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Examining Pasco County's future with a flinty eye

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BY TOM JACKSON THE TAMPA TRIBUNE

The Tampa Tribune

Published: October 28, 2009

Only the least romantic, least artistic and least forward-thinking among us can survey the optical blight that is much of Pasco's U.S.-designated thoroughfares and imagine, "This is as good as it gets." Hodgepodge is one term that leaps to mind, but it hardly stands alone.

Other descriptives are humdrum, haphazard, rundown and antiquated - as you might expect in a region where for generations land-use decisions have exhibited all the discipline of preschool soccer.

Pasco grew large and bustling on the promise of more house for less cash. Subdivisions splashed the landscape like Jackson Pollock wielding a brush. When coming as a result of landowner-developer conspiracies and lawmaker complicity, we call it sprawl, and in retrospect, we consider it dunderheaded.

Never mind the number of people so-called sprawl made happy (see: more house, less cash, above), especially when sufficient numbers of homeowners were established in a newly developed area to attract the necessities of life: a grocery, a pharmacy, a pizza shop.

This is not meant as an attempt to defend sprawl, except to note that defenders of bold new urban-clustering land-use plans such as the one county commissioners are considering have an interesting take on people caught in daily traffic snarls. The snared are not otherwise competent humans capable of making rational choices from a cafeteria line of options, but instead are victims of poor governmental planning.

That said, this space counts itself among the fans of wisely guided growth. And it is second to none in its admiration for lifestyle convenience. Nonetheless, there remain plenty of hurdles between the here and now and achieving the laudable ideals of an EPCOT-style future.

Is light rail the answer to the Suncoast's transportation troubles, or will it be a lightly traveled boondoggle with an insatiable appetite for taxpayer dollars?

What happens when developers interested in refurbishing the U.S. 19 corridor balk at the staggering costs of building, as county officials put it, "up, not out"?

And what does Pasco do with new residents still craving big backyards and more square footage for their residential dollar and regard the extra space as compensation for the annoying commute?

The moment, at least, is right.

In this prolonged sigh since the collapse of the housing dash it is beyond wise to prepare for the moment when the players mass once again at the starting line, eager to resume business as usual.

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