Pasco Library proposes demolishing historic dwelling, constructing park in its place

Getaway could quickly have a new park — but the strategy entails demolishing a historic home.

Pasco County’s library system is proposing to tear down the Charles B. Anderson House, which is on the Countrywide Sign up of Historic Areas, and build a park in its spot. The library will search for community input on the challenge at a Wednesday night assembly.

The library technique claims the dwelling isn’t in very good more than enough situation to be utilized and that a park would be a useful use of the land.

“We wished to give something to the neighborhood,” stated Bob Harrison, internet marketing and communications method manager for Pasco County Libraries.

But some nearby historians would desire that the house be preserved for its historic worth.

“We have to have to be preserving historical past, not tearing it down,” regional historian and writer Jeff Cannon mentioned.

The Anderson house sits next to the Centennial Park Library in Vacation. It is an unassuming making, even with a plaque to the appropriate of the door announcing its presence on the National Sign-up of Historic Areas. Its windows are boarded up, and on one of the back partitions its white paint is chipped.

But when the dwelling was developed in 1938 for thriving citrus grower Charles Anderson, its facilities established it aside from other rural properties. An electric garage door opener, a telephone room, a solar water heater and constant electrical outlets were being between people features, according to a 1996 registration sort for the Countrywide Sign up of Historic Areas. Mahogany paneling on the within “conveys the impact of luxuriousness,” the kind says.

The county acquired the house in 1981 since of its historic price, the St. Petersburg Times noted in 1986. Strategies fell as a result of to use it as a library, mainly because the flooring weren’t sturdy more than enough to maintain the books, or as a center for abused spouses, simply because residents opposed the notion.

In 1985, the Pasco Wonderful Arts Council leased the residence for 30 years at a rate of $1 a year. The council restored the residence with the help of about 40 volunteers, and a high-quality arts middle opened there the subsequent calendar year.

Functioning there was “good and terrible,” present-day arts council board chair Bob Langford recalled. He favored performing in a historic developing, but the home wouldn’t continue to be great in the summer time or heat in the winter. The arts council also had a trouble with vandalism.

“While we were there, it was just deteriorating,” claimed Langford, who is also president of the West Pasco Historical Modern society, and the county didn’t set in the dollars to correct it.

The arts council moved out in 2015 as the house’s situation got even worse. It’s been vacant ever considering the fact that.

Now, the library method wishes to demolish the home and make a park with a playground, an amphitheater, gathering areas and a pathway. Holiday break does not have lots of destinations exactly where inhabitants can expend time in nature and with each other, claims a report from PaleoWest, a consulting company performing on the job that specializes in cultural and heritage resource management.

“Holiday doesn’t truly have a complete ton of parks, neighborhood parks,” Harrison reported. “So that was how we arrived up with that, and we thought it would be an superb use of the home.”

Langford and Cannon, who is also a member of the West Pasco Historic Culture, would favor the home be fixed or moved to one more spot. That could involve obtaining a nonprofit do the repairs itself in return for the means to use the residence, Cannon suggested.

“Our desire is in saving background, as opposed to carrying out absent with it,” Langford claimed.

PaleoWest’s report states restoring and rehabilitating the household would value too substantially. The report proposes demolishing it and taking actions to maintain its record, these types of as placing a historical marker where by it now stands, developing library exhibits about it and documenting it under the Historic American Making Study.

In a letter attached to the report, Florida’s condition historic preservation officer recommends capturing the building’s heritage in this way if preserving the property is not possible.

The park would be named Anderson Relatives Park, soon after the house’s initial owners and occupants.

All those actions should really be taken if the residence simply cannot be preserved, Cannon explained. But he’d relatively see it saved.

“This things requires to be preserved so that we can tell the future generations what was listed here,” Cannon mentioned. “And the citrus marketplace in Florida is dying. It is likely away. You know, a different 50 decades from now nobody’s heading to even try to remember it.”

The program to tear down the dwelling isn’t last, Harrison stated. The library is trying to get community input very first, as section of a demanded process of thinking of how the task would have an affect on the historic site.

“We want to do it correct,” Harrison claimed.

Wednesday’s assembly will start off at 6 p.m. at Centennial Park Library in Getaway, at 5740 Moog Road. Customers of the neighborhood can also sign up for nearly or submit penned opinions. See extra facts right here: https://www.pascocountyfl.web/ArchiveCenter/ViewFile/Product/7806