First Families: The Crystal Lagoon is spurring big sales in Epperson & excitement among the community’s first residents

Epperson resident Jennifer Rose is excited to be one of the first residents of the community where the first Crystal Lagoon the U.S. is expected to open in February or March of 2018.

Jennifer Rose was in the market for a home, and narrowed her choices down to two communities.

Her realtor, however, suggested they take one more drive, this time to Wesley Chapel, to a large stretch of land off Curley Rd. with nothing to see but trees, grass, dirt and tractors.

Rose, a hair stylist at Salon Loft, was sold a vision that day, of a development with affordable homes that were cheaper than they ones she had previously looked at, that would be built from the ground up with gigabit internet, roads that would one day handle autonomous vehicles, a community that would be vibrant and active, and year-round parties and events.

Oh, and this new community also promised to be home to a Crystal Lagoon — which boasts a specially- formulated system for keeping its water crystal clear and clean. The lagoon, the first of its kind in North America, will be surrounded by white sandy beaches, have a swim up-bar, an adventure cove, cabanas and multiple party areas.

“There was nothing there at the time,’’ Rose says. “Even the model home was only in framing. But, I could just see the outline of the lagoon.”

The pictures of what that Crystal Lagoon will become sealed the deal.

“I absolutely loved the whole concept,’’ said Rose, who bought a five-bedroom, 2,500-sq.ft. home.  “I saw all the pictures of what it was going to be. It was swimming in bottled water that piqued my interest.”

Rose is one of the first handful of residents to move into Epperson, a new community being constructed by the Metro Development Group north of S.R. 54 off Curley Rd.

Epperson is the first part of the “connected city,” a project created by a senate bill that called for a private-public partnership between Metro Development and Pasco County.

The project will turn 7,800 acres of mostly undeveloped land in Wesley Chapel into a mini-city of its own within 50 years, with 37,000 homes, more than 60,000 jobs and almost 100,000 projected new residents.

“The connected city thing is hard to imagine,” says Diane Bissett, who became the first-ever resident in Epperson. “It will be neat to see it come together, and to say we were a part of that.”

Diane Bissett, pictured above right with her children, is the first homeowner in Epperson (Photo courtesy of Diane Bissett)

As an employee of D.L. Horton, one of six homebuilders in Epperson, Bissett had an inside track to the first home being built in what promises to be an original, almost-futuristic community.

Bissett had been eyeing the new development for what felt like forever, primarily because of the promise of the 7.5-acre Crystal Lagoon.

When she initially heard about the project, she says, she was working for a different homebuilder in Watergrass, right across the street. Not only did she think she would never be able to buy a home there, she says it just didn’t seem real what Metro was proposing.

“No way,’’ Bissett thought.

However, changing jobs and getting first dibs on a house at Epperson, Bissett, the mother of a 2-year-old boy and 4- and 14-year-old daughters, jumped at the chance to be part of something fresh and new.

And, as it turned out, a little frightening. For a month, Bissett and her family were the only residents on their street.

“There was a whole lot of dirt and not much else when I moved in,’’ Bissett said. “It was very dark and scary. It was a little spooky in the beginning.”

Bissett was the first of what is now roughly 60 residents living in Epperson, where homes are still going up and will one day number roughly 2,000.

Home sales have so far exceeded expectations., driven by the excitement over the first Metro Lagoon by Crystal Lagoons, which is currently being filled in anticipation of a spring opening.

“The Lagoon effect is real,’’ said Greg Singleton, the president of Metro Development, recently at an event announcing that water has started filling in the lagoon.

Todd Carrier bought the second home in Epperson, and wasn’t going to let bad timing deter him once he read about the lagoon.

Carrier had just bought a home in Spring Hill and had lived in it five months when he heard about a Crystal Lagoon coming to Wesley Chapel sometime around April.

“Honestly, it was a shot in the dark,’’ Carrier says. “Since I just bought a house I didn’t think I’d get approved.”

Not only did Carrier get approved, the 25-year-old AT&T sales rep found someone to rent his Spring Hill home to within five weeks.

“I heard about the lagoon and I wanted to be part of that before the prices went sky-high and got to the point where I couldn’t afford it,” Carrier says.

An avid gamer, Carrier is excited about the gigabit internet speeds, which can download high-definition movies in 30 seconds, and says the community events also are a bonus.

He grew up in a new community once before, when his parents moved into The Preserve at Lake Thomas in Land O’Lakes in 2000.

“It was not as nice as this is going to be though,” he says.

In the end, of course, it was the lagoon that spurred him to dive in headfirst.

When friends and coworkers ask him where he lives, he often just describes his new digs as “the place with the lagoon.”

“They don’t know Epperson,” he says, “but they know the lagoon.”

While the allure of the lagoon has brought everyone together, Bissett says being part of something so innovative and buzzworthy is intoxicating. Her son loves watching the construction trucks drive by as new homes continue to sell at a rapid rate.

Bissett jokes that for years, many of her South Tampa friends often passed on coming over on weekends because Wesley Chapel was too far a drive. Now, “I’ve had a lot of friends come out of the woodwork to ask me, ‘What are you doing next summer?’”

As someone who doesn’t take a lot of vacations, Bissett says Epperson, “will be like living in a resort vacation place.”

The community already has hosted trick-or-treating, and the streets are now being filled in the evenings with children riding bicycles and hanging out in their friends’ driveways. Bissett thinks a special camaraderie has developed amongst what is currently a small, tight-knit group.

Jennifer Rose says her kids can’t wait for the lagoon to open in the spring. (Photo courtesy of Jennifer Rose)

Rose agrees. She was the third person to move into Epperson, and from there, the numbers have steadily risen. One by one, each home on her street was filled with a new family. and her children, Christopher, 11, and Kayla, 9, have made new friends with each “Sold” sign that goes up.

“Oh my gosh, they love it,’’ says Rose, who previously rented a home in Wesley Chapel. “In our old neighborhood, I couldn’t get my kids to go outside. Now, I can’t keep them inside.”

It won’t be long now before what will be the center of the Epperson universe is ready for its first swimsuit-clad visitors, and the vision sold to the current residents comes into full view. Residents will lay in hammocks on Gasparilla Island after filling up at the lagoon’s swim-up restaurant and bar, or rent kayaks to cruise the waters of Venture Bay, or maybe just relax at The Grotto and cool off under the waterfall.

“The lagoon,’’ Rose says, “is going to be the place to be.”

First Crystal Lagoon Breaks Ground In Wesley Chapel; #2 To Begin Later

You get a lagoon…and you get a lagoon…and you get a lagoon!

While a good many Wesley Chapel and New Tampa-area residents have been eagerly awaiting the prospects of a state-of-the-art Crystal Lagoon being built in our area, a second lagoon also is in the works as Metro Development Group moves to raise the bar on amenities for new housing developments.

Though it was first reported back in 2014, Metro finally is digging the hole on the former Epperson Ranch that will become the much-anticipated, first Crystal Lagoon in the state of Florida. Next year, construction on a second lagoon, located at Mirada on the old Cannon Ranch, will begin as well.

Construction of the 7.5-acre lagoon at Epperson Ranch, located north of the Bridgewater community on Curley Rd. north of S.R. 54., is expected to be completed by the end of 2017.

Crystal Lagoons was founded in 2007 by Chilean biochemist-turned real estate developer Fernando Fischmann, who created a system based on pulses and ultra sonic filtration that can take virtually any kind of water and purify and maintain it at a low cost. Crystal Lagoons is the only company in the world with the technology, which is patented in 160 countries, and claims it currently has more than 300 projects in development in 60 countries.

According to Crystal Lagoons, its system is more efficient than a swimming pool, will use 100 times less chemicals and is 50 times more energy efficient, while consuming only 2% of the energy needed by conventional filtration systems.

The lagoon uses 30 times less water than a typical 18-hole golf course, and its clear, blue water will be surrounded by a white, sandy beach.

The Crystal Lagoon at Epperson Ranch will be 4,200 linear feet in circumference (which is almost 1 mile around), according to Metro Development Group president Greg Singleton.

The average depth will be eight feet, with some spots as deep as 10-12 feet. The water is so clear, Singleton adds, it doesn’t refract as much light, so the deeper spots will give it more of a deep blue color.

The lagoon will hold about 14-15 million gallons of water.

Where Metro Development Group is going to get that water created some consternation locally, when it was expected they would pump it in from the local aquifer. Local residents worried that tapping into the aquifer would create sinkholes.

Instead, Metro plans on purchasing water from Pasco County Utilities to fill the lagoon, although the developer does still reserve the right to find another source.

Another cause for the delay in construction was the uniqueness of the project, which created permitting issues for Pasco County and made finding the right people to build it painstaking.

“Being that this is the first Crystal Lagoon in the U.S., it is a unique construction project and we wanted to make sure we found the right partners and contractors for the job, which took more time than we expected,’’ Singleton says. “Also, being the first lagoon in the U.S. to be designed and permitted, we were methodical in our approach to get it right. We also needed to give our approving agencies time to work through their process, as this was also new for them.”

Epperson Ranch, which is part of Metro’s “Connected City” project currently weaving it’s way towards approval from the Pasco Board of County Commissioners, is already preparing to begin selling homes with the flashy amenity as a big draw. The first lot closing was expected to happen by the end of 2016, and model homes will start to be framed by the end of January.

The other Crystal Lagoon in Wesley Chapel also will be in the Connected City, Singleton says, in the Mirada community, which is just south of S.R. 52, a little further up Curley Rd.

“The two Lagoons in Connected City have been planned for at least two years and provide another compelling reason for people to live, work, and play in Connected City,’’ Singleton says.

Development of the Mirada community is expected to begin in the spring of 2017, and Metro is looking to break ground on that second Crystal Lagoon by the end of 2017.

Metro, which also developed the Union Park community in Wesley Chapel, plans to build four Crystal Lagoons in Florida.

Along with the two in Wesley Chapel, the developer intends to break ground on a lagoon in the SouthShore Bay community in South Hillsborough in spring of 2017, and will build another in a Fort Myers community called Brightwater.

For more information about the Crystal Lagoons, visit Crystal-Lagoons.com. To see what else Metro Development Group has going on, check out MetroPlaces.com.