Long-awaited Pasco apartments get name, get bigger

WESLEY CHAPEL -- As developers look to continue commercial expansion around the Shops at Wiregrass mall in Pasco County, one long-planned apartment complex might finally get off the ground.

Two senior project managers with King Engineering are set to meet with Pasco officials Aug. 11 to talk about a proposed 375-unit complex that could be named Altis at Wiregrass.

No other details about the complex were shared in King's application for a meeting, except to identify a 91-acre parcel on the northern side of State Road 56, just east of Bruce B. Downs Boulevard near New Tampa. The entire parcel, which would be snug between the Shops as well as the proposed Pasco site for Raymond James Financial, calls for a shopping center with a 45,000-square-foot grocery anchor store, according to a listing by The Dowd Companies.

Two smaller adjacent stores between 9,800 and 13,900 square feet each would flank the grocery location, along with nearly 4 acres available along the road.

The apartments would be built behind the shopping center, on a little more than 19 acres. Just two months ago, developers were talking about building a 248-unit apartment complex behind the proposed shopping center.

Raymond James had expected to be building a one million-square-foot campus just east of the latest development, but announced last year that any such development in Pasco was years away.

The paperwork for the Wiregrass apartment project lists the name as Atlis, which is similar to the “Altis” moniker Boca Raton-based developer Altman Cos. uses for some of its apartment communities, including two it developed in the Tampa Bay area over recent years. Altis at Highland Park, a 239-unit complex in Tampa's Westchase, was just finished this past summer, while Altis Grand Cypress in Tampa's Lutz area was sold in February for $47.3 million.