Kensington is no home for store

Happy Daylight-Saving Time Monday!

So, I’m having a Cattle Dog chat the other day with an old friend from our newspaper days, and he started going off about the Home Depot.

“What Home Depot?” I asked.

The Home Depot! The Citrus Hills Home Depot. Do I not know about this?

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Turns out there are plans for Home Depot on S.R. 44, and Citrus Hills wants permission to add an entrance/exit onto Kensington from its commercial property (Tuesday, 5:01 p.m. public hearing for Clearview Estates). My friend, who lives in the affected neighborhood, said it will draw unnecessary traffic through the community.

Most people would agree. Allowing big-box stores to entice customers through the convenience of residential neighborhood streets ... well, let's just say I'm looking forward to that public conversation Tuesday.

But it’s also somewhat the scenario these days. Developers are pushing the envelope with county commissioners to see how far the politicians will go to appease them. Won’t know if you don’t ask, right?

Citrus Hills has a history of land-use success. I couldn’t think of a single instance in the last 30 years that Citrus County commissioners said no to the Tamposi family, the developers of Citrus Hills.

Now, before going any further. Let’s be clear about something. Citrus Hills is the granddaddy of them all in Citrus County. It has consistently set the standard for upscale residential quality. Those homes account for a lot of property taxes. And, in general, Citrus Hills doesn’t seek its success to the detriment of Citrus County residents.

Nowhere is the Citrus Hills influence seen in such a public manner as on C.R. 486, where the roadway takes on distinctly different characteristics in Citrus Hills than it does elsewhere. Nothing particularly wrong with that; some would say it shows harmonious planning between the county and its top high-end residential developer.

Then there’s Ottawa. Not the county’s finest moment. It cost us millions and we got nuttin’ out of it.

The basic Ottawa story:

On a 3-2 vote, county commissioners in 2010 paid $2.9 million for Ottawa Avenue, a perfectly paved road that fed current and future Tamposi developments. The county, supposedly worried that C.R. 491 would never be widened, connected Ottawa through several residential streets to S.R. 44, creating a “bypass” that few would ever use.

What it did in real life is pay the developer rather generously for a road that still basically has the same purpose as was intended. A new Citrus Hills residential development is being built on 486 opposite Ottawa. It will share the traffic signal the county installed for a bypass it didn’t need.

That entire Ottawa debacle has worked out fine for Citrus Hills. Citrus County taxpayers, well, not so much. That's not Tamposi's fault. He didn't initiate the Ottawa purchase. That whole thing was bungled by the county from the beginning.

By the way, Ottawa came on a 3-2 vote. One of the no votes was a freshman commissioner named Rebecca Bays, who worried about the effects on residential neighborhoods.

She said at the time: “We haven’t done anything but shift a little bit of traffic from one road to another.”

So, Home Depot on Tuesday's County Commission agenda.

Cut through the jargon, and the request is simple. Citrus Hills plans to develop a Home Depot on its commercial property along S.R. 44 and wants access not only to the highway — that’s allowed — but also to Kensington, which isn’t allowed.

All the technical people signed off on it. Nothing to see here. They note that the actual details of turn lanes and such for Kensington will be discussed LATER when a specific plan comes to commissioners.

Since speaking with my friend, I’ve twice driven east from Forest Ridge Boulevard on C.R. 486 to Citrus Hills Boulevard. From there, it’s less than five minutes through neighborhood streets to the Home Depot site.

Some things are simple. This is one of them. Providing Kensington direct access to Home Depot (and other adjacent commercial ventures down the road) is unacceptable to many Citrus Hills residents, as it should be. They see their neighborhoods being used as a shortcut, and for what?

It may be out there, but I couldn't think of a single instance in Citrus County where a major store parking lot spills directly into a residential street.

​We love ya Citrus Hills, but this one needs a close look. On the outset, it's an intrusion on a lot of lives. It's easy to see it from their point of view.

Have a wonderful Monday, friends.

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