I’ve been writing about the area now known as South Shore for almost 25 years, 19 of them with this publication, and have come to know the area – and its people – pretty well.
While many of South Shore’s communities grew randomly as people moved in, built houses and started businesses, Sun City Center was a master-planned development built by Dell E. Webb. The grand opening was Jan. 1, 1962.
Originally, Sun City Center was much smaller, with homes only in the area near its original Town Hall on Cherry Hills Boulevard; well before Community Hall, which now stands on South Pebble Beach Boulevard, was even a twinkle in the developer’s eye.
The areas now known as Sundance, south of Sun City Center on U.S. 301, and the Villages of Cypress Creek – which now carry a Ruskin address – were part of Webb’s original site plan but were split off and made into family-style housing communities in subsequent site plan modifications.
But Sun City Center continued to be a retirement mecca.
The community was considered safe and secure partly because its private streets were accessible only from State Road 674, which was, until the mid-1980s, a quiet, two-lane road.
The master plan showed the community as “closed in” in every other direction.
A security patrol was formed by volunteers to watch out for anything, or anyone, suspicious who came into the area.
As the community grew into what is now known as Greater Sun City Center, which includes Kings Point and nearby assisted living and nursing home facilitates, expansion brought people, and people brought in more and more of the outside world.
Early Sun City Center residents didn’t like that. They wanted to keep their lifestyle as it was.
Then, some time in the mid-1980s when different residents moved in, Sun City Center’s volunteerism spread from within the community to other areas of South Shore. Residents started working in area schools, at the hospital, in the newly formed legal program for low -income families and at the area’s two missions.
Still, when they went home at night, it was to the “closed in” security of Sun City Center. In fact, they’d been promised by their developer that no roads would be built through the community that would connect to highways. People would always have to enter from State Road 674, which would make “outsiders” easy to monitor.
Then in 1989, the Florida Legislature granted Sun City Center residents the privilege of driving golf carts on its private streets. But soon, golf carts caused a problem for transportation on State Road 674 and the Florida Department of Transportation was called upon to set specific golf cart crossing stations on it.
Although many things have changed since then, access to the community has remained restricted.
Now, Hillsborough County is making community plans for as many areas as possible to help control the type of growth each area wants.
Since each community is different, they all want different things.
In January, a county planning map revealed South Pebble Beach Boulevard connecting to U.S. 301, just south of the new Renaissance community in southeast Sun City Center.
While some residents say this would grant them easier access out of the community, heading toward Ellenton or Parrish on U.S. 301 without having to backtrack to State Road 674, the Community Association representing more than 11,000 residents is taking a serious look at the county’s maps.
They think most residents will oppose this vehemently.
Just where did the idea of this “opening” into the community come from? How long has it been on county maps, and who put it there are some of the questions community leaders are asking.
Brian Grady, a planner with the county’s Planning and Growth Management Office, told me May 3 that the road connection went on the map as part of a general site plan modification in 1990.
He says county’s records state that the developer is required to connect South Pebble Beach Boulevard to U.S. 301.
But as of May 3, Katherine Han, spokeswoman for Sun City Center’s developer, WCI Communities Inc., says WCI has no plans to connect those roads. Going further than that, Han stated in an e-mail that the developer would honor the wishes of the community.
The county planning map, which will be available for view at the next Sun City Center Community Plan meeting May 15 at 4 p.m. at the South Shore Regional Service Center, 410 30th St. S.E., Ruskin, shows the South Pebble Beach Boulevard connection to U.S. 301 as a yellow line intersecting at a point which will be occupied by a new commercial center on one side and the entrance to Forest Brooke, a new 2,800-home single-family community (not part of Sun City Center) on the other.
The Sun City Center Community Association has formed a committee to study the maps and poll residents about the plan before approaching county commissioners asking them to intervene so that “no outside access” is permitted through Sun City Center.
Resident fears include traffic going through the community, “outsiders” bringing litter and possibly crime, and the possibility that more cars on the roads could cause FDOT to pull the special golf cart privileges currently enjoyed by Sun City Center residents.
Grady says in order for the developer, WCI, to be relieved of “its responsibility to connect the roads” is for that company to petition commissioners with a personal appearance and ask that the requirement be removed.
They can’t just “not do it.”
With all the development in the area, it will be interesting to see the results of the resident’s poll and also whether any such poll will have an affect on county commissioners.
Traffic meeting
Hillsborough County will have a public meeting May 17 at 6:30 p.m. at the Riverview High School in the cafeteria, 11311 Boyette Road. The purpose of the meeting is to discuss the widening of Boyette Road from Balm-Riverview Road to Donneymoor Drive. The estimated $10.5 million project will include widening the Boyette Road section from two lanes to a four-lane divided highway with sidewalks, bicycle lanes, bus bays and landscaping. Construction is expected to begin in late 2006 and be completed by late 2007. 

Penny Fletcher is the editor of The Sun and the South Shore News, affiliates of The Tampa Tribune