Upcoming Events: St. Paddy’s Day At O’Brien’s, Jack Wilkins At NTPAC & More!

Friday-Sunday, March 15-17 — Three-Day St. Patrick’s Day Parking Lot Celebration at O’Brien’s Irish Pub.

O’Brien’s (5429 Wesley Chapel Village Market) will again be hosting the largest St. Patrick’s Day celebration in the New Tampa/ Wesley Chapel area with an indoor-outdoor party every day of St. Paddy’s Day weekend.

Tonight, MoonShine Abby will be performing from 8 p.m.-midnight. According to their website, MoonShine Abby is “the best blend of mature artistry, vigorous technique, and honed skill all wrapped up into a high-energy, party-style band.”

What’s a St. Pat’s Day party without bagpipes? You can come out to here pipers on Saturday and Sunday. On Sat., 25-year- old Gemma Briggs plays the pipes from 6:30 p.m.-7:30 p.m. Gemma says she is, “passionate about providing high-quality bagpipe music, professionalism and an unforgettable touch to any occasion.”

Gemma (photo right) will be followed at 8 p.m. on Sat. night by the Ryan Marchand Band.

Ryan’s website says he uses “live-looping (to create) sonic landscapes with layered beat- box percussion, vocal harmonies, and a bevy of guitar effects to cover the frequency and timbre spectrum. He draws inspirations from studio al- bums from Pink Floyd, The Beatles and more.”

Then, the main event at O’Brien’s will be held on Sun., St. Paddy’s Day itself.

From 4 p.m.-7 p.m., “The Irishman” Capt. Kirk, will play all of your favorite Irish tunes. Inside, from 7 p.m.-midnight, DJ SAF will spin dance music inside, but outside, the City of Mt. Dora pipe band will play your St. Pat’s favorites from 7:30 p.m.-8 p.m. Then, the Daniel Sprouse Band will play your favorite rock and country hits from 8 p.m.-midnight outside.

Please note that no coupons will be accepted all weekend at O’Brien’s and there will be a $10 cover charge on Sun. only.

For more info, call (813) 973-09988 or visit ObriensWesleyChapel.com.

Holy Week Services & Events

Although all local churches will hold Easter services on Sunday, March 31, both Grace Episcopal Church in Tampa Palms and St. Mark the Evangelist Catholic Church on Cross Creek Blvd. have services and events throughout Holy Week, with St. Mark’s Vigil Mass for Palm Sunday (see ad below) being held on Saturday, March 23, and Palm Sunday services at both Grace (see ad below) and St. Mark being held on Sunday, March 24.

Monday, March 25, 7p.m.—Monthly meeting of the New Tampa Democratic Club.

The New Tampa Democrats are gearing up for the up- coming 2024 Presidential and local election season. For more information, see the ad below.

Wednesday, March 27, 7 p.m.-8 p.m. — Wesley Chapel Elks Lodge organizational Meeting & Membership Drive —

If you’re looking to become part of a service organization that focuses its efforts on helping children and military veterans, the Elks have nearly 1,800 chapters and about 750,000 total members across the U.S. and are hop- ing to build a new Elks Lodge in the Wesley Chapel/New Tampa area. This meeting will be held at the Lexington Oaks Community Center (26304 Lexington Oaks Blvd., Wesley Chapel) and light refreshments will be served.

For more information, call Nancy El-lardat (732) 598-7883 or email src4para-dise@yahoo.com.

Thursday, April 4, 8 p.m.— The Tampa Jazz Club’s USF New Tampa Jazz Series presents a Jack Wilkins CD Release Concert.

An All-Star cast will join USF Professor of Jazz Studies (and Grammy Award nominee) Jack Wilkins (photo) on the New Tampa Performing Arts Center (8550 Hunters Village Rd.) stage, as he releases his most recent CD and will be joined by an All-Star cast, including Danny Gottlieb, Steve Allee and James Suggs. Tickets cost $25 for adults, $20 for Tampa Jazz Club members  for students and $5 for USF students.

Saturday, April 27, 6 p.m. — The Academy of Odissi Dance 25th Anniversary Gala. 
The Academy of Odissi Dance will host & perform at its 25th Anniversary Gala on Apr. 27. 

The Academy of Odissi Dance (located on Cross Creek Blvd. in New Tampa), a classical Indian dance troupe, is celebrating its 25th anniversary in the Tampa Bay area with an amazing Anniversary Gala and performance, which will be held at the Sacred Heart Knanaya Catholic Community Center (2620 Washington St., Valrico 33594). 

Gopa Rautray founded the Academy of Odissi Dance in 1999, and, with her daughter Ambika, has been working hard to propagate Indian culture through a range of dance forms. The Academy’s teams have performed on a variety of stages, locally and nationally. They perform fusion routines, blending styles such as ballet, jazz, hip-hop, folk and Indian classical dance, blending, enriching and sharing their art with a variety of audiences. 

For Gala tickets (which include dinner) & more information, call Gopa at (813) 992-5234 or Ambika at (813) 992- 5235 or see the ad below. 

Chamber Luncheon Reveals Wiregrass Ranch Plans & Calls Out Pasco For Non-Compliance Of Its Agreement Regarding The Sports Campus

“Pasco County is in default of our agreement regarding the Wiregrass Ranch Sports Campus,” said Wiregrass Ranch developer JD Porter at the North Tampa Bay Chamber (NTBC)’s new office in the Signature Workspace at the Shops at Wiregrass on Mar. 12. ““They are out of time; they are well past the deadline we gave them to get into compliance.”

Although Porter and his development manager Scott Sheridan talked about all aspects of what is already in place and what is still to come to the Porter family’s 5,100-acre cattle ranch (which stretches from S.R. 54 to south of S.R. 56 in Wesley Chapel) at the Chamber luncheon, the blockbuster news coming out of that meeting, attended by about 70 people, was Porter’s promise to “take back the (160-acre Sports Campus) property and sue the county for its non-compliance of the terms of our agreement,” referring to the “Flycatcher” agreement between Wiregrass Ranch and Pasco County, which was created when the land was donated to the county to build the Sports Campus. “The county was never supposed to manage that property,” despite the fact that Pasco voted to self-manage the Sports Campus beginning on June 1, 2023, after also voting unanimously to find RADDSports — the previous management company of the Sports Campus — in default of its agreement in Oct. 2022. The Board of County Commissioners (BOC) also voted unanimously to spend $6 million of taxpayer funds to buy out RADDSports from that agreement as of June 1 – without ever proving that RADD was in default of its managerial contract.

One of the problems, according to Porter, was that Pasco was already supposed to provide five additional outdoor fields, a trail system, concession stands and additional parking on the property (in addition to the two outdoor soccer fields and 98,000-sq.-ft. arena originally constructed when Phase 1 of the Sports Campus opened in 2020). Not only were those additional fields never built, the county never even put them out to bid until late 2023, when Pasco said it would cost $15.2 million to build them. “But,” Porter asked, “how much less would it have cost if the fields had gone to bid five years earlier, before Covid, as the county had promised?” 

Sheridan also noted that, “We want to make sure that this continues to be an asset to the community…a tourist-development-focused asset — that is its first and primary mission. That is what our agreement with the county says it should be, and not necessarily a county park. The purpose is for it to be a tourist development asset to get people dining in our restaurants, shopping at our retail (stores) and staying in our hotel rooms…adding tax base to our local economy.”

“Scott has a much more upbeat outlook on that asset than I do,” Porter said. “They should already have that (Phase 2) done and they are failing in their agreement with us. The county is four or five years behind on delivering the fields and it’s required that they use an outside operator to manage that asset. We have put them on notice that they have crossed the line on this one and they’ve crossed it badly. Government has no business trying to bring in and run stuff like that. Hopefully, they get it back to where it needs to be because if not, we’re going to solve this ourselves and how doesn’t matter to me.  They made a promise and we’re not going to play games, which is what they’ve been doing. So, we can do it nicely or, if they want, we can go to war.”

When asked about the lack of enough parking at the Sports Campus by Becky Hayes, the general manager of the Residence Inn hotel adjacent to the Sports Campus, Porter said, “I’m not a math genius, but I know that they could have built a helluva lot of parking spots for the money they used to buy out a group (RADD) that they signed an agreement with. They spent more than $5 million on that, instead of using the money to fix a problem.” 

Following the Mar. 12 luncheon, District 2 (which includes the Sports Campus and much of Wesley Chapel) Pasco County Commissioner Seth Weightman spoke with the Neighborhood News and said that Porter was “absolutely correct in his assessment of the situation with the Sports Campus and he has every right to take back the property because Pasco is not in compliance with that Flycatcher agreement.”

Commissioner Weightman also told the Neighborhood News that he would provide numbers to compare how the county’s Parks & Recreation Dept. has done managing the facility since taking over from RADD, but Porter said that the BOC should never have voted to take over the management of the Sports Campus — regardless of its reasons — and is only now getting ready to send out a Request for Quotes/Proposals from new operators to take over its management.

“So, write the county commissioners because it’s not necessarily them, it’s the staff in that (County Commission) office that keeps making excuses every damn day,” Porter said. “Let’s make it uncomfortable for them until they do something.”

“Downtown Wesley Chapel — Legacy Wiregrass Ranch”

Porter and Sheridan also gave updates on the previously announced (and getting ready to go vertical) 300-bed Orlando Health hospital, the 50-bed PAM Health Rehabilitation Hospital (north of the Amberlin Apartments), the other planned medical buildings across Bruce B. Downs Blvd. from the BayCare hospital, the 100,00-sq.-ft. Florida Cancer Specialists medical building (on the south side of S.R. 56, next to North Tampa Behavioral Health) and the highly anticipated “downtown Wesley Chapel that we call Legacy Wiregrass Ranch,” Porter said. “This group is the first to see the update on this, although we’ve been working on it for years.”

He added, “It’s not a  Town Center. I am so tired of it being referred to as a Town Center. There are 28 Town Centers (in Wesley Chapel), and I don’t know what those are but this is an actual downtown. Everybody uses that key word (Town Center) and it’s absolutely incredible because it’s usually a Publix and maybe a Rita’s Italian Ice or something like that and it does nothing. That’s what we call ‘commercial.’ But, this is something that’s legit and it has taken a long time, but this is going to happen. Day One, we will have 150,000 sq. ft. (of office), 100,000 sq. ft. of retail and that’s by design. And we’re investing in it ourselves — we’re building 100,000 sq. ft. across the street. Nobody begins with 350,000 sq. ft. in the county and we have that before it even starts building. We don’t want to pull the trigger too early because if you do, we set somebody up for failure.” 

Sheridan also noted, “Ours will be a true downtown urban development, with a 1,500-space elevated parking structure and five-story rental apartments with truly local businesses, including a food hall, on the bottom floor., plus a large green space area for outdoor entertaining. So, this is definitely urban in nature — four- or five-story apartments, a four- or five-story hotel, all just north of Orlando Health. This will be Phase One, about 25 acres, of a true downtown Wesley Chapel – Legacy Wiregrass Ranch.” 

Porter added, “There has to be residential. These are mid-rise apartment buildings, about 900 units. I don’t understand why the county is against rental units. Lifestyles have changed, so we need rental units, which may be five or six years out, not only here but throughout the ranch. But, if I can get them to do five or six stories here, I can get them to do seven or eight stories someplace else (in Wiregrass Ranch).”

Sheridan added that although the downtown area is likely at least two years away from beginning construction, “We are beginning to seek proposals now and there is some infrastructure already happening. But, by the time Orlando Health opens in late 2025, early 2026, the first phase of this will be on the heels of that.”

Porter also noted that although all of Wiregrass Ranch has a development plan, there will still be plenty of green space throughout the community. 

“Nobody cares more about this land and the wildlife on it than I do. That’s why we’ve taken such a careful approach to this development. People call me a control freak, and maybe I am, but we’ve turned down a lot of different things and we’re building a lot of this ourselves because I want this to be successful.”

“We’ve probably turned down ten gas stations in Wiregrass Ranch,” Sheridan added. “We finally allowed one to open (the 7-11 on Mansfield Blvd.) about a year ago and just agreed to a second one. “We have lost deals  — to great users — because we don’t want to give up control to somebody else.”

Porter noted, “One of my concerns is that everybody loves Wawa, but what happens if Wawa leaves? In our case, whoever takes that over would have to go through me again to make it a Kangaroo or something else.”

And finally, Sheridan says that Wiregrass Ranch currently provides, “about $1.4 billion in tax base to Pasco County. At build-out, conservatively, we’ll probably be about $6.5 billion in tax base. That generates huge revenue for the county.”

Orlando Health Meets The Local Community At Chamber Event At PHSC 

(Above, l.-r.) NTBC President Hope Kennedy, PHSC Porter Campus Provost Dr. Davina Jones, Pasco EDC VP Mike Bishop, Wiregrass Ranch developer JD Porter, Orlando Health VP John Walsh & Turner Construction VP Kim Neuscheler provided more than 150 attendees (photo below) with information about Wesley Chapel’s newest hospital at an NTBC-sponsored panel discussion on Feb. 21. (Photos by Charmaine George) 

Although Wesley Chapel already has two full-size, full-service hospitals located within a couple of miles of each other, the area’s largest hospital is now being built less than a mile from AdventHealth Wesley Chapel, the first hospital to open (more than a decade ago) in any of Wesley Chapel’s three zip codes (33543, 33544 and 33545). 

And, although Orlando Health Wesley Chapel has not yet begun going vertical, when the nonprofit hospital operator asked North Tampa Bay Chamber (NTBC) president & CEO Hope Kennedy if she would be interested in hosting a community meeting to introduce Orlando Health to the local community, Kennedy says she jumped at the opportunity. 

“It was a no-brainer for us,” Kennedy said after the meeting was held on Feb. 21 at Pasco Hernando State College (PHSC)’s Porter Campus at Wiregrass Ranch, which is located within a few hundred feet of the new hospital site now under development at the corner of S.R. 56 and Wiregrass Ranch Blvd. 

Kennedy asked Porter Campus Provost Dr. Davina Jones if she would be interested in having the meeting at PHSC, where the Chamber hosts its monthly Business Breakfasts, and the event was quickly put together. 

More than 150 NTBC members and a number of local contractors interested in working with Orlando Health on the project came to the meeting, which featured Kennedy, Dr. Jones, Pasco Economic Development Council VP Mike Bishop, Wiregrass Ranch developer JD Porter, Orlando Health VP of Facility Development & Asset Strategy John Walsh and Kim Neuscheler, the VP & general manager of Turner Construction Tampa, which is building the new hospital. 

Walsh said the 103-year-old Orlando Health decided to make its first foray into Pasco County and Wesley Chapel because of the area’s “amazing growth and opportunity,” especially after recently acquiring Florida Medical Clinic, the 52-office physician group that will allow Orlando Health to not only staff the new hospital, but create new partnerships in the area. 

When it is completed, Orlando Health’s will be the largest of the three hospitals in Wesley Chapel, at 395,000 sq. ft. and 300 total beds (although the $300-million first phase will include about 102 beds — 90 medical/surgical and 12 ICU and six operating rooms, with room for 78 additional beds in the building’s shell). It also will include two large (one 60,000 and the other 80,000 sq. ft.) medical office buildings on the same 35-acre site. 

Walsh also said that in addition to the Tampa office of Turner Construction, all of the subcontractors also will come from the local area, which explains in no small part why so many of those providers attended this community event. 

“This is such an exciting opportunity for Pasco County and the Wesley Chapel area,” Kennedy said. 

Walsh also stressed that although Orlando Health is building a hospital, “this is not a one-and-done kind of project…we’re also already working in Lutz to put in a free-standing ED (emergency department); we’re also building the two medical office buildings, which will have an ambulatory surgical center, imaging center and an array of acute care facilities and physician specialists to keep us all healthy, so maybe we won’t have to go through the doors of the hospital (which will need about 400 employees when it opens). It’s important to have that whole array of services. This is not ‘sick care,’ it’s health care.” 

Walsh also mentioned the possibility of adding 10-bed “micro-hospitals,” as needed to serve communities located further from the hospital that couldn’t necessarily support a full-size hospital of their own. 

“The most important things we build in a community is not the buildings,” Walsh added. “It’s the relationships.” 

Porter, who admitted that, “Our biggest fear was that this could turn out to be an albatross if we built too many hospitals,” also said that he knew Orlando Health was a great partner to work with and that, despite the presence of what will be three hospitals by sometime in 2026, “With all the growth out here, this area is actually still underserved. We’ve got a long, long way to go.” 

And, when Kennedy asked about what PHSC could do to help ensure that there is a useful workforce for the new hospital, Dr. Jones responded that, “As a State College, with a history as a Community College, we have a responsibility to know what the needs are in the communities that we serve. So, we’re asking ourselves now, ‘Do we have…are we offering… the right programs…to serve the business community that’s here?’ Our goal is to never get too comfortable and to always be willing to change with the community’s needs.” 

Meanwhile, Bishop agreed with Dr. Jones and talked about the growing life sciences in Pasco and the need for more partnerships. 

“Our challenge is to bring business to this county,” he said. “But, if we all work together, we can address the challenges we all face.” 

And, speaking of those partnerships, Neuscheler said that Turner, as one of the leading health care builders in the U.S., always strives to be a good community partner, giving “opportunities to smaller, local companies to do business with us, with our Turner Construction School, which many of you already have gone through, and is something we’ve done since 1969. We will be holding another one of those in October.” She added that veteran- and minority-owned companies will definitely be offered the opportunity to participate in this process. 

Neuscheler also noted that the hospital’s foundation should begin being built sometime in April or May, with vertical construction taking about six months once the foundation is laid. 

The panelists all also talked about innovation as an important part of the new hospital, which includes in construction, doctors, nurses and other hospital personnel and the equipment that they will be using — from robotic surgery to 3D printing, artificial intelligence and more. 

Walsh said that the merger with a respected partner like Florida Medical Clinic will help ensure that the right doctors will staff the hospital. 

“One of our mottos,” Walsh said, “is that we don’t just care for you, we care about you.” 

Updating Three Of The Stories That Ran In Our Last Issue

Wharton High grad Gabriel Hassan lost his battle with Shwachman-Diamond Syndrome after receiving his diploma.

Because of the fact we only have an issue every four weeks in each of our markets, sometimes the stories that appear in our issues are or become “old” even before (or shortly after) that issue arrives in your mailbox.

In our Feb. 6 issue, we had two such stories that really needed to be updated in this issue and a third that was an event that took place after that issue hit mailboxes.

The most important, and saddest, of these was the fact that Gabriel Hassan who was on the cover of our last issue for receiving his diploma for graduating from Wharton High on Jan. 22, while he was still at Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital — passed away less than two weeks after that event.

Gabe, who was suffering from terminal leukemia, succumbed to his cancer and was buried by his family on or the day before Valentine’s Day. We also learned that his specific form of leukemia is called Shwachman-Diamond Syndrome, or SDS.

When we posted the story that Gabe had passed, his father Mahmoud Hassan commented on our Facebook page:

“He was my beloved boy — a precious soul who loved people and life.

He loved service to others, EDM music, Roblox, Video Games, Going to the movies.

He was our proud Eagle Scout and graduated HS despite all of his challenges.

Gabriel was a sweet angel and he will be missed dearly. We are grieving for our angel in heaven. We miss him so much.”

Although I never met Gabriel or his family, we join the Hassan family in their grief. Rest in Peace.

To help those afflicted with SDS, please search“Shwachman-Diamond Syndrome Alliance” on Facebook.

Suzy Tkacik Falls Short Of Award

We also knew that our story about Pride Elementary media specialist Suzy Tkacik (photo) being a finalist

for the Hillsborough School District-wide Ida S. Baker Diversity Educator of the Year award would be old news by the time the Feb. 6 issue reached your mailbox.

Even so, we still felt it was important to highlight Ms.Tkacik in these pages, as she was the only finalist for any of the District’s “Excellence in Education” awards from a New Tampa school.

Well, at the District’s award gala on Feb. 1, this year’s Ida S. Baker award went to Dr. Ilfault Joseph, the community resource teacher at Jennings Middle School.

Congratulations again, Suzy. You’re still a winner in all of our eyes!

Wharton Tournament Nets $6,400!

The third story we needed to update was the second annual Wharton High Cornhole ithloma. Tournament, which was held on Feb. 10 and ended up raising more than $6,400 to provide teacher grants and classroom needs for the school.

Our congratulations go out to Wharton teacher Matt McKernan (left in photo, left) and his partner (and fellow former Wildcat) Tate Wheeler, who outlasted 28 other teams to take home the top prize, after finishing as the runners-up in last year’s inaugural Cornhole Tourney. The second-place finishers were Benito Middle School teacher Christopher Taylor and his uncle Shawn Quinn. Both winning teams left with prize packages worth more than $700!

Tasty Namaste Express Is Open; Qdoba May Be, Too

Although we didn’t even find out about it until we went to press with our Feb 6 issue, OishiExpress, a decent fast-casual Japanese place, lasted only about a year in the spot at 17503 Preserve Walk Ln. in Highwoods Preserve — between Taste of New York Pizza and Lapels Cleaners (behind EggTown) — the new fast-casual Namaste Express(or XP) has already replaced Oishi.

I’ve only visited once since Namaste opened, but the new eatery can be summed up pretty easily — it’s a small place with a huge and what seems to be a very tasty menu.

On my visit, I enjoyed the chicken stir-fry bowl (left), which had just a hint of spice, with lots of chunks of chicken and clearly fresh vegetables. The savory sauce tasted like a completely unexpected cross between the curry flavors so prevalent in Indian cooking with a nod to Szechuan Chinese cuisine. I told the chef (I sadly forgot his name) that I would be back to try his biryani, the delicious-sounding Apollo fish (a fish filet tossed with ginger, garlic and a spicy sauce, which is specialty of Hyderabad) and the marinated, fried (but not breaded, because they’re gluten-free) chicken lollipops shown here.

Namaste has menu options from every region in India and even offers a unique “Grab & Go” menu that the restaurant’s website says is “meticu- lously crafted through cutting-edge flash chilling processes.” It definitely sounds unique.

Although there is clearly a sizable Indian population in New Tampa, considering how many Indian restaurants there already are in zip code 33647 — including Saffron, Minerva, Raaga, Dosa Hut, Bang-Bang! Bowls and the cafĂ© inside the Taaza Mart (as well as the Nepalese Gorkhali Kitchen, which also offers Indian specialties) — we hope that Namaste Express will be able to find its footing in what has so far proven to be a difficult location.

For more information, call (813) 866-1300 or visit NamasteXP.com.

Update On Qdoba

At our press time, Qdoba Mexican Eats,which we told you last issue was getting ready to open in the same plaza in Highwoods Preserve as Namaste (at 17509 Preserve Walk Ln.) last issue, was still not open, but co-owner Liz Montante says that she and her husband and co-owner Mike were expecting the New Tampa Qdoba to open “on or around March 1,” or a few days before this issue hits your mailbox.

In other words, if you’re a fan of Moe’s Southwest Grill (which Qdoba is replacing in Highwoods), Chipotle or any other fast-casual Mexican fare, you definitely should check out Qdoba, too.

“It’s been a long struggle, but we’re finally almost there,” Liz told me the day before I finished this issue. “We can’t wait for New Tampa to experience our fresh Mexican eats.”

For more information about Qdoba Mexican Eats, call (813) 761-0005 or visit Qdoba.com to check out the menu online.