By KEVIN WIATROWSKI
Tampa Tribune (Florida)
Wednesday, October 31, 2007

NEW PORT RICHEY – The tools were children’s playthings, but the job couldn’t have been more grown-up: Mapping out how Pasco can absorb more than 400,000 new residents between now and midcentury.
For about two hours Tuesday afternoon at Pasco-Hernando Community College, about four dozen people gathered around maps of Pasco County discussing what the county’s future might look like. They used Lego blocks to represent population density and ribbons to map out roads and transit corridors.
In the end, the organizers of Reality Check Tampa Bay hoped the exercise will help planners and elected officials throughout the Tampa Bay region chart a future that can shepherd natural resources such as water while accommodating a projected doubling of the region’s population to 6 million people. More than 800,000 of those people could live in Pasco, according to estimates by the University of Florida and U.S. Census Bureau.

When polled by event organizers, more than half of the workshop’s participants said that much growth over the next five decades was too much growth for the region.

They also expressed strong concerns that the region may not be able to provide enough water to supply all those new residents.

Tuesday’s exercise was sponsored in part by the Tampa Bay Partnership, a business-oriented group with its eyes on the region’s future. It was the last of seven county-level exercises that followed a regionwide planning event held in May. More community-level events are planned for early next year, said project director Amy Maguire.

“If we had been having this discussion 10 years ago, our community might look different now,” Maguire said.

The crowd at PHCC was predominantly a who’s who of the county’s leadership. The roster included County Administrator John Gallagher and several members of his planning staff, planning consultant King Helie, and land-use lawyer Clarke Hobby and the staff of the Pasco Economic Development Council.

But the crowd also included private citizens such as Virginia and Norman Blake of Zephyrhills, who participated in a similar planning exercise this year mapping out the future of the Pasadena Hills section of eastern Pasco.

While many of their table mates championed Smart Growth staples such as mixed-use developments and widespread transit use, the Blakes were more concerned about what they saw on the horizon for their corner of Pasco.

“They’re trying to say that it’s inevitable,” Virginia Blake said.

What’s inevitable? she was asked.

“That mess,” Norman Blake said, waving a hand at the plastic blocks stacked in towers between Zephyrhills and Dade City.

“This is like having it shoved down our throats,” Virginia said.