As anyone who has visited the Lotte Plaza Market food court can attest, Korean fried chicken places are all the rage here now. With one successful Florida location in Bradenton, one in Ybor City and the newest one in front of the Ballantrae community on S.R. 54 in Land O’Lakes, Sweet Krunch Korean Fried Chicken & Boba Tea (left photo) will look to capitalize on this crunchy new craze when it opens next week in the former location of FJ Express in the Shoppes at New Tampa at 1832 Bruce B. Downs Blvd. just south of S.R. 56.
Featuring authentic Korean fried chicken, bibimbap bowls, Asian fusion appetizers (like pork potstickers) and boba teas, Sweet Krunch could have a future in our area. For more info, visit SweetKrunchFL.kwickmenu.com or the Ballantrae location at 17788 Aprile Dr., Land O’Lakes.
The Bean Shack Opens At The Mall
With the move of Coffee Latitudes to a brick-&-mortar café south of County Line Rd., there’s a new purveyor of coffee in the same kiosk at the Shops at Wiregrass — The Bean Shack (photo right).
But, it’s not completely new, as Coffee Latitudes owners James and Olga Frank are still supplying their delicious house-roasted coffee to The Bean Shack, which the new owner Ben says has a “beachy” vibe. We hope to update you about everything The Bean Shack has to offer in a future issue.
Congratulations, My Spice Buds!
Bindu Grandhi of My Spice Buds receives her “Fulfill Your Destiny” Business Builder Grant award (right) from Tampa Bay Markets.
Congratulations go out to Wesley Chapel resident Bindu Grandhi, the founder & CEO of My Spice Buds, a local family-owned venture that has been spicing up the local culinary scene with all-natural, vibrant hot sauces (Super Mirchi, Fiery Mirchi, and Tangy Mirchi), which stand out in the market for their health-conscious ingredients and exceptional flavors, drawing from cherished family recipes.
My Spice Buds was honored with a “Fulfill Your Destiny” Business Builder Grant from Tampa Bay Markets (TBM) at a recent TBM Fresh Market event at the Shops at Wiregrass. Aimed at supporting local entrepreneurs, this program provides crucial funding to take participating businesses to the next level.
Bindu says, “My Spice Buds is more than just a business; it’s a passion project. This grant not only validates our vision, it also empowers us to continue innovating and expanding our product offerings,” including a new spice blend. For more information, visit MySpiceBuds.com. — GN
You still have a chance to win FREE dining in this year’s Reader Dining Survey & Contest, but as you’re reading this, there’s only a little more than six weeks left to vote for your favorite eateries in Wesley Chapel & New Tampa! Click HEREto enter!
Here are this year’s categories again!
1) Your Five Favorite (overall) Restaurants in Wesley Chapel (WC)
2) Your Favorite American Restaurant in Wesley Chapel
3) Your Favorite Pizza Place in WC
Those same three categories also appear on the New Tampa ballot.
Both entry forms, however, also include lists of places that ask you to pick your Favorite in New Tampa (NT) AND Wesley Chapel, often (but not always) because there aren’t enough in a certain category in just one of our distribution areas. Here are those other categories:
1) You Favorite Mexican Place in NT/ WC
2) Your Favorite Latin (but not Mexican) Restaurant in NT/WC
3) Your Favorite Chinese Place in NT/WC
4) Your Favorite Japanese/Sushi Restaurant in NT & WC
5) Your Favorite Thai or Korean Restaurant in NT/WC
6) Your Favorite Italian Food in NT/WC
7) Your Favorite Greek or Mediterranean Restaurant in NT/WC
8) Your Favorite Indian Place in NT/WC
9) Your Favorite Breakfast Place in NT/WC
9) Your Favorite Ice Cream, Frozen Yogurt or Gelato Place in NT/WC
10) Your Favorite Bakery in NT/WC
11) Your Favorite Coffee Shop in NT/WC
We’re providing the lists of places, although we’ve left out the large national and regional chains (with more than 50-60 total locations), because you have to write (or type) the names of your favorites in the spaces provided and we’re pretty sure you know those if they’re your favorite in a category — and yes, you can still include them (we just wish you would focus on local).
Fill out as many categories as you like, but please don’t put the same name in every category, because those votes won’t be counted and if a restaurant is on our Wesley Chapel list, your vote won’t count if you write the name of that restaurant in any New Tampa-only spaces and vice-versa.
You can submit both New Tampa & Wesley Chapel ballots without being DQed — and, as always, there is still no purchase of any kind necessary to enter or win a great FREE prize! Click HERE for Wesley Chapel and click HERE for New Tampa.
This year’s Grand Prize is now $200 in FREE dining to the restaurant of your choice anywhere in the Tampa Bay area. There also are prizes of $100 and $50, all chosen at random from among all correctly-filled-out entries received by email or on our NeighborhoodNewsOnline.net website (Note-no U.S. Mail entries will be accepted for this year’s contest!) by Friday, October 18.
AdventHealth Wesley Chapel president Erik Wangsness at the groundbreaking ceremony for the hospital’s expansion. (Photos by Charmaine George)
When AdventHealth Wesley Chapel (AHWC) opened as the first hospital located in Wesley Chapel almost a dozen years ago (when it was called Florida Hospital Wesley Chapel) with just 83 total beds, the community was told that the plan was to eventually expand the number of beds to 300.
Since then, AHWC has done a lot more than just go through a name change to AHWC in 2019. First of all, two medical office buildings have opened (the AHWC Wellness Plaza in 2013 and the Outpatient Cancer & Research Center, in partnership with the Moffitt Cancer Center, in 2021).
In addition, the hospital more than doubled its original 83 beds to 169 in 2016, which also included increasing from four operating rooms to 12 and from 20 emergency room (ER) beds to 35.
But, along with the recent establishment of the new family care residency program and the freestanding emergency room in Meadow Pointe (as we reported last issue), AHWC held a groundbreaking ceremony for the hospital’s upward expansion on Aug. 15. Although Jannah and I were not personally able to attend that event, photographer Charmaine George did attend and made sure she recorded all of the proceedings for me, so I could write this story.
On hand for the event were District 54 State Rep. Randy Maggard, Pasco Commissioners Jack Mariano (Dist. 5), Seth Weightman (Dist. 2) and Board Chair Ron Oakley (Dist. 1), and Pasco Fire Chief Tony Perez, as well as members of both the hospital’s Governing Board and its Foundation’s Board and the AdventHealth Division office. AHWC president Erik Wangsness also introduced Bill Porter of the Porter Family Trust and Scott Sheridan of Locust Branch, LLC, the developer of Wiregrass Ranch, “since we are located on the Porter family’s land,” Wangsness said.
Wangsness also thanked those involved in the design and construction of the hospital expansion, including the AdventHealth Office of Design & Construction, architects HuntonBrady, design engineers Smith Seckman Reed, Atwell civil engineers and general contractor Batson Cook.
“This hospital is not yet 12 years old,” Wangsness said. “It opened in 2012 with 83 beds but was designed to grow with the community. We’re at 169 now but this expansion will allow us to add 72 inpatient beds, which is important for us — even though there are other facilities opening around us — since this community continues to grow in a meaningful way.”
Several different groups took part in the groundbreaking. This photo includes State Rep. Randy Maggard (far right) and three Pasco County commissioners, as well as the hospital’s management team.
“Case in point,” he added, “We have around 20 patients waiting at our Emergency Department this morning for admission. We need the [additional] capacity to continue to serve this growing community. And, the development isn’t going to stop, so it’s time for us to continue to grow.”
In addition to the inpatient beds, Wangsness said the expansion will add a couple of additional operating rooms, endoscopy suites, pre- and post-op beds, additional imaging, a PET-CT (positron emission tomography-computed tomography) suite and a hybrid lab (a traditional lab that also can double as a surgical operating room), “that will help us grow in the severity of the patients we can serve. I want to thank all of you for joining us on this warm, muggy morning.” Wangsness also said the expansion should be completed by the end of 2025.
Also on hand were Bill Porter (left) of the Porter family & Scott Sheridan of the Wiregrass Ranch development team.
Wangsness then introduced Rep. Maggard, who said, “We all know how important it is for Advent to be doing this for our community. I can truly say that when I go to Tallahassee, people know [there is] no district like we have, District 54, with the community partners we have here. It is special and I feel very honored to be able to help in any way I can to help this area grow.”
Rep. Maggard also mentioned Pasco Hernando State College and its nearby Porter Campus at Wiregrass Ranch, which recently expanded its nursing program (as we reported last issue). “We can see a future that’s bright for our area.”
He also mentioned that the need for health care facilities will continue to grow. “We expect a 20% population growth for Pasco County by 2045,” he said. “If you think the traffic’s bad now, just wait.”
Comm. Oakley also said he was honored to be on the Foundation Board for AdventHealth, and to be on-hand for yet another major event for the hospital, “which is such a great community partner.” He also said that AHWC’s competition, with one additional hospital built and 1-2 others being built, means all of the hospitals “will be competing to be number 1. The benefactors of that competition are the people of Pasco County.”
Wangsness said that because Comm. Oakley mentioned AHWC’s competition, “I just want to say that we’ve been recognized by Newsweek magazine three years in a row as one of the ‘World’s Best Hospitals.’”
Comm. Weightman, whose Dist. 2 includes the hospital, then also thanked the Porter family for its vision for Wiregrass Ranch.
Norm Stein
“It wasn’t long ago that this was all wide open… with cows roaming around…and Bruce B. Downs was a road to nowhere. But, we’ve grown in incredible leaps and bounds over the past decade. The vision of Wiregrass Ranch and AdventHealth…it’s just such a fantastic place to be for our community. The investment that Advent continues to make…and the jobs… it’s just phenomenal.”
Speaking of vision, the final speaker before the groundbreaking was former University Community Hospital president and long-time AHWC Board member Norm Stein, whom Wangsness credited with having the vision for the need to build a hospital in Wesley Chapel.
“It was Dec. 14, 2010, when we had another groundbreaking,” Stein said. “The late Don Porter had walked into my hospital and told me of his idea to build a hospital in this part of Pasco and to have a college that could provide nursing students for that hospital. And, he wanted to see both of those institutions come together on his property. And you know what? It wasn’t easy, but it happened.”
Congrats to FSC Franchise Co. CEO Chris Elliott & Brass Tap GM Kate Tsan and their entire crew at the former Beef O’Brady’s on S.R. 54 in the Sunlake area of Lutz, which was officially rebranded on Aug 29 as a new Brass Tap.
FSC is the parent company of both Beef O’Brady’s & The Brass Tap, which hosted a North Tampa Bay Chamber ribbon-cutting event to commemorate the change.
According to admin Kelly Gilroy’s personal Facebook profile, the Facebook page called “Pasco County Development & Growth Updates” (PCDGU) was first created and started posting in July of 2023, and there’s no doubt that it has quickly become the most trusted online source for new information about new residential and commercial developments — not just in Wesley Chapel but for all of Pasco County — in a very short time.
And, for good reason. As the editor of the most trusted print source of news and information about Wesley Chapel and New Tampa for the last 30 years, all I can say is that page administrators David Hutsell and Kelly Gilroy have done — and continue to do — an amazing job of releasing information supplied to the county, usually the same day these development applications are filed.
Rather than express any kind of professional jealousy about how they’ve captured the imagination of local residents, I have found that PCDGU and the Neighborhood News have developed a kind of synergy — they make the announcements and we (myself and editorial researcher/correspondent Joel Provenzano) follow up to try to give additional information about them. A few times, we’ve been the first to note that a previously announced development was scrubbed or its application was withdrawn, but most of the time, the information, site maps and other graphics in PCDGU are truly spot-on.
Of Facts & ‘Myth’
One of the things that makes the volume of information they put out on an ongoing basis so impressive is that Kelly and David both apparently have full-time jobs. We found this out when we exchanged private Facebook messages with Kelly — once — and have tried a few times to get an actual interview with her and/or David (which she said they were amenable to do, but that they’re both super-busy; she also said that it was probably best for us to interview David, since PCDGU is his page), but as of the day I am writing this column, no such interview has yet been set up.
A few local news reporters, including yours truly, have tried to find out from our county commissioners and county staff if perhaps either David or Kelly or both currently or previously worked for the county, but several months ago, one Pasco commissioner told me, “No one in Pasco County government even knows who they are or how they keep such close tabs on everything that comes before us. Some of our staffers have even said they think their profiles are fake or that the administrators don’t use their real names on their page.”
Whoa. This mythology about them has grown in part because Kelly has only one photo on her personal profile page and, according to many people I’ve spoken with about it — and it seems that everyone I talk to about it wants to know — “it looks more like an illustration or AI-generated than a photo.” Her profile also says her work is “AVP – Risk Analytics at Banking Industry” and that she is married and lives in Lutz. Whenever she is asked in the comments of a post what her actual job is, she says “I work in commercial banking” (the same thing she told me on the phone).
Meanwhile, David’s personal profile says that he works at St. George Capital Partners, LLC, which is based in Palm Beach Gardens.
Considering the amount of valuable information Kelly and David put out, and the fact that (it seems) everyone wants more information about them, it’s probably a good idea that they have remained mostly anonymous doing what I assure you is not easy to do.
Back in the “good old days,” before everything submitted to a county or city government was available online, in order to get information about new developments, I’d have to go to the New Port Richey Government Center (for Wesley Chapel) or to downtown Tampa (for New Tampa), pull the files and take film pictures of the maps, charts and development info. Easy, right?
Nowadays, however, all of that info, once it’s been filed, is available online — if you know where to look. We have usually waited until a development review has been put on an agenda of the county’s Planning Commission or Board of County Commissioners (BOC) before putting that information in front of our readers. But, even though some of what PCDGU puts out is preliminary and subject to change — and Kelly and David always mention when it is — there’s no doubt that they continue to do an amazing job of providing that information.
And, this is true despite the fact that whenever someone asks on their page, “What’s coming to…,” too many people are still making the same tired jokes about car washes and self-storage facilities, while others try to turn every post into a political argument (usually) condemning the BOC and county staff. It’s a lot for them to put up with, considering that this isn’t either of their full-time jobs. Kelly, in particular, continues to try to shut down such unnecessary nonsense, but I’m sure it isn’t easy.
We also appreciate it whenever Kelly or David post Neighborhood News stories in response to comments on their page. Keep up the great work, you two! Let’s make that interview happen!
Above is a list of new developments from PCDGU since Aug. 1 that we plan to update.
