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SUN CITY CENTER - This area’s expectations for its future are set for open house exposure this month. However, both the multiple-community plan and the event are likely to be on the unusual side.
The greater Sun City Center area vision aimed at guiding development in the next 20 years is to be exhibited in detail Saturday, June 28, according to Anne Cross, the facilitator who has led a series of community-wide workshops where the plan has taken shape. The two-hour open house is scheduled for 2 PM in the SCC Community Hall on South Pebble Beach Boulevard.
The open house is an “excellent” opportunity for residents from throughout the geographic area covered in the plan – Valencia Lakes, the Villages at Cypress Creek, Freedom Plaza, Kings Point and Sun City Center - to inspect the vision-in-words that has been created since the first of the year by their neighbors working through the process in regularly-scheduled meetings, Cross noted. “We invite everyone with an interest in the area’s future to examine the various components of the plan and to share their comments,” Cross added.
While most community plans are introduced to their widest audiences in one or more open houses, this one will vary from the usual, just as the plan itself varies from those completed by other communities in the South Hillsborough County region, the facilitator pointed out.
Most of the South County community plans hammered out thus far, from Gibsonton to Wimauma, Ruskin to Riverview, have been for unincorporated sections where such issues as housing densities on still-open land and commercial district redevelopment have been of high interest and vigorously debated, she said. But, all of the communities in the greater SCC plan originated as master-planned developments, Cross explained, which has brought a differing emphasis to the process, in keeping with the concerns of families and retirees living in established subdivisions.
The greater SCC area plan as now drafted consists of seven principal elements – Health Services, Transportation, Land Uses, Communications, Recreation Sites, Environmental Safety and Commercial Development. Within each element, a number of goals have been identified, Cross added.
“What we want those attending the open house to do is sit down with us and rank the goals,” she said. “We want area residents to tell us what goals they think actually can be reached in the next five years.” This approach is expected to produce “realistic priorities,” Cross said.
To this end, the open house arrangement will include about 12 tables, each manned by an individual familiar with the process and ready to answer questions as well as assist residents in making comments. Some elements are expected to require more than one table and others will need only one, Cross said.
In addition, packets of information will be provided each person attending the open house and area maps will be available as visual aids, she said.
The plan advisory group also is interested in any “new ideas” related to the area’s future, Cross said, and a table will be set aside for residents who will offer their concepts for the future.
In the weeks following the open house, as information resulting from it is incorporated, Cross said she anticipates a final draft of the Greater SCC Area Plan will be generated under the guidance of professional planners on the county level.
In the meantime, representatives of the planning group also expect to appear before Hillsborough’s Board of County Commissioners in July on behalf of the vision now nearing completion. An earlier group of local planners opted out of the county’s area-wide planning process a couple of years ago, Cross explained, but to remain in that position would impair the plan’s enforceability. Consequently, the group will ask commissioners to fit the greater SCC vision into an upcoming planning review cycle, making the final, fully approved product enforceable.
Getting from here to there still will be an involved procedure, acknowledged Paula Harvey, a planning manager with the county. Ultimately, the Greater SCC Area Plan must be approved by the BOCC and then supported in a public hearing, Harvey said this week. It also must get the nod of approval from Florida’s Department of Community Affairs before it can be made part of Hillsborough’s Comprehensive Plan by virtue of last supportive public hearing.
©2008 Melody Jameson
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