PCGC Closes, But Fight Over Its Development Goes On

All is quiet at the Pebble Creek Golf Club (PCGC), which closed for good on July 31. So, what’s next?

Homes…probably. Maybe?

PCGC owner Bill Place had all but finalized a deal to sell the roughly 150 acres of land the course sits on to Pulte Homes, which had plans to build 230-240 homes on the property, but told the Neighborhood News last week that the company had changed its mind.

“I think they are a bit scared of the publicity that will come with this,” Place said.

Another builder, KB Home, also appears to have removed itself from consideration to redevelop PCGC.

Place is still talking to other builders.

Place is also still awaiting the results of environmental testing on the course, which was found to have high levels of arsenic and dieldrin from insecticide applications (from before he owned the property, Place says). He says the results have been sent to the Environmental Protection Commission and directions on how to remediate the soil so the land can be developed is forthcoming. 

Darlene Young, Bob Young and Ray Walker get in one last round at Pebble Creek Golf Club. (Photos: Charmaine George)

The cost is expected to be somewhere between $1 million-$3 million, but Place says a $3-million price tag would be out of the question.

And, that’s where the fight begins.

Leslie Green has lived on the 10th hole at PCGC for nearly 30 years, in one of roughly 130 (of the 1,400 total in Pebble Creek) homes physically located on the golf course.

She created the “Save Pebble Creek” Facebook page in March 2019, and is leading the charge to convince the Hillsborough County Board of Commissioners to deny any developer the rezoning it will require to build over the golf course..

Green is against building additional homes on the golf course site for a number of reasons — including the environmental impacts, flooding issues, the loss of green space and how new homes would affect an area she says is already densely populated.

She also is skeptical of many of Place’s claims. She thinks a rezoning could lead to far more than just 240 homes, doesn’t feel Place was losing as much money on the golf course as he claimed (while sabotaging it with negative portrayals) and did little in the way of improvements the past few years.

“When you’re constantly threatening to close the course, people are going to stop coming,” she says.

Green, who live-streamed on Facebook on July 31, the final day the golf club was open, also was a vocal critic when Place tried to get a brownfield designation for the course, which would have provided him with a tax credit that could have covered three-fourths of the remediation costs.

She was emboldened by the successful efforts of the community to defeat the brownfield designation. And, she thinks it can happen again.

“We didn’t just start Save Pebble Creek, we’ve been working together on this for two years,” Green says. “We have a strong community.”

Mike Jacobson, the homeowners association president for more than 1,000 of the 1,400 homes in Pebble Creek, is taking a more measured approach. Like most residents in Pebble Creek, he prefers a golf course over homes. But, he says that the choice isn’t between a golf course or new homes, but rather between an abandoned golf course and new homes.

Jacobson is mostly concerned with the worst-case scenario, and has to look no further than Plant City. In 2013, Walden Lake homeowners recommended denying rezoning of its struggling golf course for development.

Instead, the course shut down, the owner went into foreclosure and the formerly lush green fairways became overgrown with weeds and foliage. The two-story clubhouse became a haven for trespassers. Home values in Walden Lake took a big hit.

“That is my biggest fear,” Jacobson says.

There are now, seven wasted years later, plans to build homes and a “city center” on the long-dormant Walden Lakes course.

While making it clear that he is opposed to development on the golf course site, Jacobson had met with Pulte representatives before their retreat about the benefits of redevelopment.

At the end of the day, he says, it comes down to what is best for Pebble Creek’s homeowners, and the value of their properties.

“We are trying to find what is strategically the best outcome for all of Pebble Creek and, quite frankly, there’s no great outcome,” he says. “The best outcome is to find a buyer who wants to operate it as a golf course. If there’s anybody out there that wants to operate it as a golf course, I’d love for them to reach out to me….we would fight to the end with the commissioners to say we have somebody who wants to operate it the way it’s been zoned and keep it as a golf course.”

He says, however, that to date, no one has done so.

While engineers for a new developer could soon begin forging plans, the fight picks up when the rezoning request reaches the Hillsborough County Commission, possibly in 4-6 months.

“Any full rezoning boils down to the vote of the County Commission,” Place says. “And you can’t predict that with full accuracy. I expect there to be opposition, and I understand that it will be contentious.”

Here’s some photos from the last day of the golf club.

County Approves 22-Percent Trash Assessment Boost

Despite a number of problems with curbside garbage service in recent months, Hillsborough County Commissioners didn’t seem to have much choice but to vote to increase trash assessments for the coming year.

On Aug. 4, commissioners voted 5-2 in favor of the 22% increase, effective Oct. 1, rather than run the risk of having no service when the current contract with Waste Connections of Florida expires.

District 2 Commissioner Ken Hagan, who represents the New Tampa area, was one of the no votes, along with fellow Republican Stacy White.

“A majority of (Waste Connections’) service failures were in north Hillsborough, including my neighborhood,” said Hagan, a Carrollwood resident. “It was getting to the point where they were missing up to 50,000 homes a day. Residents were extremely frustrated, and I completely understand. I feel the same way.”

The annual assessment will rise from $289.32 to $352.79, an increase of $63.47 annually, or $1.22 per week.

Solid waste assessments pay for two garbage collections per week, one recycling collection per week and one yard waste collection per week, as well as self-hauled disposals at the county’s collection centers.

Fuel prices, truck maintenance and population growth have led to the need for higher assessments, according to the county staff.

However, because of recent performance issues with Waste Connections, the timing for a boost couldn’t be worse. 

The trash service provider missed more than 250,000 pickups in June and July, while hundreds of routes weren’t completed. The poor service resulted in thousands of emails and phone calls from angry residents.

Last month, the county threatened the trash hauler with fines if it did not improve service. Hagan says Waste Connections blamed Covid-related issues as well as an employee shortage brought on by not being awarded any of the new contracts, worth $589 million, which were approved in June and will begin in February of 2022. 

The new contracts went to Republic Services of Florida, Waste Management Inc., of Florida, and Fomento De Construcciones Y Contratas, Inc. 

Hagan said the new contractors are working with Waste Connections of Florida to bring over some of their employees.

“I feel relatively comfortable where we’re at now,” Hagan says. “They say they are caught up. And, we have procedures in place to prevent this, should it happen again. I feel much better than I did a couple of weeks ago.”

Miller Is Wesley Chapel’s Own Eye In The Sky

Local Realtor Jeff Miller gets ready to send his drone into the sky for his latest video of The Grove at Wesley Chapel. Miller has shot and posted more than 80 drone videos of locations around Wesley Chapel. (Photo: John C. Cotey)

Jeff Miller has seen a lot of things since moving to Wesley Chapel in 2004.

As a Realtor for Charles Rutenberg Realty, he has seen the market take off, then crash land, then take off again. He has seen the area grow and grow. He has seen neighborhoods evolve and new roads appear.

These days, however, Miller’s view has changed….to about 300 feet above the ground.

If you’ve been on the web looking for all of the new developments and businesses in Wesley Chapel, you may have come across one of Miller’s many drone videos, which are focused on all of the new developments in our area.

“I really love sharing the videos with everyone,” Miller says. “I think it’s pretty cool.”

Miller has been posting regular old ground-level videos on his YouTube page since 2017, but kept noticing more and more drone videos. 

“They were unique and super visual,” he says. “What a difference.”

Miller bought his first drone — a surprisingly compact gray DJI Mini 2 — in February, and has since posted more than 80 videos, from local communities like Persimmon Park, Estancia, River Landing and Avalon Park to area favorites like the Crystal Lagoon at Epperson, the Wiregrass Ranch Sports Campus of Pasco County and the Wesley Chapel District Park. 

The first drone video he posted was 47 seconds of footage at the Overpass Rd. construction at I-75, followed by 99 seconds of Epperson Ranch and its lagoon. None of Miller’s first five drone videos topped 100 views, but many of his videos since then have fared much better. 

A video of the future Wiregrass Ranch Blvd. has more than 600 views, a drone tour of Winding Ridge by GL Homes has more than 1,000 and an update on the Overpass Rd. construction currently is his top drone video to date with 1,300+ views.

All of his videos combined have nearly 20,000 views.

While Miller started posting his videos as a hobby, he says it hasn’t been bad for business either.

“I’ve had a lot of people reach out to me because of the videos,” he says. “Especially the updates on the Overpass Rd. bridge, the parks and the malls. There are people interested in buying homes from out of state and I think it’s pretty cool they can see how the community has progressed.”

Jeff Miller’s drone videos focus on new developments like Avalon Park Wesley Chapel (top) and popular places Wesley Chapel is known for, like the Crystal Lagoon at Epperson.

Miller said the wealth of aerial video opportunities is a far cry from his first decade or so in Wesley Chapel.

“Back then, there was really nothing to shoot (here),” he says.  

A 1993 graduate of Southern Connecticut State University with a degree in corporate video communications, Miller has long had an eye for photography and video. He says he started taking pictures when he was a kid and, when he moved to Wesley Chapel, he took on a role helping the former Greater Wesley Chapel Chamber of Commerce (now the North Tampa Bay Chamber) with social media. 

“Before Facebook, that was pretty impossible,” he says. But, he would attend events, and send out email blasts with recaps and photos. 

He says he helped start the Wesley Chapel Fall Festival and art show. In 2008, Miller even ran for the Chamber’s Honorary Mayor of Wesley Chapel. He hosted a wine tasting at the old Cork and Olive on Bruce B. Downs Blvd. hoping to attract voters, and one of his goals was to get signs up in the area that said “We Love Wesley Chapel.”

“I think I met everyone in Wesley Chapel that year,” Miller says, chuckling. 

A long-time promoter of the community, Miller says he tries to get out and shoot something in the area every day. Although he says he graduated from college without even having used the internet or a cell phone, he eagerly dives into new technology.

 “This technology is ridiculously easy to use,” he says. “It really gives me the chance to make awesome, shareable content. I hope people like it.”

To check out Miller’s drone videos, visit FlyWesleyChapel.com. For more information about Jeff, visit Jeff-Miller-Realtor-Wesley-Chapel-Fl-homes-for-sale.business.site or call (813) 382-8312.

Local Author Finds Inspiration Around Wesley Chapel

Mark Loren and his wife Susan have a strong bond with the characters in their October Fall series now available on Amazon.(Photo: Courtesy of Mark Loren)

As Mark Loren shops for groceries at the Publix on S.R. 56 in Wesley Chapel near his Meadow Pointe home, his mind imagines a battle scene taking place around the grocery store. Key locations across Pasco County, like Publix, are common settings in his post-apocalyptic present-day world book series, October Fall.

The idea came to the first-time author three years ago, after reading survival and prep books. The world he created is based on true locations, real people and key moments in his life. 

“It’s a thriller and an apocalypse and a love story,” Loren said. “And it all takes place in Pasco County.”

The story follows Jake as he uses his military training and knowledge of prepping from books to survive in a world after an Electromagnetic Pulse (EMP) attack. Without a power grid, chaos ensues and Jake must protect himself and his family. 

October Fall, the first book in the series, was released April 2, and has received 412 reviews, 83 percent of which were 4- or 5-stars.

The second book, November Feud, did even better. Of the 512 reviews, 92 percent were 4- and 5-stars.

The third book, December Battles, is expected to be released this month.

Loren took inspiration from his past to establish the life of his main character Jake, who, like Loren, is a retired Major in the U.S. Army who used to drive a tank. While Jake is a reflection of Loren, his wife Susan and children Jazlyn and Cole also are leading characters with similar personalities to their real-life selves. As Loren’s wife and editor, Susan says the events in the story may not be real but the connections between the characters are very real, indeed.

“Their relationship with us and their relationship with each other, those things are real,” Susan said. “That’s what makes the books real.”

Loren would travel to key locations in his series, marking places on a self-made map. When reading the survivalist novel Going Home by A. American, he was inspired to take a drive through Pasco County, where the book’s main character traveled. Taking inspiration from the series, Loren made October Fall an interactive story for readers to travel to the same places he did.  

“There is a little bridge on Morris Bridge Road that goes over Cypress Creek and, in the story, they stop there and do something,” Loren said. “And then, there’s a house that gets burned down by a good friend in the first book and we drive by and see the burned-down house.”

October Fall is the first in a series of books centered around a character who is trying to protect his family in a post-apocalyptic Wesley Chapel. 

Calling himself a discovery writer, Loren would keep the plot and themes in his head before transferring them onto paper, unlike his publisher, Boyd Craven, Jr., who would outline the novels. Loren currently has five books written with seven total planned out in his head. He says it took him six months to finish writing book one and three months to complete each book in the series, which enabled them to be published as rapid releases only a month apart.

Loren is a big fan of J.R.R Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings series, especially when the main characters break up into smaller missions before uniting to complete the overall goal. Taking inspiration from Tolkien, Loren says he saw the vision he wanted to create for the October Fall series.

Loren met Craven online through the Facebook group DD12 The Post Apoc Army of Readers. After Loren told him he had written four books, Craven decided to edit and publish them through his publishing company Raventhorne Books. 

“Writing the book is only half the battle, possibly less than half the battle,” Craven says. “Refining the book and getting it in front of the right audience at the right time and presenting it the right way is the other half of the game.”

Loren says the series begins to wrap-up in book 5, which is half written, but books 6 and 7 take the story in a stunning, new direction and even elicited a “Holy Cow” from Craven. 

The story is forever evolving. Loren says he would often find himself getting out of bed after having a good idea for his novel. Not wanting to forget a certain theme to incorporate into his stories, he would begin writing down the ideas at night. 

“I was concentrating on one, and going back and tying things up or making changes in another,” Loren says. 

Although October Fall is Loren’s first published work, he has been writing stories for years. When his wife was deployed during Operation Desert Storm, he would write to her of his last few days, accumulating more than 80 pages of writing and 13 chapters. He says their love story started more than 30 years ago.

To purchase October Fall or November Feud, visit Amazon.com/OCTOBER-FALL-October-Fall-Book-ebook/dp/B091NDFJBN.

Pasco County Offers New Tools to Help Olympus Pools Customers

Photo: WFLA

Pasco County Building Construction Services is stepping up to help customers burned by Olympus Pools, offering new tools and financial relief for those whose pool projects are in limbo due to open permits.

They have launched a dedicated webpage to help customers navigate the permitting process, as well as providing answers to any additional questions in this FAQ. Best of all, the county is waiving all fees associated with Olympus Pools permits through Dec. 31, 2021, a move expected to help hundreds of customers left with unfinished pools.

“We hope this action will help ease the financial burden on our customers who choose to seek other permitting options,” said Assistant County Administrator Sally Sherman.

Olympus Pools customers have three options for open pool permits:

  • Oversee the project yourself.
  • Hire a new, licensed pool contractor.
  • Cancel your pool permit.

To choose an option, just fill out the form found HERE and e-mail to BCS@MyPasco.net.

The county says over the past two years, Olympus Pools has pulled hundreds of permits for pool projects in Pasco County, and most remain unfinished.  For more information on your options, please visit the county’s new webpage: bit.ly/OlympusPermits.