SUN CITY - Under Hillsborough County rules, a 388-acre tract of row crops and wetlands just north of the Manatee County line could house a maximum of 77 houses.

Plans to change the land-use and zoning on the property call for converting it into a 2.6 million square-foot distribution center, where containers from the Port of Tampa could be routed, redistributed and sent onto highways and railroads.

Environmentalists and rural advocates object to the plans.

"This area is inappropriate for any kind of dense development," said Mariella Smith, a Ruskin environmental and community activist. "This would be an incredibly intense industrial use in the middle of a very ecologically sensitive area."

Richard Ellison, president of Inland Port Systems LLC out of Orange County, Calif., said he intends to work with state and county environmental planners to restore a quarter of the site to viable wetlands and uplands, then designate it as permanent conservation area.

The impact to Tampa Bay would be far less than the pepper farm now operating on the property, which sends nutrient-rich runoff into the sensitive wetlands and the bay, he said.

The 388-acre tract is surrounded on three sides by preserved lands being restored by the county's Environmental Lands Acquisition and Protection Program and SWIM.

The tract is one of two missing links in a 20-mile long wildlife corridor the county and state have worked for years to piece together by purchasing and protecting environmentally sensitive tracts. The other piece is Deseret Farms, owned by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Hillsborough planning commissioners discussed the proposed land-use amendments Monday but made no decision.