900Âș Woodfired Has A Lot More Than Just Two Kinds Of Delicious Pizza!

MOST Neighborhood News readers recognize how much I enjoy doing our dining reviews, especially when I get to do stories about my favorite local eateries and their restaurateurs.

Case in point: 900Âș Woodfired Pizza, located in the Shops at Wiregrass, which is owned by someone I’ve really only known since he and a former partner opened it in the mall seven years ago.

Today, long-time New Tampa resident Steve Fallabella is the sole proprietor and Steve is a very hands-on kind of owner (like a certain newspaper editor) and he has an authentic Italian heritage and knowledge of good food honed in New York. Steve says he also enjoys being the “delivery boy” for 900Âș Woodfired’s growing catering side of the business (more on that below).

Even though I’ve never been a New York sports fan myself (I root for the Rays, Bucs and Lightning), Steve is a lifelong Yankees fan who also is a past president of his subdivision in West Meadows.

And yes, 900Âș Woodfired, which isn’t a chain and is one of the most successful places to eat at the mall, is a really good restaurant, even though its primary business is still pizza — both New York-style and the 900Âș woodfired Neapolitan style that gives the place its name.
But, I told Steve that even though a pic of each kind of pizza will likely slip into this article, I really wanted to focus on everything else there is to eat at 900Âș Woodfired.

For Starters…

I’ve mentioned in previous stories about 900Âș Woodfired how much I enjoy the caprese appetizer (fresh mozzarella, sliced tomato, oregano, extra virgin olive oil, balsamic vinegar and fresh basil served on a bed of mixed greens), and the entire Neighborhood News staff recently got to enjoy a variety of other starters, including the fried, cheese-filled raviolis (served with a marinara dipping sauce), the fried calamari (also served with marinara) and the homemade bruschetta.

My favorite appetizer that we all sampled this time around, however, were the oven-baked naked wings. We split an order of ten wings — five with no sauce and five with garlic and parmesan — and they come out crispy outside, moist inside and the garlic parmesan sauce wasn’t overpowering, as it can be at some places.

The wings went down easy with my 23-oz. Peroni Italian beer on draught, and bottled beers and a variety of house wines also are available.
But, my favorites at 900Âș Woodfired are the pastas, and I’m not talking about baked items like lasagna and baked ziti, although those also are on the menu — and they’re pretty darn tasty, too.

My favorite pasta combination on the menu is the beef-and-veal-filled tortellacci, which are pasta “pockets” (some call them “purses”) filled with ground beef and veal in a classic Bolognese (meat sauce). So good. I also enjoyed the tortellini della casa, which are spinach-and-cheese-filled tortellini in a sautĂ©ed tomato sauce with black olives, chopped garlic and fresh spinach.

It’s probably also not too surprising to our readers that I often take advantage of 900Âș Woodfired’ “Create Your Own Pasta” option. I almost always choose the penne pasta with pesto Genovese sauce, grilled chicken and sautĂ©ed spinach. It’s such a huge portion that I usually have it as a side dish with every meal for several days and the penne always comes out al dentĂ© (firm), as I prefer it, without having to ask for it that way.

Pizzas, Catering & More!

OK, yes, 900Âș Woodfired Pizza does have pizzas, too (having won “Best Pizza” in our annual Reader Survey in 2015-16), but I’m going to be honest again — I’m biased as to which style of pizza I prefer. Although the 900Âș F, wood-burning oven (photo, left) is awesome to watch, I’ve never liked wood (or coal)-fired, Neapolitan-style pizza as much as I do true New York-style options. I’ve never been to Naples, but I grew up on Long Island and lived in Manhattan in my 20s, so the more authentic, the better.

Steve knows that using the best ingredients (never mention the words “Papa” and “John” in the same sentence to me) makes the best pizza and his New York crust is legit and his blended pizza sauce and mozzarella are the real deal, too.

So, I still prefer regular ol’ NY-style cheese pizza the best, but for the pics for this story, I wanted to show 900Âș Woodfired’s delicious toppings, so the photo above right is a large (16”) NY-style pizza that is half-pepperoni, half-”Mega Meat,” with ‘ronis, sausage, bacon and ham. To no one’s surprise, none of it was left over.

As for the woodfired pizza that gives the place its name, we decided to try a couple of pizzas other than our usual (and super-delicious) Neapolitan-style margherita pizza and went a little exotic.

Several in our office went crazy over the 12” medium-spicy Buffalo chicken pizza, but I was stunned at how much I loved the Ortolano pizza, which is a veggie lover’s dream — a sauceless pie with fresh mozzarella, sliced cherry tomatoes, marinated zucchini and eggplant, artichokes and fresh basil. The pieces of artichoke were huge and a little overpowering, but this is one delicious and unique pizza. And, for those who want or need gluten-free pizza, every pizza on 900Âș Woodfired’s extensive menu is available as a 10” gluten-free.

“Our newest growth area is catering,” Steve says. “Through the EZcatering Network and word of mouth, our catering has doubled over last year. And our online catering reviews have been awesome. We will soon be publishing a new catering menu, and eventually buying a vehicle dedicated for the catering business.”

Steve is one of those techie people who jumps all over the latest industry trends. In fact, 900Âș Woodfired was the first Wesley Chapel restaurant to use Ubereats.

“I helped Uber recruit more restaurants in Wesley Chapel, so they would deliver into more subdivisions,” Steve says, “and our delivery business just took off. We’re part of the industry shift to the convenience of dining at home vs. dining out.” ” He also offers online ordering for takeout.

For more information about 900Âș Woodfired Pizza (28152 Paseo Dr.), which is open every day for lunch & dinner, visit 900DegreesWoodfiredPizza.com or call (813) 527-6940.

Editorial: Evolution Of WCNT-tv And Kayaking Editor

I hope you’re continuing to enjoy watching our WCNT-tv — Wesley Chapel & New Tampa Television— segments on YouTube and Facebook. It at least appears that quite a few of your enjoy watching and sharing the segments, whether they’re “News Desks” with yours truly and my co-host Susanna Martinez or senior video editor Gavin Olsen’s outstanding slide videos, which continue to grow in popularity.

So, while we haven’t quite yet reached a million total views on Facebook and YouTube, we are approaching 700,000 total views and a total Facebook reach of more than 1.2 million people in a little less than two years (WCNT-tv debuted in June of 2016).

In fact, Gavin’s slide video a few weeks ago, about the “green” grocery store known as Earth Fare breaking ground at the corner of S.R. 56 and Wesley Chapel Blvd./S.R. 54, has been our most-viewed segment of 2018 to date, with a reach of nearly 30,000 people on Facebook, nearly 17,000 views and 1,100+ engagements (likes, comments and shares).

The most recent slide video Gavin put together for us (which also includes quite a bit of beautiful drone video footage shot by our friend Sergio Venegas of Eagle Fly Media) that was released on May 24 was about everything happening on S.R. 56 near and across from the Tampa Premium Outlets and had already reached nearly 6,000 people, with hundreds of engagements, as we went to press with this issue — only two hours after we released it!

The most recent WCNT-tv News Desk segment provides even more info about everything happening in and around the Tampa Premium Outlets. It was expected to be released shortly after Memorial Day, so I hope you’ll keep an eye out for it and let me know what you think.

The new News Desk segment also will include full captioning, so more people can watch it without having to have the volume on. Gavin and I believe that having the captioning of every episode will be a factor in finally getting us over the one million total views on YouTube and Facebook I’ve been hoping for since the show started.

Over the next couple of weeks, I also hope you’ll look for the return of WCNT-tv business correspondent Mollyana Ward, who held a North Tampa Bay Chamber of Commerce Ribbon Cutting, after the Chamber’s own ribbon cutting at its new office, for Lagoon Realty, the local real estate company in Epperson, where the first Crystal Lagoons¼ amenity in the U.S. recently held its own Grand Opening celebration.

Also, over the next month or two, you’ll also see WCNT-tv segments updating the S.R. 54 and S.R. 56 areas near Wiregrass Ranch, and hopefully, an update from the new Bahama Breeze Island Grill opening this summer.

I also want to thank our webcast partner, the North Tampa Bay Chamber and CEO Hope Allen for continuing to support the show and this publication (see ad on pg. 12), even though it’s been a little while since Mollyana has gotten to host a Chamber Featured Business segment.

Please call (813) 910-2575 for email ads@WCNT-tv.com for information about promoting your business on our show.

Gary Won An Award? For Kayaking?

Although I was happy with how I fared in the first race I ever finished in my Neighborhood News/WCNT-tv “Banana Boat” surfski single kayak on April 14, I was even happier when I finished my second race on May 19 — The Florida Cup off Madeira Beach.

The planned 3-mile “open” race was reduced to 2.2 miles because of the inclement weather that was expected but never arrived that day, and I was thrilled to finish the race in 27:47 (less than 14 minutes per mile), which had me in 31st of 48 finishers in every type of paddling craft.

But, I was even more excited to have been the third 50+ male on a surfski single to finish the race, more than 5 minutes ahead of the fourth-place finisher.

Even so, Susanna makes fun of me again on the S.R. 56 WCNT-tv segment, but only because I scripted it that way. Check it out!

Storage Wars

It Seems That Even With All Of The 2- & 3-Car Garages In New Tampa & Wesley Chapel, The Need For Storage Facilities Continues To Grow With The Community. How Many Is Too Many? 

Wesley Chapel is its own little boomtown.

New restaurants are popping up on every corner. There is shopping everywhere you turn. Major sports facilities are breaking ground. Hundreds of new hotel rooms are almost ready to be booked. An avalanche of houses and apartments is under construction.

Wesley Chapel is a sexy place for developers.

But, the seemingly most popular business in the area these days might be the least sexy of them all: Self-storage facilities.

Within one roughly 10-mile radius, five storage facilties have landed on the local map the last two years.

A three-story, 80,000-sq.-ft. CubeSmart (with 94,000 square feet of storage space in all) on S.R. 54 recently opened, with another three-story, 80,400-sq.-ft. CubeSmart facility under construction, on S.R. 56.

Morningstar Storage, another three-story unit boasting 100,000 sq. ft. of storage, is currently being built in Wiregrass Ranch, behind the new Fairfield Inn.

The Storage Center In Wesley Chapel — arguably the most straightforward name of any local business — was putting the finishing touches at the end of May on a four-floor, 76,500-sq.-ft. facility off S.R. 56 and Trout Creek Dr. (behind WaWa).

And, developers have already met with the county about yet another 110,000-sq.-ft. storage facility, to be located behind the Walgreens on S.R. 54 and Bruce B. Downs (BBD) Blvd.

Why the explosion? It’s simple.

“There’s tons of money to be made,’’ says Patrick Rairigh, managing partner of Rairigh Realty & Investments, LLC, “and they are a great business to own.”

The facilities are inexpensive to build, have low overhead costs, require few employees — some can be run by less than a handful of workers — and have great profit margins, Rairigh says.

When it comes to investments, self-storage has proven to be safe and reliable.

It is a $38-billion industry, according to SpareFoot, a company that covers the storage industry. While the vast majority of the facilities are mom-and-pop owned, it’s no wonder that many are backed by Real Estate Investment Trusts, also known as REITs.

Nearly 1- in-10 Americans pay an average of $91.14 per month to store their overflow in more than 50,000 self storage facilities across the U.S., offering more than 2.3 billion square feet of total rentable space. The average price in Florida is closer to $88 a month.

The five aforementioned new storage facilities in Wesley Chapel offer roughly a half-million square feet of previously unavailable storage space.

Those facilities, which offer a variety of unit sizes (a 5’ x 10’ unit, for example, is the most popular size in Florida, which would run you $100 a month at the recently opened Cube Smart on S.R. 54) generally operate at an 80-90 percent occupancy rate.

The industry even spawned a hit reality television series on the A&E Network, “Storage Wars,” which followed professional scavengers who would bid on storage lockers that had been abandoned or were no longer being paid for.

According to SpareFoot, the self-storage industry as we know it today got its start in the Midland-Odessa area of West Texas in 1964, when two local oilmen constructed a building for customers to house their belongings.

Russ Williams and stepson Bob Munn called it A-1 U-Store-It U-Lock-It U-Carry-the-Key, which today sounds like someone trying to get their business web hits with Search Engine Optimization (SEO), but back in the 1960s it was merely a ploy to get listed near the front of the Yellow Pages.
The two men built six more facilities around Odessa, and expanded to places like Austin and Houston. The bigger players in the “biz,” like Public Storage Inc., currently the largest self-storage company in the U.S., didn’t arrive until 1972.

Storage facilities may be money makers, but they aren’t exactly the kind of businesses that excite county planners or chambers of commerce.
North Tampa Chamber of Commerce CEO Hope Allen has been a happy promoter and champion of new businesses coming to Wesley Chapel and creating excitement in the community, but she is more muted about the recent proliferation of storage facilities.

“Demand is going to drive the market,” Allen says. “If that is what is driving the market, then so be it.”

While there is no doubting their money-making prowess for investors and developers, there are areas around the country that are now recoiling in the face of the self-storage industry’s impressive growth, as saturation becomes a major concern.

Last year, Collier County commissioners considered placing a year-long ban on some businesses, like storage facilities, along a 7-mile stretch of U.S. 41 to encourage, “more desirable land uses, such as restaurants, hotels and stores,” according to the Naples Daily News.

“We don’t have any rules like that,” says Ernie Monaco, acting planning and development director for Pasco County. “If there was no need for them, believe me, they wouldn’t be building them.”

Besides, there is currently nothing the county can do to stop developers from building them.

“At the end of the day, people are investors and want to make money,” Monaco says. “We don’t own the land.”

Monaco says the self-storage expansion is, however, yet another indicator of Wesley Chapel’s growth.
The more houses and apartments that are built, and as more businesses move here — Raymond James Financial, for example, is expected to add more than 700 jobs to the area — more people will be moving in.

And, with new homes getting smaller and smaller, they will need a place to store their things. Plus, many baby boomers are downsizing. Over-55 adult communities are in the works in Wesley Chapel, and older residents relocating to the area from the Midwest and Northeast will need to find replacements for their attics and basements.

Storage solutions aren’t just for families who have outgrown their homes or apartment-dwelling downsizers — or even people who are trapped in the consumerist cycle of ordering things they don’t need from Amazon and other easy-to-buy-from websites — but small businesses as well.

Allen and Monaco’s greater concerns center on the storage units taking up valuable space in prime areas they feel could be better used for commercial or industrial projects that create more jobs.

To meet demand, storage facilities have evolved from rows of garage-like units in discreet locations to accommodating and comfortable buildings offering free Wifi in more convenient and high-profile locations.

Monaco says more and more developers of self-storage facilities “want the visibility.”

The two CubeSmarts have roadside locations on the area’s busiest roads, and the Storage Center In Wesley Chapel, while more tucked out of sight, is directly behind a popular and heavily-trafficked Wawa.

However, these aren’t your Daddy’s self-storage places, either.

The recently opened CubeSmart on S.R. 54 looks like a large office building, and the Storage Center In Wesley Chapel could almost be mistaken for a small hotel.

When New Tampa was still in its development phase, like Wesley Chapel is today, it was almost impossible to get approval to build a self-storage facility.

“Years ago, Bruce B. Downs was the hardest spot you could find to put a storage unit,” Rairigh says. “They were ugly and no one wanted them.”

Rairigh Construction built the second self-storage unit ever located in New Tampa, and then sold it to Metro Self Storage in 2003. The first facility was built on Doña Michelle Dr. before also being sold to Metro Storage.

Another CubeSmart, the fourth-largest self-storage company in the U.S., is under construction in New Tampa behind Christian Brothers Automotive on BBD.

Rairigh thinks New Tampa and Wesley Chapel, when the self-storage units currently under construction or planned are all built, is approaching saturation. But, the interest in building more hasn’t waned.

He says that over the last three years, he’s had a steady stream of investors and developers knocking on his door looking for sites. Price, he says, is not an object for potential suitors.

“The model has changed,” he says. “You used to need a lot of land to build them, but now you have climate control buildings that are more vertical. They take up less space because they can be built on smaller parcels of land. And, the builders are putting some money into them. They have nice facades, they look like they belong.

“Honestly, some look better than some of the office buildings.”