Lake Hideaway

The headline was foreseeable with the County Commission’s 4-1 approval of the Lake Hideaway project. There’s room to grow the county population so let it be. Commissioner Diane Rowden’s sole dissenting vote was also predictable. When will she learn she can’t buck the system; it works the other way around.

The estimated 2,400 homes and 1,300 townhouses on 886 acres at The Hideaway will be more than twice the 1,750 homes on 280 prime acres atop Hickory Hill but not nearly as numerous as the 4,800 residential units, 75 motel rooms, on 1,385 acres in the adjacent Sunrise subdivision.

Lest we not we forget the 365,000 square feet of retail space at Sunrise and the planned 50,000 sq ft of retail of The Hideaway. The Hill has a special exemption, but where there are more people, there are more retail stores. And more employees at those stores. The average yearly income of a worker in the County is $28,000 – in the Tampa area the figure jumps to $38,000. The difference will widen as those minimum wage jobs continue to proliferate in Hernando.

How nice the Board of County Commissioners required developers of The Hideaway to provide a 20-acre park. But the park will be in the confines of the subdivision! Dagnabit, what’s the sense in that when that part of the County could sorely use a park accessible to all?

Commissioner Rowden might find some solace with the token $370,000 set aside for affordable housing, even though the “state formula” indicates it isn’t required in this development. Her quest for affordable “workforce” housing will have to wait for another day; it’s an elusive pipedream no matter where people live in Florida.

So, where will these homeowners work to afford the $150,000 to $350,00 homes? The population is allowed to grow but what about higher paying jobs? The lack of diversity of employment opportunities will increase the 34% of local workers to job locations beyond the county borders.

Somewhere along the way of development in Hernando County, someone needs to step up the process to entice a broader range of businesses. Local schools are expanding curriculums with technical classes but those graduates won’t find many of jobs here locally.

I recently gave up cable TV for dish service. There’s no high definition of government proceedings so I won’t miss the characters on their poor rendition of a reality show.

This keyboard is beginning to typer-ventilate, so let me be done and go about my way visiting what will eventually be left of Hernando County’s Nature Coast.