The Neighborhood News Is Looking To Pay More Writers!

Whether you or someone you know is 16, 36 or 76 but has always loved to write — and would like to get paid for those efforts — I hope you’ll read and respond to this editorial. 

As I have periodically throughout my 32 years of owning and being the editor of the Neighborhood News, I am looking once again for additional freelance writers to help me continue to provide more news and information about the New Tampa and explosively-still-growing Wesley Chapel areas than any other local medium — whether print, broadcast or online. 

Even if you’ve never had anything published before, send me your resumĂ© and something you’ve written — on any topic — both of which you have checked carefully for spelling and grammatical errors, to my attention (see ad, above) at Ads@NTNeighborhoodNews.com. 

If you are sending a clip, please don’t send me three or four. All I need is ONE piece of 300 to no more than 1,000 words that indicates your ability to write in English (not text-speak), tell a story with full sentences and, if possible, one that uses a few quotes that shows that you know how to use them (and quotation marks) properly. 

Please also note that if you’re going to send me a link to a web page or social media site, that the first thing I see needs to be your strongest work because I probably won’t get to the second item on the site/page if the first thing I see doesn’t grab my attention. 

So, whether you have a journalism or English background or not, or any professional writing experience or not, all I am looking for are people who are interested in being part of the Neighborhood News family who are willing to learn. 

In other words, if you think you already know everything there is to know about writing, this probably isn’t the right freelance opportunity for you. That’s why I’m fine working with young people — as long as they’re willing to work, follow directions and can submit stories on deadline. Just please be prepared for a lot of edits and comments about each piece from me. 

If you’re interested in writing news stories, I’m particularly interested in people who are willing to do actual research for those stories, not just regurgitate what they find on Chat GPT or any other Artificial Intelligence app. 

All successful applicants also should be prepared to have to write the Business Feature stories that appear towards the center of each issue, even if you tell me you’re more interested in news, sports, features, human interest or online stories. 

You’ll still get to write those, too, but our advertisers tell us that the Business Features provide them with the best response they receive from any local media, so I do still need them. 

So, send me something and let’s go from there. Good luck — and no phone calls, please! 

Tampa City Ballet Hosts An Amazing ‘Inside The Studio’ Wine & Cheese Social!

I’m so glad our photographer Charmaine George was able to be on hand for the “Inside the Studio” wine & cheese event at the Tampa City Ballet (TCB) studio at 15365 Amberly Dr., in the Shoppes at Amberly plaza in Tampa Palms. The event was hosted by TCB founder and artistic director Paula Nuñez (right in photo) and Board member Marguerite Pinard (left in same photo) and featured demonstration dances by TCB’s super-talented professional dancers, as well as a vocal performance by Coloratura Soprano Daniela Mass, (below left), plus wine, cheese and many TCB supporters and joyous attendees.

Up next for TCB is “Dance Now,” Tampa Bay’s (FREE) Dance Festival, with hundreds of dancers from Bay-area dance troupes of all genres. It will be held at Tampa’s Water Works Park (next to Ulele Restaurant) on Sunday, March 15, 4 p.m. For more info, see the ad below or visit TampaCityBallet.org. — GN

Olive Garden & Seasons 52 Coming To WC Blvd. At Gateway Blvd.!

Yard House Unconfirmed But Now Rumored To Be The Front Runner To Replace Bahama Breeze On S.R. 56 

Above is an absolutely not-to-scale NN composite map showing the existing businesses on the south side of Wesley Chapel (WC) Blvd. between Old Pasco Rd. & Gateway Blvd., with the site plan for the now-under-construction Gateway Plaza Retail Center superimposed to show the approximate location of Olive Garden (believed to be “Restaurant #1” on map) and Seasons 52 (believed to be “Restaurant #2”). The project also will include a dental office that will have its entrance off Gateway Blvd. The map shows Centerline Dr., which starts behind Slim Chickens, intersecting with the new plaza, but does not properly show where WC Blvd. & Gateway Blvd. connect to it. (NN-created map sources: Google Maps & Pasco County)

 The restaurant rumor mill in the Wesley Chapel area has been swirling even more recently, with the previously announced planned closure and rebranding of the Bahama Breeze Island Grill on the north side of S.R. 56. 

At almost the same time, the previously announced Olive Garden restaurant, located at the intersection of Wesley Chapel Blvd. (aka S.R. 54), Gateway Blvd. and Centerline Dr. (see map), began clearing the land for the Gateway Plaza Retail Center with Olive Garden, a dental office and a second previously unnamed restaurant. 

After reading on one of the local Facebook groups that the second restaurant was going to be Seasons 52, I then had my research guy and correspondent Joel Provenzano look into the development plan and Joel did find that Seasons 52 is indeed the second restaurant coming to that site — even though Seasons 52 also was announced as one of the Darden Restaurant brands that could replace Bahama Breeze on S.R. 56. 

We will keep you posted on the progress of Olive Garden and Seasons 52, but having those two Darden Brands now coming to Wesley Chapel Blvd. less than 5 miles from Bahama Breeze, seems to have narrowed even further the possible options to replace the island-themed eatery across from the Tampa Premium Outlets. 

The Wesley Chapel area’s existing Darden Brands already include Longhorn Steakhouse, Chuy’s, Cheddars Scratch Kitchen and now Olive Garden and Seasons 52. 

That leaves only Darden’s most upscale restaurants — Eddie V’s Prime Seafood, Ruth’s Chris Steak House and The Capital Grille, plus Yard House sports pub, with Yard House rumored (also in online chat we’ve seen) to be the front runner. But, with Bahama Breeze still 12-18 months from being repurposed and no official announcement yet forthcoming from Darden, all we can say is we’ll keep you posted. 

Eight Turn CrĂȘpe Brings Unique Japanese Street Food To Wesley Chapel

If you’ve been wanting to try something truly different from the norm in our area — whether you want a delicious hand-held savory crĂȘpe filled with crispy pork belly, chicken teriyaki or even smoked salmon and cream cheese, or a sumptuous dessert crĂȘpe with Dubai chocolate or lychee, raspberry and almonds, you probably should go check out the new Eight Turn CrĂȘpe, which celebrated its Grand Opening (photo above) at 2653 Bruce B. Downs (BBD) Blvd., Suite 116, on Jan. 31. 

This location was previously occupied by 35 Below ice cream, in the same plaza as Dickey’s BBQ, Umu Japanese & Thai and Sorbo coffee — which is interesting because Eight Turn CrĂȘpe is an homage to Japanese street food, but offers items that are completely different from anything served at either Umu or Sorbo. 

Let’s start with the company itself, which began with a single location in New York City’s Soho district in 2013 and is now up to about a dozen locations in New York, California, Texas, Idaho, Washington state and Virginia. The BBD location is the first to open in Florida and the chain’s VP of franchising Steve Kogan was on hand (left in top photo) for the opening of franchise owner Lien Nguyen’s (center in same photo) Wesley Chapel location. 

The former ice cream shop is small but attractive, with only a few tables inside and a few more outside, but the stars of the show are the super-tasty, naturally gluten-free, rice flour crĂȘpes themselves. You can order them in either the classic Japanese cone shape (right photo above) or rolled and sliced sushi-style, like the crispy Tokyo pork belly crĂȘpe Charmaine and I shared (left) — an amazing mix of flavors, with kimchi, avocado, lettuce, crispy shallots, sesame seeds and Japanese mayo. 

In addition to the options I mentioned above, there’s also Thai chicken, bacon, egg & cheese and Philly cheesesteak savory options and all of the sweet crĂȘpes are layered with different flavors of custard cream — and most of them are stuffed with fresh fruits, including strawberries, bananas, raspberries, blueberries, mango and lychee, with pistachios, almonds, walnuts, peanuts, hazelnuts, crunchy flakes, granola and more. 

I incorrectly assumed that the sweet crĂȘpes also would include gelato, but even though only two of the sweet crĂȘpes on the menu include a scoop of vanilla gelato, there are a number of other gelato flavors you can add to any sweet crĂȘpe on the menu. Best of all, you also can design your own sweet or savory crĂȘpe, using any of the aforementioned ingredients. 

Eight Turn CrĂȘpe also has a large variety of bubble and fresh fruit teas, “super food” smoothies and creamy Japanese milk shakes. Charmaine and I loved the cherry blossom milkshake we shared — it was bursting with real cherry flavor. 

I’m hoping our readers will find and frequent Eight Turn CrĂȘpe. It’s truly different from anything else in our area — and totally tasty. 

For info, call (813) 867-6413 or visit EightTurnCrepe.com. — GN, all photos by Charmaine George 

Talking Impact Fees With New North Tampa Bay Chamber Chair Tony Benge

NTBC Board chair Tony Benge

The first time I ever met new North Tampa Bay Chamber (NTBC) Board chair Tony Benge was at the NTBC’s annual meeting back in December, when he was sworn in with the rest of the NTBC’s 2026 Board of Directors and we were introduced to each other by NTBC president and CEO Hope Kennedy. 

At that time, Mr. Benge and I agreed that we should sit down to discuss his vision for his tenure as the new Chamber Board chair, as well as his primary role as the president of Benge Development Corp., which has been based in Orlando since 1994, but also has one current development project in Pasco County and recently had its original Pasco development plan denied by the Board of County Commissioners. 

Although neither of those projects is located in Wesley Chapel, the denied “Fletcher Project” (more on that below) was located at the intersection of S.R. 52 and U.S. Hwy. 41 in Land O’Lakes, immediately adjacent to the Moffitt Speros campus we told you about last issue. 

The other project, called the Hawes MPUD, which is moving forward, sits north of Wesley Chapel and east of the Mirada development. both north and south of S.R. 52, east of Handcart Rd. in San Antonio, and is approved for up to 523 multi-family units (see map below). 

His Benge Development Corp. has developed more than 30 large-scale projects, mainly in Orlando and Apopka, FL. 

Benge, who introduced Florida’s Lieutenant Governor Jay Collins at the NTBC Business Breakfast on Feb. 3 (see story on page 8), also asked Lt. Gov. Collins about mobility and school impact fees, subjects Benge knows a lot about because his company has to pay them every time he develops a new project. 

“Impact fees have started to cripple a lot of the [development] industry,” he said to Collins. “For a typical residential unit, as an average, $30,000 per unit is now being levied. When they were originally passed, [these fees] were specifically to be limited to incremental new capacity for things like schools, roads, sewer and water treatment plants. But, we’ve paid into this now for a decade and there’s been no accountability. You can’t get any information from these counties, which seize the money, in essence. And yet, they have no new schools or anything else to point to. How do we get accountability for this?” 

Collins responded, “It’s got to be statewide legislation. It can’t be executive action. It has to go through the legislature and it’s got to be codified into law. There has to be some form of accountability in that system.” 

He added, however, “But, valid impact fees? I think we all agree that valid is a good word. We can do that, but the accountability has to be there. I don’t think DOGE ( (the Dept. of Government Efficiency) is something we should just do once and walk away from. I think sustained accountability and predictability for our people matters. We’re going to have to implement that.” 

State Senator Danny Burgess, of course, presented a different solution when he was the guest speaker at an NTBC “Coffee & Connections” event two years ago, before DOGE even existed, saying that he wanted to see an audit of every county regarding impact fees. 

Benge agreed that an audit showing how much impact fee money has been collected and what that money was spent on would be a good way to hold counties accountable for the impact fees they collect. 

He says that although Pasco’s impact fees are among the highest in the state, “Osceola County’s are actually the highest. They’ve really become insane, literally. The night [Osceola] did the most recent increase, there were probably 20 developers in the audience, representing hundreds of millions of dollars in projects. I told them, ‘If you pass this, just throw our application in the trash.” 

He added that for a typical 300-unit apartment complex, the developer has to pay $9 million in impact fees to get a building permit. 

“I mean, we’re already building all of the roads, improvements… we’re having to do turn lanes, traffic signals, water, sewer, bus stops, all of that. And we still have to pay regular taxes and everything else.” 

Benge also told me that impact fees first started back in 2000, with something called the “Martinez Doctrine,” which was named after former Orange County Chair and U.S. Sen. Mel Martinez, who served as Secretary of Housing & Urban Development under U.S. President George W. Bush. The Martinez Doctrine attempted to limit school overcrowding by requiring local developers to address school capacity issues before breaking ground. 

“The idea was that growth should have to pay for itself, which makes sense,” Benge said, “But the trade-off was supposed to be that we will always have utilities and roads and services available to go along with this. 

“So when these impact fees first started, I don’t know who came up with the numbers, but they’re so abominably disproportionate. We’ve actually tracked some of the apartment communities, which might have kids in only 20% of the complex’s units. So, on 300 units, I’d have maybe 60 units that have kids, I paid $6 million in impact fees for the construction of new schools, which is basically 1/3 of a whole [700-student) schoolhouse for 60 kids. And, I’m still paying taxes every year, too. These fees were supposed to only be used for new school construction, but they never gave me any data.” 

Benge also said he decided to go about it a different way. “Let’s just track how many homes and apartments were built from, let’s say, 2015 through 2025. So, I made up a number, let’s say 100,000 units were built. Each one paid $14,000 per unit. Where’s that $1.4 billion? Or, list me out the new schools that’ve been built with that money, with the budget you spent on each one. 

“A K-8 school right now costs $18-$20 million, a high school is upwards of $50 million, and that would house, in Orange County, up to 5,000 students. By our estimation, there should have been around 84 new schools built during that time — and they only have three. 

“So, where’s all that money? [Counties aren’t] allowed to use it for [their] general funds. You can’t use it to pay more administrators. This money should be segregated out and if it’s not, this is a big issue.” 

He added that many of the assumptions used by counties to set their school impact fees, “are horribly flawed. If I build a 300-unit apartment complex and a third of those units are one-bedroom units, how many kids live in one-bedroom apartments? Historical precedence says that only unless someone is building a house that isn’t ready yet, one-bedroom units don’t generate any kids, yet I still have to pay the same school impact fees for those units. It’s crazy.” 

The Fletcher Project 

Speaking of crazy, Benge said that his Fletcher Project — named for the family that owned the 100-acre property — was originally planned in Aug. 2024 for 350 multi-family units, about 160 townhomes and 25,000 sq. ft. of commercial uses and had been through more than a year of meetings and plans when Pasco’s commissioners voted last year to deny it. 

“The big pushback was the private, never-permitted airstrip from the 1950s next door, which would have prevented us from building anything on 1/3 of the property. We agreed to not build on that portion, but we asked to have the same density on the rest of the property. So, we wouldn’t build as [many total units], and they turned us down. We started with Plan A and were up to Plan Q, and they still turned us down.” 

Hawes MPUD 

Despite that setback in Pasco, Benge Development is moving forward with its plan for the Hawes MPUD (marked in red on map below). The project will extend Handcart Rd. to the north, with 396 multi-family units on the south side and 127 townhomes on the north side and some neighborhood commercial (grocery store, etc.) entitlements. The Hawes project was approved in 2023, but Benge has not yet begun building at that site. 

Jonathan’s Landing 

Benge also is building Jonathan’s Landing, the first adult autistic facility in the U.S., in Lake Nona, FL. “It will have 5,000 beds and bring 5,000 jobs to that area,” Benge said. “My friend, Jason Eichenholz, has a son named Jonathan who is an adult with autism. This will help so many adults because state support for [developmentally disabled] people ends at age 18.” 

Look for more info about Tony Benge and his vision for the NTBC in our next issue.