SPRING HILL, Fla. — Dave Rabbitt and his Spring Hill neighbors have been fighting the potential development across the street from his house for almost two years.
“We wouldn’t have moved here knowing that something of this nature and magnitude was going to happen,” he said.
He feels so strongly about it he has a big sign pointing right at the problem.
“It’s frustrating, but you have to stand up for something. And it’s not just for my wife and I. It’s for the rest of the neighborhood.”
Many people living here are working to keep Hernando County officials from allowing a large wooded area next to the neighborhood to be turned into a commercial development, possibly with a Wawa, tire shop, and strip mall.
Kalyn Lehr lives here with her baby Sam who turned 9 months old Friday.
“We call it a “chubb-ersary” because we call him the “Chubbs.”
She said she wants him to grow up in a quiet neighborhood where kids can play safely outside.
But she says the development will take away the buffer of the woods, leaving them with more noise, traffic, crime, and pollution.
“We don’t want to see this change because some developer wants to develop this plot of land. Why not another plot of land,” said Lehr.
The final vote on what to do with the land is expected to come at the Hernando County Commission meeting on Aug. 22.
In the meantime, Dave said the issue has brought people here closer together.
“We’ve met more of the neighbors since this started than we have because it united all of us,” said Rabbitt.
