Shrinking Landscapes: The Story of the Rural Community of San Antonio, FL Is All Too Familiar
by Jeffrey Forbes
Photo by Kim Davidson.
In the little town of San Antonio, Florida big changes are happening all around and all at once.
San Ann sits in far eastern Pasco county atop the high sand ridges between the western Gulf Coast and the great Green Swamp. Nearby, the Withlacoochee River winds its way slowly from the swamp to the Gulf. Sandhill cranes walk along-side ranging cattle and nesting pairs of kestrels alight from old pine snags. Atop the ridges, a soft breeze continually blows.
St. Leo University is here along with its abbey and beautiful cathedral. In the past, cattle and citrus drove the economy and farm families passed on their legacies and their land to the next generation. On a Friday evening, neighbor calls “hello” to neighbor waiting for a table at the famous Pancho’s Villa Mexican Restaurant under the water tower and soft street lights in the middle of town. Surrounded by pasture land dotted with ancient live oaks, islands of palmetto and remnant longleaf pines, San Ann oozes “Old Florida.” This WAS small town Florida.
But San Ann has always had a looming problem: all of that open pasture land coupled with being the second exit off of I-75 heading north out of Tampa is highly attractive to more than just ranchers and orange growers. Commercial and residential developers salivate over this kind of property. Cleared pasture land and a close proximity to the ever-expanding Tampa Bay metropolitan area spells easy pickings and big dollars to large scale real estate investors. So, in 2003 when my in-laws moved onto a five-acre parcel along lime-rocked McCabe Road to escape the intense population crunch of Pinellas County, we shouldn’t have been surprised at the rumors of imminent change.
Photo by Kim Davidson.
The talk at the time from friendly locals centered around a planned community that would sit in between the town and the interstate on the two miles of cattle field that separates the two, “…but that’ll be years and years from now. Don’t worry.” Later, it became clear that plans by the Florida Department of Transportation to shift State Road 52 from its current location to McCabe Road as a hurricane escape route were in the works, but that too was “years from now, and we’ll stop it from coming. We’ll sue.” Luckily for my in-laws, 2008 saw the Great Recession come in full bore, and the small Mediterranean style real estate office that was going up on the cattle field came to a halt and was boarded up. Then it developed a mold problem and was torn down. Permitting signs faded and bleached in the Florida sun. For the moment, the threat seemed to subside.
In 2009, my father in law, Pat, was experiencing kidney failure and began dialysis. He also had a recurrence of a rare cancer he’d beaten once before. The two together were just too much for him and he died in early 2010. His wife, Ellen remained in their home for some years after, but an Alzheimer’s diagnosis made it clear that we would need to sell. By this time, it was also clear that the state road shift was surely coming and we would have to put the property on the market with full disclosure of that information. Fortunately, the lovely five-acre parcel on the corner of two country roads and crowned by towering pines was attractive to a buyer, hurricane escape route and all. We left with much concern about the future of San Ann.
Fast-forward to the present day. I received a call from a good San Ann neighbor we hadn’t talked to in a while. “Jeffrey, don’t come here if you never have to. It would simply break your heart,” she said. Honestly, we have not had a reason to drive through the area and I have been a bit worried about what we’d find if we did. And so, I listened and envisioned and grimaced.
State Road 52 has, in fact, been shifted from its original route and now a four-lane, asphalt highway runs in front of our old house. The lime rock, country road is gone forever. Now Tampa will flee an oncoming hurricane through these old citrus groves. Worse (maybe), immediately to the west lies the new planned lagoon community. Five thousand, zero lot line, single family homes sit tightly clustered around loop roads with names like Tally Fawn and Jazz Leaf. These made up monikers have nothing to do with the history or cultural fabric of San Ann. All of the biggest residential builders are here. The community website boasts that they will “deliver a unique, inland coastal lifestyle in a burgeoning, convenient location with a short drive to downtown Tampa and the international airport.” Sounds like what you’ve seen happen all over Florida for years, right? Well, only partially right. What’s this lagoon business? Great question.
On property lagoons are the region’s newest trend in amenity heavy, sprawling, single family communities with homes ranging from the high $200,000 to nearly a million dollars. The difference is that these communities include MEGA swimming holes or “lagoons” that span acres. In the San Antonio suburb the lagoon is almost a whopping fifteen acres that holds 33 million gallons of water. If fact, it’s the largest manmade swimming lagoon in the country. As much as 8600 tons of sand was brought in to mimic the beach that you now never have to leave home to enjoy. Why experience the real Gulf of Mexico when you have a chlorinated lagoon outside your back door? Bands play. There’s a floating obstacle course. Paddle boards and kayaks patrol one end. You can even buy the family steak tacos at the snack bar for your day at the beach, er’ lagoon.
I have no reason to return to San Ann. This kind of rampant development guised as “innovative” and “sustainable” is anything but. Pop-up cattle-field communities like this tear at the historic fabric of rural Florida. What good sense does it make to carve out fifteen-acre swimming pools in a state that is already taxing its water resources so greatly? And Pasco County is just one front in the battle to conserve such landscapes. This sort of thing happens all over.
Photo by Kim Davidson.
Why not another Orange Lake Overlook instead? That one hundred and fifty-five plus acre preserve in Marion County went from citrus to cattle to conservation. When it was under the threat of development, the community stepped up to save it. Good people gave what they had to keep the sprawl at bay. Natural Florida is a paradise full of abundant beauty, amazing recreational opportunities and historic charm. It doesn’t need to be re-created for convenience sake. Wild Florida is all of the amenity anyone needs.
I know plenty of San Antonians who loved their unique place and are now distraught over what is gone. A special place like Orange Lake Overlook offers hope, the hope that more and more Floridians, our neighbors and our friends, understand the great importance of conservation and the sacrifice through generosity that it involves.
Jeffrey Forbes serves as ACT’s Development Coordinator. He is an avid student of all southern culture, literature, flora, fauna, architecture and history, and, most especially, food. He has a great appreciation for and extensive knowledge of longleaf heart pine and he is working to help ACT conserve as much Florida land as possible.
Banner image by Alison Blakeslee.
