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Pasco Declines To Buy Land For Gopher Tortoise Preserve

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By Carl  Orth | The Suncoast News

Published: February 24, 2009

NEW PORT RICHEY - Endangered gopher tortoises are thriving on a Hudson-area site that scores of Beacon Point residents want the county to buy as a preserve.

Presented with a petition today signed by some 200 people, Pasco County commissioners agreed the land certainly could be worthy of preservation.

Commissioners declined, however, to use money from the county's Environmental Lands Acquisition and Management Program fund to buy the land.

The ELAMP money comes from the county's share of Penny for Pasco special sales tax revenue, which is restricted for specific purposes and corridors, commissioners explained.

The site the petitioners wanted the county to buy, which is along Buffalo Drive, isn't within one of those corridors. Buffalo Drive is roughly between Hudson and New York avenues.

Money to buy the land might be available from state agencies, commissioners suggested.

The tortoises already dodged one development plan, residents reported.

D.R. Horton Co. had planned to build 68 triplex townhouses and 43 single-family houses on the nearly 84-acre site. The property is bordered by the Beacon Point subdivision, the Reserve, the Estates, Wildwood, Links Golf Course and the Clayton Property. Horton executives had planned to relocate the gopher tortoises prior to construction.

The developer, however, wound up selling the property to a limited partnership called Hillwood Investments, a Ross Perot Company, according to research by G. Richard Heinen, a Beacon Point resident. Commissioners were supplied copies of the information Heinen compiled.

Reportedly the purchase price was about $200,000.

Carl Orth can be reached at 727-815-1068 or corth@suncoastnews.com.

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