Pasco County’s torrid growth reaches once peaceful Shady Hills hamlet

The chickens are dying in Shady Hills.Dennis Kiegel and his neighbors suspect the culprits are coyotes — thieves in the night searching for their next meal.Kiegel gets it. The coyotes have been pushed deeper and deeper into more populated areas of Pasco County. The forests where they used to hunt have been clear-cut for townhomes and industrial plants.This kind of growth has been familiar to longtime southern Pasco County locals for decades as the Tampa Bay area, bursting at the seams, overflows north. But many residents of Shady Hills — just a 10-minute drive from the Hernando County line — put down roots amid pastureland and hay farms to escape places like Wesley Chapel and Land O’ Lakes, where suburbia is in full bloom.They didn’t think the growth would reach an area where the closest place with a parking lot was a mom-and-pop animal feed store.But Pasco County had other plans. Commissioners have approved several construction projects that will draw more people to live in Shady Hills and create places where they can work.The most recent is the Del Webb project , which will add more than 400 apartments and 700 retirement community homes — and could grow the census-designated area’s population by more than 10%. It’s under construction, alongside an adjoining office complex, retail space and over 100,000 square feet for light industry.Pasco commissioners are known for their welcoming attitude toward new construction. It raises property values not on what’s being built but on existing homes and land around it, bringing in additional taxes to pay for new roads and sheriff’s deputies.They have also prioritized ensuring that new construction includes places where people can work. They’ve said they don’t want Pasco simply growing as a bedroom community to Tampa, with residents commuting long distances to jobs, further stressing ever-crowded roadways.So development in Shady Hills also includes the newly completed Gary Plastic manufacturing site that received nearly $1 million in taxpayer incentive money to create jobs. And the approved expansion of the Covanta waste-to-energy power plant to go with a number of townhomes and suburban neighborhoods that were constructed during the past decade.The landscape has changed significantly, especially during the past five years, Kiegel said. “I feel like most people that you speak to that live out here are very, very unhappy.”Pasco County’s overall population has grown by nearly a third since 2010, faster than all the counties that border it, including Hillsborough County and Pinellas County.Wesley Chapel, now the largest population center in the county, has nearly doubled in size. Other communities are set to experience the same level of growth in coming years, including county seat Dade City , where officials approved a massive development. Zephyrhills , Pasco County’s largest city and home to the Zephyrhills Water company, put a halt to development last year after facing possible water shortages due to growth.There are more than 600 ongoing construction projects across the county, and over 100 in the pipeline for approval, according to the Pasco County government website . Ninety percent of them are private industrial, commercial or residential construction, as opposed to local government infrastructure projects.For a place where citrus groves used to make up a majority of the land use, it’s a shift, said Jon Moody, a member of the Pasco County Planning Commission.But with several freezes in the 1980s, droves of Mediterranean fruit flies and disease outbreaks, the citrus-growing industry is a fraction of what it used to be when Moody was a child in the 1970s. The county needs a new source of work — and light industry, which has taken root in Shady Hills and the rest of the county, is an easy thing to turn to, he said.Metropolitan areas grow. And growth will come to Shady Hills, and the rest of the county, too, Moody said.“I don’t like having my neighbor 10 feet from me, and I live in an area where my neighbors are better than 100 feet from me,” Moody said. “But the population is forced to move into areas that become developable, whether I like them or I don’t.”Some longtime residents fall firmly in the “don’t like it” camp, Kiegel included.He’s 48 and has lived in Shady Hills all his life. He remembers when Shady Hills Road, the namesake of the community, used to be a sleepy back-country drive. His in-laws put on an annual truck and car show in the late 1980s where they would close the road for an hour or two. They would drive the cars up and down, parade-style, for residents who would sit on the curb.Now the road is a main thoroughfare — closing it would be chaos these days, Kiegel said. There are too many semitrucks roaring to the manufacturing plants.Kiegel hasn’t considered leaving Shady Hills. The majority of his family still lives there, and many others are returning after working in other Florida cities. He loves it for its lingering rural feel. The thick canopy of trees between each house. The wildlife that used to tread across his backyard: gopher tortoises, foxes, white-tailed deer. He listens to choirs of birdsong drown out the far-off noise of the Suncoast Parkway.“It really is peaceful,” Kiegel said. “Just to be able to go outside and sit in your yard and not hear engines and fire trucks and ambulances. Unfortunately, now all I’m seeing are dead animals on Shady Hills Road because they’re being pushed out.”He’s especially worried about the Del Webb development’s effect on Crews Lake, he said. It used to be a popular Shady Hills boating spot, deep enough to water-ski across when he was a child. Now the water is choked with weeds and muddied with sludge, and often the waterline isn’t high enough for boats, Kiegel said.There is a general sense of unrest among his family and friends every time a development is approved by the County Commission, Kiegel said.Linda Farmer, who lives near the Hernando-Pasco county line, takes Shady Hills Road to work in Land O’ Lakes. Over the course of 35 years in the area, she said she’s never seen an alligator in the road — until now.There were three over the past few weeks near the Del Webb development. They were hit by cars and had to be relocated by the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission, she said. She’s also seen cranes and turtles lying dead in the same area.“It hurts my heart to leave my house and drive down Shady Hills Road,” Farmer said. “I get angry by the time I get to work.”Farmer thinks the environmental disruption in Shady Hills is a symptom of a larger problem across Pasco County: overdevelopment.Farmer has moved from Wesley Chapel to Land O’ Lakes to Spring Hill to get away from it. She understands that grocery stores and gas stations are needed for the people moving into Pasco County, but she thinks the rate of development is far beyond reasonable progress.“It’s like, who can make the most money and destroy their county the quickest?” Farmer said.Some outspoken Shady Hills residents have tried to get the Pasco County Commission to listen to their concerns. Jen Kerouac, a pastor at Shady Hills Mission Chapel, frequents meetings that alternate between Dade City and New Port Richey. She’s dedicated hours of driving time to speak her three minutes during public comment, she said.She shares concerns about overdevelopment, about the uprooting of live oak trees and clear-cutting of old-growth forests. She reminds them of the dangers of a two-lane main thoroughfare where cars veer off the road to pass slow traffic.Often it feels futile, Kerouac said. She has a life too: a congregation to care for and a job in real estate. Her passionate neighbors usually don’t have the same flexibility to back her up at the meetings every month. And she said sometimes it feels like the elected officials have stopped listening.“Every time we went to a meeting,” Kerouac said. “It was like, thanks for playing. Take a Pasco County pen home with you and have a nice day.”Moody, who has served on the planning commission on and off since 2007, is a proponent of landscape buffers like walls and hedges to protect rural properties, he said. At the same time, he said the growth is coming. He doesn’t think the county should try to stem it, he said.Kiegel has seen some of his old Pasco County neighbors head north again. They have moved to Hernando County, and sometimes as far as Citrus County and Sumter County, to try to preserve their rural lifestyle.In their place, he sees an influx of residents from out of state settling into brand-new townhomes along Shady Hills Road. And where he never did before, he spots coyotes.

Pasco County’s torrid growth reaches once peaceful Shady Hills hamlet

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