PORT TAMPA - From West Shore Boulevard, the former Wenczel Tile property doesn't look that big. Or that contaminated.

But drive just past the two metal buildings at the front of the site and a major environmental cleanup is taking place.

More than 9,000 tons of lead-tainted soil must be removed from a 1¼-acre compound, taken into the buildings and mixed with a chemical to detoxify the dirt before being trucked to a landfill in Kissimmee.

"It's very unassuming from the street," said Ryan Studzinksi, development manager for the Zaremba Group, which plans to redevelop the property. "Most people don't realize the extent of what goes on back here."

The cleanup started in November and will take at least six months, property owner John McCrocklin said.

It's the latest installment in McCrocklin's saga with the property, which he learned about in 2001 and has owned since 2004.

He plans to sell the 13-acre property to Zaremba, which proposes 274 one- to three-bedroom apartments in four four-story buildings, along with a trail and a 6,500-square-foot restaurant or retail space.

The restaurant, which McCrocklin hopes is a national chain, would be at West Shore and McCoy Street.

"Our decision to incorporate a restaurant in the plans is a function of conversations we had with the community," said Nicholas Husak, Zaremba's regional director of residential development.

A city council rezoning hearing on the property is scheduled for Feb. 14.

Tom Vento, president of the Civic Association of Port Tampa, said he welcomes the development adding businesses, but is concerned about the effect of the apartments on traffic and the neighborhood.

"We need some commercial, some neighborhood-serving commercial," Vento said. "We hoped that site would go that direction. There's a lot of folks that are pleased they changed the site plan to include a restaurant."

McCrocklin said Wenczel Tile pumped sludge and other waste into the ground from the 1950s to 1980s, primarily from lead used in tile glaze. State environmental regulators stopped the practice in the 1980s and the waste was secured in the compound.

"Back then, lead was used in everything," McCrocklin said. "And Wenczel thought they would be there forever."

Wenczel filed for bankruptcy in 1993, and the land has been vacant since.

When McCrocklin purchased the property, he had to do an extensive environmental survey to determine the location of hazardous waste. Most of it was contained in the compound.

He hired WRS Infrastructure and Environment to dig out the waste and clean up the property. Before it can be hauled away, the soil must be mixed with triple superphosphate to make it nonhazardous, McCrocklin said.

In addition to the lead, McCrocklin needs to clean up 4,500 tons of arsenic along a railroad spur on the site's northern edge. That's where Zaremba plans to build an extension of the South Tampa Greenway.

"It took me many years just to get to this point," McCrocklin said while looking over a huge pit where the compound used to be. "We're just scratching the surface."

Reporter Michael H. Samuels can be reached at (813) 835-2109 or msamuels@tampatrib.com.