New Townhome Community In Epperson May Get An Elam Rd. Entrance After All

Residents of Abby Brooks Circle (ABC) in the Epperson II CDD met with Pasco Planning Dept. director David Engel (blue suit) and Development Services director David Allen (gray suit) during the May 6 Board of County Commissioners meeting to discuss alternatives to using ABC as the only access point to a new townhome community in the Epperson North CDD.  

Even though the county attorney’s office told Pasco County’s Board of County Commissioners (BCC) on May 6 that there was nothing they could do about Metro Development Group’s plan to put the only entrance to a new townhome community —  located in the Epperson North Community Development District (CDD), through a quiet Epperson II CDD community along Abby Brooks Cir. (ABC) — the residents who live on ABC have been encouraged by the possibility that a possible solution appears to be on the horizon.

As of today, the efforts of ABC residents Candice and Mark Alfieri, Danielle Polovich, Alexandra Lewis, Erin Totaro, the Epperson II CDD Board and many of the 120 total affected families on ABC and Lily Arbor Way — who met twice the week before the May 6 BCC meeting to put together a strategy to protect their quiet neighborhood full of children — seem to have been fruitful, as a Metro spokesperson told the Neighborhood News that the details of an agreement for a possible second entrance to the JK2 townhome community off Elam Rd. is in the works, but is not yet finalized, and released only the following statement:

“Metro has heard the concerns raised by residents regarding access for the Epperson North townhome community, and we want to assure you we are working with local officials to devise the best possible plan for everyone involved. We ask for your patience as we navigate a solution. Metro prioritizes resident safety and neighborhood connectivity. We’re committed to thoughtful planning and collaboration to ensure the long-term success of the Epperson community.”

Abby Brooks Circle (ABC) resident Alexandra Lewis was one of nearly two dozen residents living on ABC in the Epperson II CDD who asked the Pasco Board of County Commissioners for help regarding an approved entrance through their quiet street for a new townhome community in the Epperson North CDD.  

The current plan — which was approved administratively by the county staff using the State of Florida’s new Land Use Equivalency Matrix, without a BCC vote — has Elam Rd. as an emergency-only entrance to the townhome development. 

In other words, the townhome site, which was originally donated to the Pasco County School District for an elementary school, did not need a BCC vote to be rezoned for JK2’s 186 planned townhomes after the School District gave the site back to Metro and said it didn’t plan to build a school on it.

County attorney Jeffrey Steinsnyder told the commissioners on May 6 that there was nothing they could do to change the development plan, but commissioners Jack Mariano, Kathryn Starkey and Lisa Yeager all said that they supported the efforts of the two dozen ABC residents who spoke or planned to speak at that meeting. 

Representatives of the ABC group then met with Pasco Planning Dept. director David Engel and Development Services Dept. director David Allen while the May 6 BCC meeting was still taking place to see if, in reality, anything could be done to keep ABC from being the townhome community’s only (or main) entrance.

A week or so later, even though the future townhome residents currently are still planned to also have access through ABC, the main entrance to the JK2 community could now be shifted to Elam Rd., which is much more capable than ABC of handling the additional (estimated) 1,000 or more trips per day the 186 townhomes are expected to generate. 

Look for another online update as soon as any agreement is finalized, as well as a fully updated story in the June 10 edition of Wesley Chapel Neighborhood News.


Pasco Seeking Park Site In Connected City; Plus, Epperson II Townhome Concerns 

Although the meeting happened a little more than a month ago as you’re receiving this issue, there were two important new pieces of information that came out of the presentations about the 7,800-acre “Connected City” (CC) development made to the Pasco Board of County Commissioners (BCC) by Metro Development Group principal Kartik Goyani and the county staff on Apr. 9. 

The first had to do with the number of single-family entitlements still available in CC. William Vermillion of Pasco’s Planning & Economic Growth department, who oversees MPUDs in Pasco, said that a recent study by the county found that there are still 44% of the single-family detached home entitlements left in CC. 

“Even though you were told a couple of years ago that there were no more single-family (SF) entitlements left,” Vermillion said, “there actually are still about 4,400 remaining [of the 10,583 SF homes originally approved for CC]. We also have about 50% of the multi-family, which includes townhomes and garden-style homes for the higher density areas. We also still have roughly 37% of our commercial left and 75% of the office. And, we have roughly 26% of the land remaining.” 

Dist. 2 Comm. Seth Weightman told me after that meeting that although he was shocked the staff had been giving the commissioners the wrong figure for so long, he didn’t believe the “mistake was intentional on anyone’s part. We’ve had a lot of turnover in our staff.” 

But, had Comm. Weightman known there were still SF entitlements available, would he still have voted to allow other developers within CC to convert their plans from SF to multi-family (MF)? 

“No, I would not have voted to convert them [to MF] had I known the correct figures,” he said, adding that he remembered that one of the conversions he reluctantly voted for, “felt like chewing on a mouthful of sandspurs.” 

The Bigger Issue: Parks 

As for CC’s current Park Service Areas, Vermillion said on Apr. 9 that if you combine “all of the parks in [CC], there are 115 acres of neighborhood parks already built, not inclusive of the planned VOPH (the adjacent Villages of Pasadena Hills development) Superpark or the Wesley Chapel District Park” (neither of which are in CC). 

But, Weightman noted that the 240-acre (previously reported as 300-acre) VOPH Superpark, “isn’t going to be as ‘super’ as we anticipated. We’re going to fall short on a few areas of uses, and, with the age of the people moving to the area growing younger, I really feel we need to revisit the diverting of [CC] funds to the VOPH Superpark.” 

He added, “With the [WC] District Park already at capacity, we need to find a way to have a similar style park within [CC] and whether we reallocate funds from the shortfall that the Superpark is going to have, or we restructure the way that funding mechanism works, I think it needs to be done because [CC] is here today. The youth and their parents are demanding that we have field space now for a variety of sports. The people are here now, so the 40 acres we have in the site we [Pasco] already owns [in CC]
that footprint needs to be doubled and we need to figure out the funding between VOPH and [CC] because something needs to happen sooner than later in the [CC} corridor.” 

Pasco Parks Dept. director Keith Wiley then responded that Comm. Weightman was correct. 

“And, the question is,” Wiley said, “Where should we locate the other park facilities in [CC]? We’d have to ‘swap’ projects in order to have a district park, since a community park doesn’t really get it done. We’d have to decide which of the 21 capital projects identified need to be removed.” 

Board chair & Dist. 3 Comm. Kathryn Starkey said she would like Wiley to look into using the site Pasco owns near the future CC Town Center Hub, either for a land swap or to build a District Park on property that had originally been slated for a utilities maintenance area. 

Wiley added, however, that the county’s Master Parks Plan was done more than a decade ago and could be updated, “rather quickly” to see if there are locations within CC that could accommodate a District Park. At our press time, we had not heard if that update had been completed. 

Dist. 1 Comm. Ron Oakley, whose district includes CC, cautioned, however, that the entire county needs more ball fields, not just the [CC], “and we can’t build more parks without having the money to maintain them.” 

Epperson Ranch II CDD Issues 

On May 1, I attended a meeting of the Epperson Ranch II Community Development District (CDD) Board of Supervisors, which is, “the only CDD in Epperson that has no parks and no amenities whatsoever,” said CDD Board chairman Joseph Murphy (as well as several of the 50 or so Epperson II residents in attendance during the three-hour meeting). 

“And the site in Epperson II that previously was designated as a school site has been rezoned for 186 townhomes and the one entrance and exit for that townhome community is now Abby Brooks Circle (see map), which is a quiet, residential neighborhood that can’t handle the 400 additional vehicles per day from those townhomes. The entrance to that townhome community should be off Elam Rd., which is already a main road through Epperson, and which was designated as the entrance to the school site. But, when the property was converted to townhomes, the Board of County Commissioners agreed to change that to only allow emergency vehicles to access the townhome community using Elam Rd.” 

The Epperson II residents who spoke at that CDD meeting all voiced their displeasure, concern and fear for the safety of their children if the townhome community was able to proceed with the plan to use Abby Brooks Cir. as its only ingress and egress point. Although the next BCC meeting was on May 6, two days after we went to press with this issue, the residents shared with me a resolution drafted by the CDD’s new lawyer, Jere Earlywine of Kutak Rock, which was sent to every commissioner on May 2, asking that the BCC reconsider its decision to not allow regular vehicular access to Elam Rd. and to commission a new traffic study — since the previous study was conducted in 2015, when the townhome site was still a school site. 

The CDD resolution says, “…In order to protect the health, safety, and welfare of the [Epperson II] District and its residents, guests, and constituents, the Board hereby declares its objection to the proposed change of roadway configuration for the Former School Parcel, specifically as it relates to authorizing a single point of ingress and egress to and from the Former School Parcel, and without a primary access from the Former School Parcel to and from Elam Road. The Board hereby directs District Staff to transmit this Resolution to Pasco County, Florida, and respectfully requests that Pasco County take all appropriate action to rectify the improper change of roadway configuration for the Former School Parcel, to conduct and/ or re-conduct a traffic study in order to determine the impact of the anticipated traffic on the existing roadways and residents of Epperson Ranch II CDD, and to modify and/or revoke any development approvals related thereto.” 

The only Epperson II CDD supervisor to vote against drafting and sending the resolution to the BCC was Mike Lawson, who also is the only CDD supervisor who works for Metro. Lawson is the director of operations for the CC developer. 

The BCC didn’t have anything about Epperson II on its May 6 agenda, so no action could be taken, but the residents of Epperson II, particularly those who live on Abby Brook Cir., were planning to show up at that meeting in force to again express their concern, this time to the county commissioners. 

We’ll keep you posted.

Meadow Pointe II & III Residents Sound Off On Proposed Wrencrest Dr. Gate 

The residents of Meadow Pointe II (MPII) and Meadow Pointe III (MPIII) have been down this road before. A gate went up on Wrencrest Dr., the main thoroughfare through the Wrencrest communities which exist in both MPII and MPIII back in 2020 and Pasco County ended up telling MPII that the gate had to come down because it wasn’t properly permitted. 

The residents of MPIII thought that the discussion of a gate at the entrance to MPII on Wrencrest Dr. from the MPIII side was over, but it clearly was not. 

On Apr. 23, the MPII Community Development District (CDD) hosted a “Neighborhood Meeting” at the MPI clubhouse on County Line Rd. — “a neutral location with a much larger meeting room than the rooms at either MPII or MPIII,” according to MPII CDD district manager Jayna Cooper of Inframark Community Management (at microphone in photo above) — where the idea of erecting a new gate, similar to the one where Kinnan St. in New Tampa meets Mansfield Blvd., also in MPII, was again the main topic of discussion. 

“This is not a CDD meeting,” Cooper told those in attendance as she read the following statement, “Meadow Pointe II’s goal in going through this process is fully focused on safety enhancement and the security of all residents, including in both MPII and MPIII. The goal in submitting an application to the county is to receive approval to construct an emergency gate on Wrencrest Dr. between Blanchard Ct. and Rensselaer Dr. (see photo below) to cut down on the excessive traffic and the speedway this road has become. The road was never intended as a regional framework roadway for regional transportation uses. The policy goal is instead to return its use to as a neighborhood internal roadway we are all paying for as residents while still allowing for emergency access for emergency services.” 

Cooper then introduced Jerry Whited of BDI Engineering, who said, “We did do a traffic study that confirms our findings and proposal that a large volume of the traffic that is coming to the west side of Wrencrest is traffic coming from the MPIII side but also from traffic that is accessing MPIII from outside of the community. It’s being used as a major cut-through for residents who are coming from MPIII who should be accessing Mansfield Blvd. via Beardsley Dr., which is a much more pertinent roadway to be using for this type of vehicular traffic. It is a larger roadway, less narrow and has less pedestrian traffic and no driveways, while there are hundreds of driveways on Wrencrest Dr.” 

Roughly two dozen speakers, mostly from MPII but some from MPIII, were given three minutes each to speak. 

And, while there were a couple of MPII speakers who acknowledged that speeding is happening in both neighborhoods and agreed that installing strategically-spaced speed tables along the full length of Wrencrest Dr. might be just as, if not more effective, most of the MPII speakers mentioned the two MPII Wrencrest residents who were seriously injured and had to be airlifted because of speeders and said that installing the gate was the only real solution to the problem. 

MPII Wrencrest resident Kathy Jimenez read a moving statement written by her neighbor Ray Quinones, who was one of those airlifted after being hit by a car that had passed fellow neighbor Marla Mitchell “doing at least 45 mph” and both expressed sadness over how Quinones had suffered since the accident, writing, “The worst part is the memory loss. Chunks of my life are gone.” 

But, almost all of the MPIII residents who spoke at the meeting said that adding speed tables, narrowing the road and even adding trees along the portions of Wrencrest Dr. with no homes would be a much more effective way to slow down the traffic in both communities. 

In fact, MPIII Wrencrest resident Michael Jenkins said, “It makes no sense to think that the best way to solve the problem is to cut off the community from the main thoroughfare. We can do better than this. The members of the boards of both MPII and MPIII have allowed this to become a spiteful, back-and-forth match between the two CDDs.” 

Updates from the MPII legal counsel were expected to be provided at the MPII CDD Board meeting scheduled for May 7, or two days after this issue went to press, but our phone call to Cooper to ask if the MPII CDD Board would actually vote on the issue at that meeting was not returned before we went to press. 

Even if the MPII CDD Board votes tonight to move forward with approving the gate between the Wrencrest neighborhoods in Meadow Pointe (MP) II & MP III, the final decision would still be in the hands of the Pasco County Board of County Commissioners (BCC), which would have to add the vote to a BCC agenda at a future date.