In the sunny cradle of a Florida morning, the 7,000 acres of Bexley Ranch are a pause in Pasco's frantic pulse. A flock of sandhill cranes wheel low in languid flight, past cattle herds, miles of cypresses and the purple-headed bayonets of bull rushes in bloom.

New houses nip at its southern edge, and the Suncoast Parkway is a distant throb to its west. But hemmed in the heart of development country, Bexley Ranch may at least save some of its grace.

"We're going to keep 50 percent of it intact," Don Whyte said.

The 52-year-old head of Newland Communities' southeast operations says this as his Cadillac Escalade shivers through an unpaved road on the ranch where Whyte plans to develop 7,000 homes, 540,000 square feet of offices, 206 acres of parks and three schools.

The proposal is still in the planning stages and is about to enter rezoning hearings.

As he crafts it, the man behind Hillsborough County's Tampa Palms, FishHawk Ranch and MiraBay draws on the memory of his first development project, Lake Midnapore in Calgary, Alberta.

"It was open farm field," he said. "We constructed toboggan hills, vegetated it like a forest, created natural features from scratch. We planted more trees ... I thought that was spectacular."

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Bexley Ranch's sheer size carries an ecological significance that must influence how it is developed, environmental activists say.

The question so far is its impact on flooding.

The Anclote River ribbons through the 100-year floodplain that Bexley sits on before spilling into the Gulf of Mexico.

The Bexley proposal includes a 176-acre wildlife corridor along the Anclote River and a 1,433-acre green-way belt with walking trails and bike paths.

Bexley's county development order shows 86 acres of wetlands - less than 5 percent of its total - would be impacted. The order commits Newland to avoid "Category I" wetlands, meaning those connected to natural water bodies or the Floridan Aquifer, a major source of groundwater.

But, for its staggering size, the proposed development has so far not attracted fire from environmental concerns the way others have, for example, the Richard E. Jacobs Group's plans to remove 55 acres of wetlands at its Cypress Creek Town Center project, and Standard Pacific Homes' attempt to dig a 40-acre pit at the Ashley Glen proposal south of Bexley.

So far, Whyte enjoys the benefit of the doubt among environmental interests.

"I met with Don Whyte to talk about the size of his project, to ask him what steps he's taking to build within green infrastructure," said Jennifer Seney, executive director of Pascowildlife. "As far as I'm concerned, with Don Whyte or Newland, nothing's developed to an issue level. There wasn't much for me to do that he wasn't already trying to do. For a corporation of that size, they do have a green sense. I would rather have Don Whyte and Newland develop all of Pasco than half a dozen others that I won't name."

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For a guy who takes helicopter ski vacations in British Columbia and wears faux snakeskin shoes, Whyte grew up in what he describes as modest means in Calgary.

His father was an accountant turned Mobil crude oil trader, and his mother worked first as a day care center operator, then as a legal secretary.

It was during his college days at the state University of Calgary, as a civil engineering undergraduate, that Whyte became struck by Calgary's boomtime opportunities.

"I thought, gee whiz, you can actually shape this," he said. "You can actually name the roads and build the golf courses."

He took on an array of development-related stints, from testing materials to paving parking lots in schools.

At 31, two years after moving to the United States, Whyte settled in Florida to helm Tampa Palms, at the time the region's largest residential community.

"At the time, no one had done something on that scale," he said.

Next came FishHawk Ranch, where Whyte passed an unexpected test.

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In 2003, traffic problems cropped up at Newland's FishHawk Ranch, a 7,500-home development in Lithia, whose community center entrance sits directly across from Bevis Elementary School.

When Whyte met county and school officials, he offered solutions at Newland's expense, one Hillsborough School Board member recalled.

"I think he should be the poster developer on how to work correctly with government agencies to build communities," said Jennifer Faliero. "He should formula it and package it."

But despite its reputation as an environmentally sensitive developer, Newland Communities of California has not escaped controversy.

In Montgomery County, Md., Newland's Clarksburg Town Center was built in apparent violation of height and setback requirements, amid a slew of other traffic and occupancy-permit problems.

When asked about Clarksburg, Whyte said Newland took over the property from the developer, Terrabrook. As head of southeast operations, Clarksburg was never under Whyte's charge. Still, he acknowledged that the company failed to listen closely to residents there.

In central Pasco, Octavio Blanco, the northern end of whose 100-acre property butts up against Bexley's southwestern corner, has a more jaded eye.

Blanco has spent nearly three years and thousands of dollars fighting Standard Pacific Homes' efforts to dig a sand pit that may drain wetlands on land Blanco owns next door.

He wants to know that Whyte's plans won't also affect his swamp.

"He's cordial," Blanco said of Whyte. "Says he wants to work things out. But everybody starts out that way. They say they want to move trees and save stuff. It's a wonderful thing if it's true. I'm not positive or negative about them, but it sounds like they are being proactive."

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At Bexley Ranch, the idea is to "re-naturalize" the streams.

Cattle grazing altered the water network that crisscrosses the pastures' wetlands, Whyte said.

"It's very difficult to bring the streams back to exactly what they were," he said. "But we'll return them to the manner they were, where there's tree cover around them, and we'll put walkways along them to allow public use, as opposed to just walkways along the road network."

As part of the Bexley deal, Newland will also pay $78-million for road improvements, including widening part of SR 54 and building most of Sun Lake Boulevard, a new north-south road linking SR 52 and SR 54.

For those like Blanco, the jury is still out on whether Bexley will remain an oasis of calm.

For Whyte, it comes back to the Clarksburg experience.

"The lesson learned from that is that you can never fully tell what the issues are," he said. "The best thing is to talk to people and always work with residents."

Chuin-Wei Yap covers growth and development in Pasco County. He can be reached at 813 909-4613 or cyap@sptimes.com.