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Size May Sink Nursing Home

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By ELIZABETH LEE BROWN, The Tampa Tribune

Published: September 26, 2007

Updated: 09/24/2007 08:11 pm

LUTZ - A 55,000-square-foot skilled nursing home proposed on North Dale Mabry Highway would violate a building size cap designed to preserve the area's rural nature.

Residents say allowing the larger building would erode the community's bucolic lifestyle.

Yet splitting the nursing home into three buildings would create more change and not be cost-effective, said Steve Luce, the nursing home's planning consultant.

Luce presented the variance request for the larger building at a hearing Thursday. Hillsborough County land-use hearing officer James Scarola is expected to make a decision by Oct. 11.

Home Quality Management wants to purchase 5.29 acres off North Dale Mabry Highway to build the skilled nursing home. The parcel is part of a 10-acre site and the former Cypress Creek Landscape Supply store.

The company needs the variance because the county's Lutz rural design standards limit nonresidential buildings to 20,000 square feet.

The 120-bed nursing home would be one story with an internal outdoor courtyard and residential-looking architecture. It will have 89 employees working in three shifts, with about 30 to 40 employees there at any time, Luce said.

The parcel is at 19091 N. Dale Mabry Highway, about a half-mile south of Lutz-Lake Fern Road.

Home Quality Management, based in Palm Beach Gardens, operates 59 nursing homes and assisted living facilities in the Eastern United States, according to its Web site.

Luce said there is a need for health care in the community, and the state's Agency on Health Care Administration has granted a certificate of need for a 120-bed facility.

Constructing three buildings instead of one would be a hardship in design, cost and building efficiencies, Luce said.

'It cannot cost effectively and practically be broken up into three buildings,' he said. 'In every respect, it adheres to the Lutz rural design standards, except for the size.'

Five neighbors have written e-mails opposing the variance. Two of them spoke at the hearing Thursday.

Michael Hunt, who lives adjacent to the property, said allowing the larger building would degrade their rural lifestyle.

'We live rurally for the peace and the quiet and the darkness. This will change all of this in a big way,' he said.

Hunt compared the size of the 55,000-square-foot nursing home to the nearby Publix shopping center, which has 68,000 square feet.

He said the nursing home can be built as three buildings, but owners are choosing not to.

'They want to save as much money as they can,' Hunt said. 'They've made it plain their chief concern is to make a profit on these 120 people as best they can.'

Wilson Lakes neighbor Robert Cribben said a 55,000-square-foot nursing home under one roof doesn't fit within the community's rural design rules, which give exemptions to churches and schools.

'It's still a very, very large facility. It will have very large impacts to that neighborhood,' he said.

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

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