A number of residential developments are in the works for Plant City, but North Park Isles stands out among them because of its large scale and geographical placement.
North Park Isles will be located north of Sam Allen Road and Park Road. Its single-family homes will likely be priced around $225,000 to $235,000, and they will be designed in a variety of styles. LandBuilder, the project’s developing firm, also plans to add a pond for kayaking, a walking trail and a clubhouse.
LandBuilder acquired the land in 2004. The property contains floodplains, which slowed the project’s progress. City officials would not allow the rezone until flooding issues had been solved. Even more of a roadblock was the mid-decade recession.
“I’ve got partners who have held it since 2006 — just been sitting on it,” Devon Rushnell, president of LandBuilder, said. “Right now, we’re just picking it back up, dusting it off, deciding which way we want to position it. We’re just waiting to figure out exact plans on how to move forward with it.”
The preliminary plat for phase one already has been approved, which comprises a basic layout design of streets and 319 housing units.
Phillip Scearce, senior planner for the City of Plant City Planning and Zoning Division, said LandBuilder had been trying to expand the 397-acre parcel to about 500 acres. The reason for this is a provision in the City of Plant City code that allows developments larger than 500 acres to have smaller front- and side-yard setbacks.
Scearce, Rushnell and City Engineer Brett Gocka said they did not know specifically when the project would move forward. Rushnell said he was waiting at least until the new city manager, Mike Herr, was instated.
Rushnell said Plant City was ideal for increased development because of its placement in relation to Interstate 4 and Interstate 75. There has been a trend of sprawl from Tampa in the exact direction of Plant City.
“I think (Plant City) could be the next New Tampa,” Rushnell said. “There’s just so much area that the city could grow into.”
However, the parcel upon which North Park Isles will be built comes with some distinguishable concerns. Of the currently annexed 397 acres, 163 acres are wetlands and 106 acres are upland forest, though the parcel is mostly surrounded by developed land.
Gocka said his team would work around the wetland areas, although it would be expensive. For example, in the northern region of the development, some sort of bridge is needed to cross from one upland area to another.
Rob Northrop is a faculty member at the UF/IFAS Extension of Hillsborough County. His areas of expertise are wildlife ecology and forestry. Northrop provides technical advice and planning assistance to private and public forest land owners on forest management and restoration, and the protection of natural areas.
Northrop said the necessary conversation was not whether to build a development like North Park Isles, but rather, how to go about doing so.
North Park Isles’ geographical location is favorable, Northrop said, because it is connected to an existing city.
“The more we can cause people to live in closer proximity to one another, the easier it’s going to be for us to conserve more of the landscape, more of the forest, more of the wetlands, more of the farmlands,” Northrop said.
Still, Northrop said the building process should be executed carefully because wetlands play important roles in the maintenance of human health and wildlife welfare.
“People could live on this land and not really disturb the values that society expects to get from forests and wetlands,” Northrop said. “That would pretty much depend on how much of it would have to be cleared, and whether there were going to be dramatic changes to the land.”
He also said it would be important to design the subdivision in a way that recognized the connections of ecological functions between uplands and wetlands.
New tools are available to help city planners determine the ecological value of portions of land, and how different developmental designs could maintain or decrease that value. The EPA recently developed a software program for this purpose called “EPA H2O.”
EPA H2O was designed specifically for use in the Tampa Bay watershed. Local governments can run models to determine the services that a piece of land currently provides, such as water quality, air quality and habitat structure.
Marc Russell, a Florida EPA research ecologist, led the development of EPA H2O.
“The tool facilitates comparisons between scenarios by translating ecosystem service production onto the common scale of dollars when possible,” Russell said.
He expects the program to be released this October, and available for use at epa.gov/ged/tbes. Northrop said he and EPA representatives hope to host meetings throughout the Tampa Bay area where city planners can learn how to use EPA H2O.
“We tend to see everything as black and white,” Northrop said. “We tend to see the environment pitted against economic development, and it’s unfortunate because it doesn’t need to be that way.”
Contact Catherine Sinclair at csinclair@plantcityobserver.com.