Nibbles and Bytes!

Orchid Thai Is Now Palm Thai!

If you love great Thai food like I do, check out my new friends Tammy (a Tampa General Hospital Registered Nurse) and her husband Michael (an engineer) at the new Palm Thai, which opened recently in the space previously occupied by Orchid Thai in the same Shoppes at The Pointe plaza as Ciccio Cali and Koizi in Tampa Palms.

Palm Thai’s lunch is one of the best deals in town, as my pork with garlic and black pepper sauce (above, left) came with a delicious spring roll, chicken soup and salad, for less than $10! Palm Thai wasn’t open in time for my 2017 “Gary’s Favorites,” but if its crispy duck measures up, it surely will make my list next year!

For more info about Palm Thai (17022 Palm Pointe Dr.), call (813) 252-3534, visit PalmThaiTampa.com, or see the ad & 10%-off coupon on pg. 40 of our latest New Tampa issue!

Oakley’s Grille Sold!

Those of us who have loved the hamburgers and sandwiches at Oakley’s Grille — located at 17631 Bruce B. Downs (BBD) Blvd. (next to Supercuts) — since it opened in 2011 — will be happy to learn that even though owner Keith Oakley recently sold his popular burger-and-sandwich restaurant, everything about the place is expected to remain the same under its new ownership, at least for the foreseeable future.

Oakley’s Grille, which has received first place burger and/or sandwich honors from yours truly every year since it opened, was purchased by first-time restaurateurs Heather Woodall and Ladesha Stoudemire, who are excited about their new venture.

“We heard Oakley’s was for sale through a business broker, who took us there for lunch,” Heather says. “And, we just loved the quality of the food, the way the staff knew and treated the customers and the entire operation. It was a no-brainer for us.”

Heather and Ladesha agree that while they might try to add menu items in the future — by customer demand — they promise the same amazing burgers (above, center), fries and sandwiches done the same way by the same people.

For more info about Oakley’s Grille (17631 BBD), call (813) 523-5075 or visit OakleysGrille.com.

And, if you mention this write-up when you order, you can buy one ribeye or chicken Philly sandwich with fries and a beverage and receive a second Philly sandwich of equal or lesser value FREE with the purchase of fries and a beverage. And, please tell Heather, Ladesha and their crew that the Neighborhood News sent you.

Prost Kitchen & Bar Opens

In another one of those locations that has seen a progression of restaurants come and go, the German-inspired Prost Kitchen & Bar has opened  in the space most recently occupied by Big Papa’s Pit in the Palms Connection plaza at 2802 E. Bearss Ave., just west of BBD.

The space was first home to Garofalo’s Pizza more than two decades ago and also has been a Beef O’Brady’s and one or two other places I can’t remember.

Prost, with its 20 craft beers on tap and full-liquor bar, already has been packed for Sunday brunch, but I really enjoyed not only the super-crispy, but moist inside Jagerschnitzel pictured above, but also the candied broccolini flambé and homemade spaetzle it was served with on my first visit.

For more info, visit ProstKitchen.com or call (813) 466-5249 and please tell owner Cody Jay of Jay Hospitality Group and his staff that we sent you!

Top Shelf’s Grand Opening

So, it’s never easy opening a new business, much less a restaurant, but I’m excited to say that the Top Shelf Sports Lounge at Florida Hospital Center Ice (FHCI) has (finally!) now been for a few weeks and has celebrated with a North Tampa Bay (formerly the Greater Wesley Chapel; see pg. 3) Chamber of Commerce ribbon cutting ceremony on Feb. 2.

The 2,500-sq.-ft. restaurant, which overlooks three of the five ice surfaces at FHCI, serves a nice variety of burgers, wings, wrap sandwiches, salads and entrées like beef brisket and potato poutine skillets (a Canadian delicacy).

Best of all, Top Shelf will be participating in this year’s Taste of New Tampa & Wesley Chapel at FHCI on Sunday, March 25, noon-4 p.m. (see pg. 3), after not being able to get open in time for last year’s event.

Co-owner Keenan Cottle, who will be serving beer from his 81Bay Brewing Co. in South Tampa at the Taste, thanked FHCI owners Gordie Zimmermann and George Mitchell of ZMitch, LLC, for opening “this amazing rink” during the ribbon-cutting.

Top Shelf co-owner Joe Boyd said that the partners are excited to be part of the Wesley Chapel area and are looking forward to more great events at Top Shelf.

The Top Shelf Sports Lounge is located on the second floor of FHCI (3173 Cypress Ridge Blvd.). For more info, stop in or call (813) 953-1032 or visit TopShelfTampa.com.

Olympus Pools Offers A Unique, Customized Customer Experience

Involving the homeowner in the design process — and new technologies — are hallmarks of Olympus Pools and regional manager and designer Doug Griffith. (Photo by Andy Warrener)

A swimming pool can say so much about a home. Architecture and landscaping can project a homeowner’s sense of style from the street, but a unique, custom-designed pool conveys that sense of style to friends and family, people who are inside the home.

It can be difficult in scorching Florida summers to enjoy the outdoors without a pool. It’s also a huge investment, perhaps the biggest single-ticket item that goes into anyone’s home.

New Tampa residents James and Alexis Staten, owners of Olympus Pools in Tampa, share that view. They won’t put any pool in your home unless it’s of the same quality they would have in their own home.

“From the amount of steel, the thickness of the concrete and finished products like tile, pavers or travertine floors, the same products we offer our customers are the same products we use in our own homes,” Staten says.

The company is accustomed to managing a large volume of projects. There are four designers and four project managers on staff, with 150 crew members out in the field on any given day. In 2017, Olympus completed 330 pools, all completely customized; 40 to 50 ongoing projects are managed at any time.

It doesn’t matter whether you’re budgeting for a $30,000 or a $300,000 pool, Olympus uses the same top-quality products.

“We use the best filters, best pumps and best salt systems included with every pool,” Staten says. “Even the most basic design gets the most premium quality money can buy.”

It’s a sentiment not lost on Olympus Pools’ core of veteran employees.

Construction manager Brian Messler has 34 years of experience in the business, and helped start the company with the Statens in 2013. “All of my subcontractors are top notch and each specializes in one phase of the construction,” says Messler. “We’ve got tile guys, plumbers, excavators and other specialized craftsmen. A lot of our crew (members) have 30 or more years of experience, too.”

Messler says that if anything doesn’t look right when your pool is being built (or completed), it will be dealt with immediately. “If I go to a job site and I see something that would be unacceptable in my house,” he says, “we take it out and replace it.”

Customized Designs

Olympus Pools doesn’t sell “templates.” Every pool starts with a clean slate and is entirely built around the customer’s desires. James says his company’s guiding principles are incorporating the customer’s available space, taste and budget.

“The design has to fit with the customer’s environment, as well as their wants and needs,” he says. “It’s what makes this business fun to work in. We’re extremely passionate that each pool we build will be unique. I like to say we’re in the memory business.”

He adds that every week, customers send him and his staff text messages with photos of their new pools and how much they are enjoying them. If his customers are happy, James and his staff are happy.

“It’s what gets us out of bed in the morning,” he says.

Olympus Pools prides itself on bringing the customer’s vision to life. Sometimes, all they have to work with is something sketched on a piece of paper. No matter. Regional manager and designer Doug Griffith takes customers through every step of the process, letting them see and touch the colors and textures that will be used in their dream pool.

The company’s showroom near Tampa International Airport helps bring the customer’s vision into reality.

“We’re not selling a package,” Griffith says. “We spend a lot of time creating the right pool for the right person.”

Griffith, like Messler, has been with Olympus Pools since its inception and as the regional manager, he stays on top of any issues that come up with a new or existing installation.

Tracking With Tech

Olympus Pools keeps up to date with cutting-edge technology, which fits into every aspect of pool construction. The company’s 3-D imaging AutoCAD system creates a life-like image of your pool. It can be rotated 360 degrees, to show the customer what the pool would look like at dusk or at night, even view features as if floating through the pool.

“We can create an entire 3-D tour for every client” James says. “Customers can see what their pools will look like before any construction is started.”

During construction, customers can use a customized application that enables them to check the construction schedule, communicate with Olympus staff members, access any documents related to the pool’s construction and make secure payments online.

Customers also can receive photos of the project’s progress 24-7, even if they are away from home.

Olympus also utilizes an application created by pool pump manufacturer Hayward called OmniLogic that enables customers to control day-to-day and customized functions of their aquatic oases.

The technology is only three years old, and it allows a homeowner to change the pool’s temperature, check the salinity and chlorine levels, and even turn the spa on or off. For example, a client could be out to dinner and, by pressing one button on their phone, can set the temperature and lighting just right in their spa for when they get home.

“We want ownership of our pools to be as easy and carefree as possible,” James says. “The only thing I want them to worry about is what to serve at the barbeque.”

Community Connections

The Statens live in and install a lot of pools in the New Tampa/Wesley Chapel area, and are big proponents of giving back to the Tampa Bay community.

Four or five times a year, Olympus Pools sponsors a local classroom through Donors Choose.org, a public charitable organization. DonorsChoose connects contributors to classrooms that have submitted requests through the website. Olympus Pools sponsored five classrooms in 2017, which are predominantly in the low-income-area public schools in Hillsborough County.

Recent efforts saw Olympus Pools donate tablets to each student in a selected class, help in donating an entire audio-visual system to a special needs class where the teacher had students who were hard of hearing, and donating $200 from each of 22 different pools they built to Feeding Tampa Bay, a hunger-relief charity — nearly 3,100 meals were purchased with those funds.

“If you’re in business and all you do is make money, you’re not a very good business,” James says.

Over the years, Olympus had donated more than $50,000 to the aforementioned charities, as well as to Kids Place (a foster home), and in sponsorships and donations to schools in the New Tampa and Wesley Chapel area. Hand-written thank-you letters from dozens of students line the window of the main office and dry erase board in the Olympus Pools showroom.   

“We’re all about giving back to the community,” James says. “Most of our staff lives in the New Tampa/Wesley Chapel area. Our kids go to school in the area and half of our business comes out of that area.”

Olympus Pools has installed custom pools in the Live Oak, K-Bar Ranch, Estancia at Wiregrass Ranch, Union Park, Grand Hampton, Meadow Pointe and Esplanade communities, to name a few. The company’s goal is to make your dream aquatic paradise a reality.

Olympus Pools is located at 4422 N. Lauber Way in Tampa. For more information, visit OlympusPoolsFl.com, call (813) 983-7854, or see the ad on pg. 24 of this issue.

Road Projects In New Tampa Hope To Ease Traffic Flow

As the final segment of the massive Bruce B. Downs (BBD) Blvd. widening project chugs towards its completion, transportation planners are looking at a few other ways to help with traffic flow at some New Tampa hotspots.

District 7 Tampa City Councilman Luis Viera, whose district covers the city portions of New Tampa, says there are multiple projects in the exploratory stages that could provide some relief at busy area intersections, and another that will add a light at the site of the new fire station being built on County Line Rd.

“Some of these could really improve traffic for New Tampa residents,” Viera says.

The most notable of these proposals is a pre-design study — which determines if a certain design is possible — currently underway to potentially add a third left turn lane where westbound Cross Creek Blvd. drivers turn south onto southbound Bruce B. Downs (BBD) Blvd. (see map). According to the project report, there are currently four alternatives being studied.

One would build a third left turn onto southbound BBD, while keeping the two lanes that currently cross over BBD to New Tampa Blvd. and into West Meadows, and the lane that turns northbound onto BBD.

A second option would be to extend the existing dual left turn lanes almost back to Dayflower Dr., to prevent the common bottlenecking that occurs during peak travel hours.

“We need to figure out which option would work best,’’ says Jean Duncan, the city’s director of transportation and stormwater services.

Viera, who travels along that stretch of Cross Creek Blvd. from his Hunter’s Green home, says he has been pushing for one of these two options since being elected to the City Council last November. “I’m hopeful that the study can conclude that a third left-hand turn lane is a viable idea,’’ he says.

A third option would be to convert one of the two lanes that cross over BBD into the third turn lane, while the fourth option builds a third left turn lane, and takes away one of the two lanes crossing BBD and converts it to a second right turn lane for those trying to turn right (north) on BBD towards Pebble Creek.

There are currently no plans, however, to add another right turn lane on BBD for those turning east on Cross Creek Blvd., another thorny spot for rush hour travelers. Viera says that problem, however, may be mitigated by studying and tweaking traffic signal patterns.

A New Tampa Mobility Enhancement Project, a $306,000 study, is looking into ways to maximize the benefits of the Advanced Traffic Management System (ATMS), which uses real-time data from things like speed sensors and cameras to determine if any action needs to be taken (light timings, re-routing, etc.) to improve and enhance traffic flow.

When Cross Creek Blvd. and BBD were widened, Duncan says, the intersections were built with the ATMS, which included upgraded cabinets that house the guts of the signal system, and uses fiber optics instead of copper. New Tampa is fortunate, she says, because 3/4 of the city is still using the less effective copper-wired cabinets, which are DOS-based and not as intelligent.

“New Tampa was one of the first to get it,” she said, adding that the city is working with the Florida Department of Transportation to upgrade the rest of the city over the next five years.  Duncan says the city actively manages traffic signals, whereas the county does not.

The Mobility Enhancement also includes a roundabout feasibility study to identify possible locations for modern roundabouts in our area.

Three intersections in New Tampa are being considered.

The first is at the junction of Compton Dr. and Commerce Palms Dr. in Tampa Palms, where a stop sign on Compton Dr. and another across the street at the B.J.s Wholesale Club handle a busy flow of traffic.  The second is just down the road at the intersection of Compton Dr. and Tampa Palms Blvd., where traffic currently is monitored by a four-way stop.

Also being considered for a roundabout is the intersection of Highwoods Preserve Pkwy. and Highwoods Palm Way, which runs through the Highwoods Preserve Corporate Campus, a mile or so from BBD.

Duncan says that there is a big national movement towards roundabouts, which have proven to be cheaper, safer for drivers and pedestrians and more sustainable than lighted intersections.

Lastly, the city is working on adding a traffic signal at County Line Rd. and Trout Creek Dr., to accommodate the needs of the new Fire Station 23.

Viera says he has been told the fire station will open by the end of the 2018, and the first design submittal and review for the signal has already taken place and is on an accelerated pace to be completed at the same time the fire station is expected to open.