Room to Roam
by Jill Maunder

IF YOU LISTEN CLOSELY, YOU’LL HEAR whispers of impending change. So say those close to Hernando County, where large tracts of open land are being bought up and rave reviews of its nature-friendly, small-town lifestyle are spreading far past its county lines. With the opening of the Suncoast Parkway two years ago, Hernando – named after Spanish explorer Hernando DeSoto and set at the northern reaches of the Tampa Bay area – has become easier for non-Hernandoans to explore, and vice versa. Businesses and homebuilders in the long-rural county applaud its easy access to Tampa and its jobs, international airport, professional sports and shopping. “Its time has arrived,” Blue Stone Development’s Jerry Harris says of his home county, where he’s been in business for 20 years. “We feel very strongly about that.”

It's just another day at the office for Shirley Jordan, president of ESCO Inc., a manufacturing leader in its field selling into 35 countries.

His company’s Avalon Investments is ready to develop a residential community on 374 acres “one short block” from the entrance to the 42-mile parkway. Avalon Villages, the first phase of which will encompass 118 units, will be marketed as “a Tampa bedroom community,” he says.

Harris is far from alone in his optimism. Across 306,000-acre Hernando, where cattle and dairy farming have prospered along with limerock mining, a half-dozen other residential developments have begun construction or entered the rezoning or permitting process. Commercial centers are planned with several of them. A new commercial/industrial park prominently positioned at Interstate 75 and State Road 50 has sold three parcels. An 18- hole championship golf course is open for business at the country club community of Hernando Oaks, where the first 50 homes are up or about to be completed.

With its proximity to Tampa International Airport and dead-center location in Florida – a fact trumpeted by economic development boosters for its value to transportation, Hernando has long appealed to industrial and distribution interests. Most of them have located at its Airport Industrial Park, with proximity to the Suncoast Parkway near Spring Hill Drive and U.S. 41 and adjacent to Hernando County Airport.

MANUFACTURER ESCO INC. is a success story made to order. It’s in its third location at the industrial park, with each location bigger than the other.

“This company was started with one bead breaker (hydraulic equipment to remove tires from rims),” president Shirley Jordan says, “and it’s turned into what we have today.” ESCO is the world leader in manufacturing specialty tire-changing equipment, selling it to 1,500 re-distributors in 35 countries. It is a “niche market” business, Jordan says, with most of its specialty lines of tire-changing equipment private-labeled for ESCO.

Besides dozens of styles of bead-breakers, ESCO makes and sells pumps, couplers, jacks, wrenches and air hoses. Only 10 percent of its inventory is for tires of automobiles and light trucks. Most of the stock is for heavy-users – such as agricultural vehicles, off-road trucks, trailers and earthmovers.

Previously named Equipment Supply Co. before the acronym was adopted, the company moved in 1991 to Florida from a suburb of Akron, Ohio, where Jordan founded it in 1984. Her husband, George M. Jordan, has his own business, serving as an expert witness in lawsuits filed over tires and their servicing.

The Jordans decided to move to the ‘Nature Coast’ because her parents reside in Hernando. They were set to buy a home and locate their businesses to the north, but soured on it when they found telephone service spotty. “We live and die by the telephone,” Jordan says.

When the company moved to Hernando, ESCO had three employees. It has grown to a staff of 13. In 1999, gross sales were less than $1 million, Jordan says, and this year ESCO will gross over $4 million.

ESCO first leased space in the industrial park, then constructed a building and in April bought and moved to a 20,000-square-foot building, one-fourth of which is office space. It’s four times the size of the previous building.“When we built our building four doors down, we expected it to fill our needs forever,” Jordan recalls.

But as ESCO grew in inventory as well as staff, “we were bulging at the seams,” she says. “We went ahead and bought this rather than build. At least it gives us some room to grow.”

Also at the Airport Industrial Park, Manzi Metals expanded, moving into vacated space next door to grow to 10,800 square feet and a staff of 15. President Barbara Manzi wanted additional room for more privacy for her employees (such as those working in a “call Health Management Associates Inc. room”) as well as more office space.

But since the expansion, the metals distributor – which sells to the Department of Defense and aerospace and automotive industries – has seen sales decrease and had to let five employees go. “Last year we were quite busy,” Manzi says, “After the war, it’s slowed down.”

Other expansions in the past year were those of manufacturer Accuform Signs Inc., which doubled its space to 67,000 square feet, and model aircraft distributor Imex Model Co., which grew to 30,000 square feet.

With no relocations to the park this year, these expansions delight Mike McHugh, director of the county’s office of business development. “The economy seems to be turning around, “ McHugh says, “and we’ve fared pretty well. We’re holding our own.

“TEN PERCENT of our businesses are considering expansion. Money’s cheap right now, so that’s an important factor.”

The public sector also has accounted for some recent construction at the airport. A new hangar soon will be added for the sheriff’s department and Bayflite (helicopter service for emergency transportation to Bayfront Medical Center in St. Petersburg), airport technician Bob Beason says. Army Aviation Supply Facility No. 2, which has four units based at the airport, has built two hangars in the past two years, Sgt. John Grotheer says. One is 12,000 square feet and houses a C-23 Sherpa airplane, and the other is three times that size to accommodate the unit’s Black-hawk helicopters.

Long-awaited laying of rails to the county’s railpark will be complete in early 2004. They will connect the railpark, which is west of U.S. 41, to the existing tracks on the eastern side of U.S. 41, allowing rail access for industrial buildings platted in the park. “That just gets us into another market,” McHugh says, “There are certain segments of industry that require rail service.”

At One Hernando Center, an industrial park located near the interchange of State Road 50 and Interstate 75, discussions about developing half of its 300 acres are in “preliminary planning stages,” says Al Fluman of OPC Properties. McHugh is “actively marketing our holdings” and indicates that there are several prospective land buyers, Fluman says.

Cortez Crossing, a new commercial/ industrial park west of I-75 at State Road 50, or Cortez Boulevard, is getting “some very good inquiries,” real estate broker Gary Schraut says. One prospect is considering building an 11,000- square-foot warehouse on spec to attract a tenant to the 45-acre park, which has frontage of a half-mile on I-75. Three parcels have been sold, but owners appear to be holding them, with no activity imminent. But one of the owners wanted a cell tower and built one in the park’s retention pond, Schraut says.

MEANWHILE, THE RETAIL SECTOR is seeing conversions of buildings vacated by previous tenants. Shoe and carpet retailers have moved into premises on State Road 50 that Publix and Walgreen’s used to call home, McHugh says, and a former Food Lion is being converted to about 35,000 square feet of medical office space on U.S. 19. A Sam’s Club now is being built on State Road 50, McHugh says. WalMart Super-Centers have been completed on U.S. 19 at Spring Hill Drive and U.S. 41 on the south end of Brooksville.

But the residential sector is where it’s happening.“People can get a lot more home for their money,” McHugh says. “Our land is less expensive.”

Hernando is growing, surely and steadily, though it is not exploding. “We are seeing residential grow,” Schraut says, “which is driving commercial properties.”

Single-family building permits have increased by 200 or so this year over last year, nearing 1,700 to 1,800, planning director Larry Jennings reports. The pace is well beneath levels of permitting in the early 1980s when Hernando grew markedly, he adds. County statistics show that Hernando’s population rose from 44,000 in 1980, to 101,000 in 1990, to 130,000 in 2000.

Residential activity recently has been strong in areas north of Spring Hill and south of Brooksville. “Land is rapidly pushing a premium price,” says Schraut of Coldwell Banker/Schraut & Associates.

Even though Hernando has long been considered rural, “there’s so much land owned by the state and federal government – thousands of acres – and the mines take a good part of the north center section of the county,” Schraut says. What’s left to the private sector is being gobbled up. When he spoke with the MADDUX BUSINESS REPORT, Schraut was working on three deals involving large tracts.

“We move along on a weekly basis here, things are moving along so rapidly,” he says. “As residential rooftops get created, your commercial goes up and then your retail. We’re getting ready to cross the 150,000 population number.”

Schraut is among those involved day-to-day with one of the new throng of residential communities – Chastain, which is proposed for 113 acres east of Brooksville by VLT Inc. The gated community, which is in the process of county approvals, would include 131 home sites and 240 zero-lot-line units, plus 10 acres of commercial uses along State Road 50.

NOT FAR FROM THAT SITE are 420 acres that crushed rock and cement baron Tommy Bronson is spearheading for development as Majestic Oaks, named for the high hammock land’s lofty trees. Majestic Oaks Partners Ltd., which was formed to combine his children’s acreage with that of Neil Law Jr., plans a 600- unit community ranging from villas to large homes on two-acre lots, with a small portion of commercial attached to it. Majestic Oaks is in the permitting process and plans to start construction early next year. The property lies near the Brooksville Golf and Country Club, which the partnership also has been renovating and plans to open this month.

At the 626-acre golf club community of Hernando Oaks, “we’re trying to get the young professionals from Tampa and Pasco County and some of the retired market from the Northeast,” project manager Ronnie Dunston says. The project at U.S. 41 and Powell Road is a joint venture by Pensacola Group LLC and TECO Properties, a subsidiary of TECO Energy, and envisions 975 homes built among rolling hills as well as two commercial “town centers.”

At the site of Avalon Villages near the Suncoast Parkway, plans call for not only 200 units when built out but also for commercial development. Harris envisions a supermarket, bank and veterinarian as likely tenants there. The proposal is under review and, if approved, ground will be broken early in 2004.

Real estate veterans continue to keep their eyes peeled to preparations by the prominent Jacksonville-based LandMar Group, with commercial powerhouse Crescent Resources, start the 1,000-unit Southern Hills. The golf-course community is to be built at State Road 50 and U.S. 41. About 160,000 square feet of commercial space will be included.

Longtimers in Hernando welcome the likely spillover from such an immense development and the clout of this major player. (Crescent Resources is the real estate investment arm of Duke Energy, the North Carolina utility). They savor increased national visibility for Hernando as a result of Southern Hills. “We’ll get so much activity because of their marketing efforts,” Schraut says of Southern Hills.

Once these expansive communities are built out and the commercial bustle that they spawn follows, no explorer will ever be able to call Hernando sleepy or rural again. By then, the county’s motto ‘Close To Home, Room To Roam’ may need some alteration.