By KEVIN WIATROWSKI
Tampa Tribune (Florida)

The Jordan family’s 300-acre ranch north of Dade City one day might become a significant employment center for east Pasco County.

Thursday, county officials approved a proposal that calls for building a mix of apartments and town houses fronting U.S. 301, and that designates more than 1.2 million square feet of land as industrial and commercial on the property, which lies between U.S. 301 and the CSX rail line, about a mile north of the Dade City Business Center and next to the Joy-Lan Drive-in theater.

Family members had wanted to build homes on the property but changed their minds as the county’s emphasis shifted toward creating employment centers, attorney Clarke Hobby told the Development Review Committee on Thursday.

Much of the development would be woven among wetlands that poke like fingers into the property from the north. Hobby said the goal would be to integrate the wetlands into the project through boardwalks and other access points.

The proposal won praise from Richard Riley, a resident of Trilby who helped his neighbors fight large residential projects at Berry Hill and Citrus Ridge. Riley urged DRC members to block the landowners from selling to industrial users that might export the area’s groundwater.

Riley and other residents also raised concerns about obtrusive lighting, traffic problems and other details.

That prompted Hobby to remind DRC members that the proposal aimed simply to get zoning for the land to prepare it for sale at some undetermined time.

“This is too important to get caught up in minutia at this point,” Hobby said.