Hernando County - Commissioners will vote on a master plan and three subdivisions.

Nearly 20 years ago, the County Commission created a 4,800-acre "blank slate" near State Road 50 and Interstate 75.

Now, the commission is ready to fill it.

Commissioners will vote Wednesday on a master plan to provide roads and other services for this vast district, designated for future development in 1989 but still mostly covered with pines and pasture.

Also coming before the commission are proposals for three subdivisions in the district, including Sunrise, with 4,800 houses and apartments, potentially the county's largest residential project since Royal Highlands in northwest Hernando 35 years ago.

The master plan maps out how the county will provide schools, roads, parks and other services for the 24,000 residents expected to live in the district. Most developers will be required to kick in extra money for these services because of the higher costs of building them from scratch.

But the plan could have done more than just address basic public needs, said Joe Murphy, conservation chairman of the Hernando Audubon Society. It could have created a real city - "a 21st century community," he said - rather than making way for a collection of subdivisions, shopping centers and scattered industrial sites.

"It doesn't get any better than that - having a big chunk of land, not that many landowners, and years to plan it," Murphy said. "This was a tremendous missed opportunity."

---

County planning director Ron Pianta said the County Commission gave him a much narrower job than what Murphy would like to see. In July of last year, the commission approved plans submitted by Cornerstone Communities of Clearwater and Metro Development Group of Tampa to build two subdivisions each in the development district.

Before they could start, though, the commission told them to work with other landowners on a master plan for the district, including owners of the Sunrise property: Brooksville banker Jim Kimbrough, retired mining engineer Tommy Bronson, real estate broker Robert Buckner and businessman Hale McKethan. Plans for their project include a golf course, shopping center and hotel.

Sunrise lawyer Joel Tew represented all three development groups in negotiations with the county, and the development companies' traffic consultants and engineers - including Coastal Engineering Associates of Brooksville - wrote the plan.

"Is this a master plan in the truest sense? Maybe not," Pianta said. "But I think the issue the county was most concerned about is the infrastructure and who would pay for it."

That will be addressed in a stack of documents the commission will consider: the master plan for the district; development agreements for Sunrise as well as Cornerstone's two developments, which include a total of 1,149 houses and apartments; and a separate ordinance that allows the county to charge higher impact fees for buildings in the development district.

Though new to Hernando, the impact fee surcharges have been used in other Florida counties to cover the added costs of creating a new network of government services, Pianta said.

Build a home in the district, and you pay a premium, depending on the extra cost of various services. School impact fees will be 10 percent greater than in the rest of the county, parks 60 percent higher and roads 50 percent higher; altogether, the surcharges could add $2,603 to the $9,211 impact fee the county charges for a new house.

According to Sunrise's development agreement, it will pay the higher fees for parks and schools, as well as donating 20 acres for a park site and setting aside 50 acres on Kettering Road for a school. If the county builds a school there, it will cut the value of the property from the amount of school impact fees Sunrise must pay.

Paying for roads

But the most expensive surcharge, $1,813 per house, is designated for road construction. And Sunrise, like Cornerstone, will be exempt from that higher fee because it has agreed to build more than $21- million in road projects, all within two years of the start of construction, according to Sunrise's development agreement. The work includes widening SR 50 between I-75 and Kettering Road and building a north-south collector road through the project.

About $16.1-million of the work will benefit surrounding residents, not just those in Sunrise, and will therefore be eligible for impact fee credits.

The county wanted to encourage Sunrise to pay for the work upfront rather than with impact fees that trickle in over the life of the project, Pianta said, explaining why he allowed Sunrise the exemption from the surcharge.

Also, he said, Sunrise has agreed to donate nearly $3-million in right of way for roads in the development district, which will not be deducted from its impact fees. Finally, the widening of SR 50 is crucial to improve traffic flow in eastern Hernando, he said, and the county was willing to concede charging the higher impact fee to get it done.

"We made a value judgment that that project was very important to us," Pianta said.

The commission will ultimately decide whether the trade-off is worth it, commission Chairman Jeff Stabins said. Though he had not seen the development agreement or the master plan when he was interviewed last week, he said one of his concerns is whether the county will require Sunrise to pay its fair share for road improvements.

"Developers need to step up and do more than they ever have before," he said, and approval is "not a slam dunk by any means."

Creating urban core

Murphy thinks the master plan probably is a slam dunk. But in a letter to commissioners last week, he asked to delay its passage to allow for at least two more public hearings.

Among Audubon's objections: The current plan doesn't seem to meet the requirements set out when the district was created in 1989.

Those requirements call for a "clustering of industrial uses" that cover between 20 percent and 40 percent of the district. The designated industrial areas are instead centered in two different areas, and the total amount is at the low end of the requirement.

Also, the county is supposed to create a higher standard for landscaping in the district. It hasn't, said Deputy County Administrator Larry Jennings, who was planning director until last year. But he added that the current landscape ordinance is probably stricter than anything imagined by the commission 18 years ago.

In addition, Murphy sees few indications to suggest that the master plan complies with a requirement for "steps in intensity" - dense development near SR 50 and larger lots on the outer fringes of the property.

He favors taking that concept even further, creating a dense, mixed-use urban core that would allow residents to work and shop in the same neighborhood where they live. It might be urban enough to justify mass transit to Tampa, he said, keeping traffic off I-75. It would leave room on the outer edges for preservation land.

Murphy is only the latest of several activists to suggest such a plan. The responses, likewise, are the same as those offered in the past.

Such a plan means the county would reward a few landowners with the right to build high-density developments, critics say, and penalize others whose land is designated for green space.

Kimbrough said it would be nearly impossible to make a plan like that work "when you have as many property owners as exist in this large quadrant."

But the county never even made an effort to take on the challenge, Murphy said, "and, of course, if you never try, it will never work."

Dan DeWitt can be reached at dewitt@sptimes.com or (352) 754- 6116.