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Seffner community wants rural protection along Green Corridor

TRIBUNE PHOTO BY YVETTE C. HAMMETT

Community Plan committee member Marcia Curl, right, talks with Chandrika Broos about the plan at a meeting earlier this year.

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BY YVETTE C. HAMMETT

yhammett@tampatrib.com

Published: November 6, 2009

SEFFNER - Citizens working to devise a plan for their community say they want assurances that the rural character of the area won't be destroyed by the county's plans for a high-tech corridor along Interstate 4.

Getting that assurance may require them to set specific zoning restrictions within the planned high-tech "green corridor" that falls in Seffner's rural community. The corridor would run from Tampa east to the Polk County line.

On some 300 plus acres between MacIntosh Road to the east and the county's urban service area to the west, from I-4 to the north and U.S. 92 to the south, the county currently allows only minimal residential development.

The corridor plan, still being finalized by Hillsborough County, could allow for offices, light industrial, health care businesses, bioscience and research facilities.

Members of the Seffner-Mango Community Plan Committee say they want the ability to limit the types of uses going into that portion of the corridor that lies in a rural area know as "the notch."

"This is a very unique circumstance here," said Terry Flott, director of the Seffner Community Alliance, a watchdog group for the area. Tighter zoning restrictions are in order, she said. Others agreed during a meeting Nov. 5t Quest Church on Kingsway Road.

Accomplishing that may mean requiring planned developments, which means developers have to lay out specifics on the types of uses and conditions they would put on a parcel before a zoning change is granted.

Kami Corbett, an attorney representing the Carter Family Trust, which owns the 94 acres in the notch, said she is willing to take the idea of requiring planned developments to her client and the county officials studying the corridor plan, so long as Seffner residents will agree to allowing light industrial in the area.

The committee agreed to set another meeting to give the staff time to come up with a list of businesses that might be allowed in a light industrial zone and to give residents more time to consider restrictions for the notch area.

No date for that meeting has been set.

The first public hearing on the green corridor plan goes to The Planning Commission in February, then on to the county commission for public hearings in April.
At that time, the Seffner-Mango Community Plan and the corridor plan must line up, county planner John Healy said.

Reporter Yvette C. Hammett can be reached at (813) 627-4763.

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