When good friends and Tampa Bay-area doctors Krishna Nallamshetty M.D., and Seenu Sanka, M.D., envisioned a place their parents could live their later years in, they imagined a calm and peaceful setting. People in a 55-plus community with shared interests, an active and vibrant community with trails to walk.
Fitness rooms to exercise in, places where they could worship and meditate and partake in the vegetarian lifestyle they have enjoyed their entire lives.
Beginning in June, that’s exactly what the two physicians plan to build in Wesley Chapel’s Meadow Pointe community.
Anand Vihar, which means “Blissful Living” (according to its website), promises to be the premier 55-plus community in Tampa Bay. It will be one of the only 55-plus adult communities in Wesley Chapel.
It will be built on a 50-acre site on Mansfield Blvd., less than 100 yards north of where the road currently dead ends (as we reported about again last issue) and is surrounded by large conservation and ponds.
55-Plus Community Coming Together
Drs. Nallamshetty and Sanka, who searched for the right place for two years before enlisting the help of another friend, Santosh Govindaraju, the CEO of Convergent Capital Partners (CCP), hope to break ground on Anand Vihar this summer.
Eric Isenbergh, the CEO of Oxford Homes, has joined the team as the property’s builder.
“I think it’s a phenomenal area to be in,’’ said Govindaraju, whose company focuses on development and repositioning of commercial real estate. He said CCP has put more than half a billion dollars into redeveloping places like Carrollwood Golf Club (previously Emerald Green Golf & Country Club) and a number of hotels and commercial properties. This is the company’s first foray into Wesley Chapel.
Govindaraju said he was able to secure a great price for the property. The deed, he says, will show the partners paid $25,000 for the land itself, but because the previous owners chose not to pay taxes on it — the recession stalled a previous project on the property — the new owners had to pay off liens on 87 lots, at a cost of $11,000 per lot.
According to Govindaraju, multiple banks owned parts of the parcel, but none had any interest in developing it and allowed it go delinquent.
“It was a very fragmented ownership,’’ he said. “We diligently put it back together.”
The roads, parking areas, utilities and detention ponds were all constructed in 2006, after the previous owners had received approval for 330 townhomes and condos.
Three of the buildings in the southeast portion of the project were constructed, with 24 apartments that currently have residents and eight townhomes that don’t, but any further development came to a halt.
The existing buildings and roads will remain, with a new one planned near Anand Vihar’s soon-to-be-built, 17,000-sq-ft clubhouse. CCP plans to invest $5 million into the 55-plus community, building 280 units and incorporating more green space.
“We are very excited,’’ Govindaraju said. “There’s so many great things happening in this area. We want to contribute to the success at Meadow Pointe by creating more upscale opportunities, and increase the value of them by investing more in these properties.”
Although the project appears to be targeting the existing Indian community in our area, Govindaraju says it’s more about a lifestyle than people of any particular origin.
“We will be targeting more of a healthy living lifestyle,’’ Govindaraju says, noting that the Anand Vihar clubhouse will have an exclusively vegetarian kitchen (non-vegetarian meals will be catered on a weekly basis), a yoga room, a multi-faith prayer and meditation room and a theater room to watch the latest Bollywood (and other) movies.
“We will also have a full-time activities director, and I think that will also set us apart,’’ Govindaraju says.
Anand Vihar already has 30 reservations, he added.
For more information, visit AnandViharTampa.com, or call 534-4127.
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