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Nursing Home To Be 1 Building

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By ELIZABETH LEE BROWN, The Tampa Tribune

Published: October 17, 2007

Updated: 10/15/2007 07:13 pm

LUTZ - Developers of a proposed 55,227-square-foot nursing home on North Dale Mabry Highway received the go-ahead to build the facility under one roof.

Land-use hearing officer James Scarola sided with the owners, Home Quality Management, and approved a variance last week allowing the facility in a single building.

Land-use planner Steve Luce, who was representing Home Quality Management, sought the variance because Hillsborough County codes cap nonresidential buildings within the North Dale Mabry Overlay District at 20,000 square feet.

In a five-page report filed last week, Scarola ruled the waiver is justified.

The proposed nursing home has a certificate of need from the state and is an allowable use on the property zoned agricultural, single-family residential, he wrote.

The county's comprehensive plan seeks to protect elderly housing. Limiting the building size was not intended to prevent affordable health care or preclude nursing home health care standards, the report said.

The 120-bed nursing home would be on 5 acres at the former Cypress Creek Landscape Supply store on North Dale Mabry Highway, about a half-mile south of Lutz-Lake Fern Road.

Luce has said the nursing home would be one story with an internal outdoor courtyard. Splitting the facility into three buildings to comply with the regulations would be a hardship in design, cost and building efficiencies, he said.
Wilson Lakes neighbors who opposed the variance at a hearing Sept. 20 said the larger building would erode the rural lifestyle Lutz residents want to protect.

But Scarola concluded that granting the variance would not 'substantially interfere with or injure the rights of others.'

In addition, neighbors' concerns about noise and stormwater were unfounded, he wrote.

Reporter Elizabeth Lee Brown can be reached at (813) 865-1502 or ebrown@tampatrib.com.

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