.” But Commissioner Anthony Palmieri, who, along with Commissioner Anna Liisa Covell, voted against the action, said he could not support it until the Department of Community Affairs’ questions were answered. He said the department’s letter states that the plan for rural clusters violates 12 of the goals and objectives of the county’s comprehensive plan. “I have no idea what those goals and objectives are,” Palmieri said. “But when this has 12 of them, I cannot approve.” ***As always, the latest in Real Estate News as it pertains to Spring Hill Real Estate, Brooksville Real Estate, Weeki Wachee Real Estate, Hernando Beach North Real Estate, Hernando Beach South Real Estate, and Hudson Beach Real Estate. – Brought to you by Hernando Luxury Homes, Your Luxury Real Estate Leader in Hernando County, Florida and Pasco County, Florida. Bookmark This Post
Tampa developer plans huge project in Hernando CountyA Tampa developer is planning one of the largest residential subdivisions in recent Hernando history: 3,700 residential units and 180,000 square feet of shopping off U.S. 19 near Woodland Waters. “Hernando County is a really exciting area,” said John Heagney, a spokesman for the developer, Metro Development Group. “We feel there is a tremendous opportunity for intelligent growth.” Because of the project’s size, it is classified as a “development of regional impact,” or DRI – meaning it will face a longer, more exhaustive approval process than smaller subdivisions, said Paul Wieczorek of the county Planning Department. Representatives from Metro Development met with the county Thursday to begin identifying development issues. Though the discussions are preliminary, one major concern will likely be the local road network, Wieczorek said. The development, called Lake Hideaway, is expected to feed traffic onto U.S. 19 to the west, Hexam Road to the north, and State Road 50, Weeping Willow Street and Star Road to the south. Some of those roads will certainly need to be upgraded to accommodate increased traffic, he said. Because the property is already designated as residential, Metro will not need a comprehensive plan change. Also, the land is already mostly surrounded by residential development, including Woodland Waters and Royal Highlands, though most of those lots are larger than the ones planned for Lake Hideaway, Wieczorek said. Metro has a contract to buy the land from a trust headed by Tommy Bronson of Brooksville. Two years ago, the Bronson family’s company, TBF Enterprises Inc., proposed developing an 80-acre portion of the property as part of Woodland Waters. County Commissioner Diane Rowden objected at the time, saying she wanted to see plans for all of the Bronson property to ensure it received scrutiny as a DRI. “The County Commission said they would like to see a master plan next time this comes forward,” said Don Lacey, a vice president of Coastal Engineering Associates, which prepared the initial plans. “So now we’re back.” The plan includes land for a school, Lacey said, and calls for the project to hook up to a county sewage treatment plant adjacent to the property. Bronson, who was involved in the initial development of Majestic Oaks – on another parcel of land the family partly owned on the east side of Brooksville – said he would not be involved in the Lake Hideaway development. “This is a land transaction,” he said. Even Metro may not be the final owner, Heagney said. The company, which also has offices in Orlando and Jacksonville, specializes in acquiring parcels, securing development approval and building roads and laying utility lines. It then typically sells sections of its properties to builders, which market the subdivision and build the homes. That will probably not happen for three more years, Heagney said. The company said it is interested in thoughtful planning, though no details of Lake Hideaway have been finalized – not even the total number of houses or how many will be villas or townhouses. “We have no specific plans at this point,” Heagney said. “(But) we know there is going to be a school. We know there are going to be parks.” The 3,700 units in Metro’s plans are about the same number as in Seville, a long-dormant golf community that is also preparing to submit new plans for development, Lacey said. Since the approval of the Royal Highlands subdivision in 1972, only Sunrise – a DRI near I- 75 with a proposed 4,800 houses and townhouses – is larger. Neither Heagney nor Lacey knew the likely price range for houses at Lake Hideaway. But given the rapid increase in home prices and escalating building and land costs, Lacey said, “you’re going to have a hard time getting anything built under $200,000 anymore.” Dan DeWitt can be reached at dewitt@sptimes.com or (352) 754- 6116. ***As always, the latest in Real Estate News as it pertains to Spring Hill Real Estate, Brooksville Real Estate, Weeki Wachee Real Estate, Hernando Beach North Real Estate, Hernando Beach South Real Estate, and Hudson Beach Real Estate. – Brought to you by Hernando Luxury Homes, Your Luxury Real Estate Leader in Hernando County, Florida and Pasco County, Florida. Bookmark This Post
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