New census report shows Pasco County among Florida’s fastest growing communities

PASCO COUNTY, Fla. — A new census report shows a significant population increase in Pasco County.

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Pasco County has seen a more than 15% increase in population within the last five years, making it one of the fastest growing counties in the state of Florida.

“We’re attracting young professionals,” Hope Kennedy, President & CEO of the North Tampa Bay Chamber of Commerce, said. “We’re attracting start-ups, innovation, life sciences. We’ve got it all here in Pasco.”

Along State Road 56 in Wesley Chapel, you’ll find an assortment of housing. From new apartments to new homes, this is part of the population boom in Pasco County.

“We’ve seen extreme growth over the last three to five years,” Kennedy said. “The census reports are coming out with that information- I believe it was around 15%. But what’s more important is that we’re growing in quality, just not in quantity of people.”

She has witnessed first-hand the increase in traffic throughout Pasco County, both on the road and in housing, Kennedy said.

“There’s a lot of factors attracting people here to Pasco,” she said. “It’s the geography where we’re at proximity, but it’s also that we’ve built a quality community here in this area. And I say it’s the secret sauce. It’s a very diverse community. It’s where people want to live, work and invest their money.”

Just about 20 miles away, a similar view can be seen in Zephyrhills.

“We’re coming in for the estimates for 2025 just shy of 20,000 people,” Rodney Corriveau, principal planner for the City of Zephyrhills., said. “Now rewind five years ago, we were around 17,000 people. So that’s an astronomically high rate of people to be moving into our city.”

Two years ago, a moratorium was put in place, putting a pause on all new housing developments throughout the city. While that may still be in effect, proper planning for growth has not stopped under city staff like Corriveau.

“The challenge is to make sure we fit and accommodate all the people moving here, the residential component with the industrial component and making sure that those don’t conflict,” Corriveau said. “We want to make sure that people, when they’re living adjacent to some of the commercial and industrial areas, that we buffer those for sound and visual effects and things like that.”

This is crucial to maintaining growth, Kennedy said.

“We’re at 650,000 now. We’re most certainly going to be at a million,” she said. “It’s really important that as the chamber and the business community together, we’re thinking ten years down the road so that when we’re making decisions and we’re planning our future, we have growth in mind.”