By George Niemann

PoHo contributor and R-LAND, UCAN, Amendment 4, FSP activist

The ideas expressed are my own and not necessarily those of the organizations to which I belong

At the land use meeting held on January 12, 2010 in downtown Tampa, Hillsborough’s Board of County Commissioners decided to spare a Brandon neighborhood from further commercialization.

Neighborhood residents cheered and gave a standing ovation to the BOCC for rejecting a rezoning request that would have replaced a 19.2 acre citrus grove at the intersection of Lithia Pinecrest/Brooker Road with a shopping center containing medical offices, apartments, fast food chains and 24 hr retail stores.

Not all of the BOCC deserved those cheers, however. The vote to reject the rezoning request was 5-2. Team Sprawl members, Commissioner Jim Norman and Commissioner Kevin White were the two that voted against rejecting it. Just to be clear, Team Sprawl has 4 members on the BOCC – Hagan, Higginbotham, Norman and White, however, there are occasions when members do break ranks for political reasons and end up voting for citizens, and not for developers, although that is generally rare.

The problems with this case were the usual suspects – incompatibility with the surrounding community and lack of infrastructure, namely the roads to support the resulting traffic.

This article appears in Jan 13-19, 2010.