Patient Place

Patient Place

GOVERNMENT WATCH by Mark Gordon | Managing Editor

Billy Springer thought his latest project would be a fitting end to a distinguished career. But it's the delays that have been endless so far.

Billy Springer has been building homes in Sarasota since the Lyndon B. Johnson Administration. Long enough to have built 6,000 homes and developed at least 10,000 lots.

And long enough so that Springer is rarely, if ever, surprised. After all, he's survived six boom and boost cycles over the past four decades.

Springer has nonetheless been hit with several surprises over the last two years, as he developed plans for Palmer Place, a residential project that originally had the potential to become the largest affordable housing community in Sarasota County, if not the state. The still unapproved project, on 412 acres just east of Interstate 75 in mid-Sarasota County, was originally planned as 1,480 units. Half of those were to be marked as county-designated affordable housing.

After neighborhood opposition, the project has since gone through multiple revisions and has been downsized to 600 overall units, with 300 to be labeled affordable.

This was only after Springer held and attended dozens of meetings, with groups ranging from local citizen organizations to the Florida Department of Community Affairs.

The next meeting and potential vote on Palmer Place is scheduled for May 28, at a county commission meeting. Springer is planning to attend that meeting, as are groups on both sides of the project. Commissioners could vote to either outright approve the project as currently planned or kill it altogether.

Density bonuses

Springer's story of surprises is also one of forced patience - so far - and perseverance, not necessarily uncommon traits in Gulf Coast building and development circles. Yet for Springer, 64, the process has been excruciating.

He has spent at least $500,000 on consultant fees, lawyers and holding costs on Palmer Place, as well as the better part of three years on the project. He's also offered to spend more than $3 million for road improvements and set aside land to build a school.

Says Springer: "This has been the hardest and most expensive project in my life."

First there was surprise number one, the good news: In late 2005, Springer, president and founder of Sarasota-based Ridgewood Building & Development, was asked by Sarasota County commissioners to craft an affordable housing plan for the land he owned just east of the intersection of Palmer Boulevard and Bee Ridge Road. Springer had owned the tract for about one year at that point, and he'd had it under contract since 2001.

The land was close to water and sewer lines and had already been environmentally approved for certain uses. As such, county commissioners deemed it a suitable, nearly perfect spot to begin solving what was then a big problem in Sarasota: Building so-called affordable or attainable housing in a time of escalating home prices.

The plan was for the county to trade Springer some density bonuses in return for building the affordable housing components. Springer was flattered. He looked at the proposal as an invitation to cap his career with a truly meaningful project, one where he could turn a profit and leave a lasting impact on the community.

Then there was surprise number two, the bad news. That has essentially been a series of votes and delayed votes from county commissioners, sandwiched by loud displays of opposition from several neighborhood groups.

The result has led to more meetings and more scaled-back versions of the project. And that has meant more losses for Springer, in money and time. Not that he's giving up. "Now we are so far into it," he says, "I would hate to see it go away."

'No complaints'

Springer and some supporters of the project, both inside and outside Ridgewood, believe the enemy in this fight, in general, is NIMBY groups who don't want it in "their backyard." Specifically, the list of opponents includes groups such as the Bee Ridge Neighborhoods Committee, the Laurel Meadows Association and the Sarasota-based Council of Neighborhood Associations.

"They want it defeated," says Robert Medred, a Sarasota-based planning consultant who has worked with Springer on Palmer Place and several other projects. "But if they can't get that done, they will try to encumber it so much that it can't work financially."

But Donald Schultz, one of the leaders of the Bee Ridge Neighborhoods Committee, says the group technically doesn't even oppose the project - so the NIMBY tag doesn't fit. Well, they did oppose it in 2006 and again last year, Schultz concedes, when the project came in at nearly 1,500 residences. He says Springer was given too much density bonuses in return for agreeing to build the affordable housing.

Schultz and his group have also argued that if the project were to be allowed at anything over 600 homes, traffic congestion and construction hassles would become cumbersome.

"We don't look down on people who need affordable housing," says Schultz, who moved to the Heritage Oaks neighborhood near Bee Ridge Road in 2002, after retiring from a job as a lobbyist for an Ohio utility company. "Our goal has not been to stop [the project], but to make it better."

For example, says Schultz, his group worked with county planners and Springer's team to change some of the planned structure of the unit, to have both affordable housing and market price housing on the same side of the street.

Springer though, is feeling somewhat shell-shocked over the barrage of criticism he's received, both from Schultz's group and county commissioners. The neighborhood groups have been well organized and have even hired consultants to dispute some of Springer's projections. The organization led by Schultz was formed five years ago, mostly to bring up traffic safety issues with county officials.

Lingering issues

But criticism from the latter group - county commissioners - is even more surprising to Springer, as it was the commissioners themselves that asked him to build the project in the first place.

"When we did the original design we visited with each commissioner and asked for their blessings and comments," Springer says of meetings held in late 2005 and early 2006. "And they had no complaints."

One lingering issue with the project has nothing to do with sides and everything to do with market realities: The need for affordable housing has clearly waned over the past two years. Says Medred: "The sense of urgency isn't as strong as it was three or four years ago."

Still, Sarasota County officials and housing advocacy groups maintain that the demand for affordable homes, especially for lower and middle-income residents, still exists. Springer agrees, and that's why one reason he has stuck with it.

"We almost need to go through with this," says Springer, invoking some gallows humor, "just to see what else they can pile on us."

Ridgewood Building & Development

Sarasota-based developer Billy Springer jokes that it's ironic his current project, involving a large affordable housing component, has attracted so much criticism.

That's because Springer's first housing project in Sarasota, Colonial Gables, was real affordable housing. Back then, in 1964, the homes were going for just a few thousand dollars each.

Springer, president of Ridgewood Building & Development Co, has quietly become one of the area's most prominent builders in the 44 years between Colonial Gables and his current planned project, Palmer Place. Although Ridgewood's home figures are large - it has developed at least 10,000 lots, for example - Springer's business model has always been to stay small and farm out the work to subcontractors and freelancers.

The formula works. The company's projects have stretched from Orlando to Fort Myers, with the bulk in Sarasota. Local communities the company has built homes in include Colonial Oaks, the Grove and the Hammocks.

In 1986, Springer partnered with the Kemmons Wilson Cos., a Memphis, Tenn.-based real estate conglomerate. That company's founder, Kemmons Wilson, founded the Holiday Inn hotel chain.

REVIEW SUMMARY

Business. Ridgewood Building & Development, Sarasota

Industry. Development

Key. The developers are fighting layers of neighborhood and government opposition for a large residential project.