Opinion

Good signs

TBO.com
Published: January 17, 2013

There have been many false dawns on the economic horizon since the 2007-2008 Florida real estate and construction market collapse, and the nationwide recession resulting from the financial system meltdown. So we don't want to get carried away. Of late, however, there have been a few developments here on the Suncoast that could be interpreted as positive.

In Pinellas County, a developer is considering building 43 houses in the $500,000-$1 million price range on 12 acres on Lake Tarpon, off Keystone Road.

Perhaps more importantly for Pinellas, its marketing appears to be paying off in the form of more visitors to the county from Europe. The county had a 7 percent increase in European tourism last year, according to tourism consulting firm Research Data Services.

Up the road in Pasco County, construction is about to resume at Connerton, a development on 4,800 acres in Land O'Lakes that ground to a halt two years ago after only 256 of its planned 8,500 houses had been constructed. Luxury homebuilder Homes by WestBay is building a model house in Connerton, and three other builders are planning to start work there as well.

Meanwhile, the Starkey family has sold its 2,500-acre ranch off State Road 54 in the Odessa area, for $54 million, to a Connecticut-based private equity firm that plans to build a large-scale residential-commercial-office-medical-light industrial community on the land.

Given the gloom of recent years, we'll take these few rays of sunshine and hope for more.