PASCO COUNTY, Fla. — We continue to hear objections from Pasco County residents about plans to build a restaurant at Anclote River Park. The park is home to a Spanish well and historic mound built by Indigenous people.
After months of pushback from several different groups, county officials are asking the developer to scale back the size of the restaurant. We followed up with people who disagreed with the plan, who said a smaller restaurant is not enough.
“Anclote Park is very sacred land. It's a park now, but it was a place of worship in the past, and that’s how it should be treated,” Dillon Rich said.
Tuesday night, the Save the Sacred Sites Alliance Group met in Tampa to pray for Anclote River Park.
The group has a petition with almost 5,000 signatures to stop the building of a new restaurant.
The original plans were to build a 22,000-square-foot restaurant on the riverfront. While some residents were excited about the possibility of a new restaurant, many others were not on board.
In November, Keith Overton, the developer, asked for an extension on time to do his due diligence.
The county responded, asking him to significantly scale back the size of the restaurant to not exceed 3,000 square feet.
In that letter, Mike Carballa, the county administrator, said, "It is my opinion that the board always intended to have a small restaurant footprint within the larger leased premises.”
The county is waiting to hear back from the developer. Meanwhile, the people we spoke to say they want the plans to come to a halt completely.
“I think the big problem now is money, money, money, build, build, build," Rich said. "I think it’s time people come together and we start doing what’s morally right.”
