HART To Improve Bus Service in New Tampa

New Tampa’s current one-stop Route 51LX is getting a makeover, with more stops, making it easier for local residents to get to nearby malls, downtown & Tampa Intl. Airport!

New Tampa residents without vehicles and/or in need of access to public transportation have always lived with a dearth of options. But, that is about to change.

Starting Sunday, July 1, a long-overdue, all-day, hourly bus route is being launched by the Hillsborough Area Regional Transit Authority (HART) that will transform public transportation between S.R. 56 in Wesley Chapel near the Shops at Wiregrass and the University of South Florida area.

The new route, called Route 275 Limited Express (275LX), will replace the existing and limited Route 51LX. It is funded at $1.2-million annually through fiscal year 2019 by an Urban Corridor grant from the Florida Department of Transportation.

The new route will run from Wesley Chapel through New Tampa, the University area and downtown, all the way to Tampa International Airport (TIA). Additional stops in New Tampa will make the service more accessible for more people who need to use public transportation.

Ruthie Reyes-Burckard, the chief operating officer at HART, says it will now be possible to take a bus from a number of new stops in New Tampa all the way to TIA in less than two hours, for the price of a $2 ticket. And yes, the HART buses are equipped with WiFi.
“That’s a pretty good deal,” she says.

More important is that the new route will offer a slew of brand new stops at New Tampa locations, as opposed to the one (in front of the Lowe’s at the corner of Bruce B. Downs {BBD} Blvd. and Commerce Palms Dr.) that exists now.

The new route promises to be a dramatic improvement for those who currently use public transportation, with the hope, Reyes-Burckard says, that the added convenience will encourage more use.

Interim HART CEO Jeff Seward (left) and Tampa International Airport CEO Joseph Lopano at HART’s TIA Rental Car Facility stop. (Photo Courtesy of HART)

The soon-to-launch Route 275LX will merge with Route 51LX to provide hourly service beginning at 5:30 a.m., with 13 stops between the Pasco County Public Transportation (PCPT) Park-N-Ride (at Florida Hospital Wesley Chapel in Wiregrass Ranch) and the University area, with 28 total stops to TIA. Service will be available until 10 p.m.

New Tampa will have stops at BBD and Hunter’s Lake Dr., Hunter’s Green Dr., Richmond Place Dr., Highwoods Preserve Pkwy., Commerce Palms Blvd./Lowe’s, Palm Springs Blvd., Tampa Palms Blvd., Amberly Dr. and Lake Forest Dr.

From there, the 275LX will head south, turn west on Fowler to I-275, to the Marion Transit Center in downtown Tampa, to stops on Westshore Blvd. and Spruce St. before arriving at the TIA rental car facility.

A route to TIA was a big selling point for Tampa residents who participated in surveys and email questionnaires distributed by HART, which also held 10 public outreach sessions, four on-board sessions and an open house at the New Tampa Regional Library on Cross Creek Blvd. in March.
HART proposed three route options.

One proposal was a seven-day, 6 a.m.-10 p.m. route running from Wiregrass Ranch to the Marion Transit Center, without an airport stop. A second proposal presented a route running from Wiregrass Ranch to the airport during the week, but only going as far as the University area on weekends.
At a public hearing March 28, a majority of the 105 attendees said they preferred the third option, Wiregrass Ranch to TIA, or 275LX route. It was approved at the May 7 HART Board of Directors meeting.

“We’ve heard many requests for more routes for years,” says Reyes-Burckard. “The (current) options for a few trips in the morning and afternoon doesn’t work for people who might have emergencies, or work an alternate schedule. This will provide them with much more flexibility.”

The current 51LX route available to New Tampa bus riders is extremely limited. Riders can only catch buses heading south from the Park-N-Ride location at Lowe’s, but only at 6:05 a.m. and 6:42 a.m. Riders needing to go north to the Park-N-Ride lot next to Florida Hospital Wesley Chapel (off BBD in Wiregrass Ranch) have no morning options. In the evening, buses leave the Lowe’s stop at 5:29 p.m. and at 6:02 p.m. to return to their original starting point, with no stops in between and no return service to New Tampa.

The current route was one of HART’s underperforming lines. It was established in 2005, but since 2014 has seen declining ridership. It was projected to serve fewer than 10,000 passengers for all of 2018 and the most recent data shows that Route 51LX has had 500 fewer passengers compared to last year at this time.

Ridership has been stymied by a number of issues, including the difficulty getting there for many New Tampa residents, especially those north of the I-75 intersection. But, with additional stops, as well as easier access to the Shops at Wiregrass (and even the Tampa Premium Outlets, via the Pasco County Public Transportation (PCPT) Route 54 connector), the hope for HART is that a more robust route will successful.

Reyes-Burckard, who has been with HART for nearly 17 years after spending 10 years with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) in New York City, said the new Route 275LX is part of HART’s revamped strategy to make their system into more of a grid that offers more frequency and more connectivity.

She adds that at least some of the impetus for the new route is the New Tampa and Wesley Chapel area’s recent and additional development still to come.

“The development in that area is what is really spawning the need to include this (route with more stops and all-day buses) in our service,” Reyes-Burckard says. “This is not only an opportunity to serve the community going downtown. It also will serve businesses in that (BBD) corridor.”

Kalarickal Resigns As Chairman Of The Board Of North Tampa Bay Chamber

Local dentist Dr. Zack Kalarickal has officially resigned his position as Chairman of the Board (and the Board itself) of the North Tampa Bay Chamber of Commerce (NTBC) only six months into his one-year term, citing family concerns.

Immediate past president Jennifer Cofini of the Parks Auto Group, who read the Chamber’s official statement to more than 100 NTBC members at this morning’s Monthly Business Breakfast at PHSC’s Porter Campus at Wiregrass Ranch, has stepped in to serve the remainder of Dr. Kalarickal’s term.

Look for more details in the June 15 & June 29 editions of the Neighborhood News.’

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.”

New Tampa Weighs In On Traffic, Parks & More At New Tampa Council Meeting

To District 7 Tampa City councilman Luis Viera, there is nothing like the sight of a filled room for one of his town halls and New Tampa Council meetings.
This time, on May 2, it was the Jeri Zelinski Community Room at the New Tampa Regional Library, which was filled with local residents with questions about water, fire and emergency service, traffic and future developments.

But mostly, traffic.

Hillsborough’s countywide District 5 Commissioner Ken Hagan — who is running for the District 2 seat that represents all of New Tampa — was the guest at the May 2 New Tampa Council meeting. Viera actually had to recuse himself and leave the room halfway through the meeting when the discussion turned to an issue — the connection of Kinnan St. to Mansfield Blvd. (see stories on pages 1 & 4-5) about which he had a hearing the next day.

What did you miss?
Here’s some of the more interesting tidbits from the hour-long meeting:

Parks, Parks & More Parks
Comm. Hagan was asked about building a cricket field in the area, which turned into a conversation about the progress of a park on 50-plus acres of land in K-Bar Ranch. Hagan said the park will be paid for by the county — which has already set aside $5 million for the project, he added — but will be maintained and run by the City of Tampa in a rare city-county collaboration.

Ken Hagan

He says the park has the blessing of Tampa Mayor Bob Buckhorn, and the two parties are working on a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU), a non-binding agreement that lays out the terms, details and each party’s responsibilities as they pertain to the park.
As for the what amenities the park would offer, Hagan is unsure. He said, however, that sports fields will not be one of them. At one point, an athletic complex was envisioned, but according to the commissioner, “the city felt that was too intense.”

Another park, this one a public-private venture, is planned for the Branchton Park area, south and west of the intersection of Cross Creek Blvd. and Morris Bridge Rd.

The county bought 10 acres of land for $1.17 million to complete its holdings in the Branchton Park area and open the way for development, as reported last November in the New Tampa Neighborhood News.

Hagan said he is hoping for a creative project. He also said that he expects there will be some commercial development on the corner of Cross Creek Blvd. and Morris Bridge Rd., with the developer funding a lot of the potential amenities, like a splash pad, dog park or zip line.
Hagan also said that he is excited about the The Village at Hunter’s Lake project across the street from Hunter’s Green, saying it will break ground in October. As for the New Tampa Cultural Center, he said that planned jewel will be opening in 2020.

“It will be a centerpiece for the community,’’ Hagan said.

The Zombie Road Returns?
Plans to build a 3-mile East-West Road (E-W Rd.) connecting New Tampa Blvd. and I-275 died in 2008, but it never fails to draw some conversation at Viera’s New Tampa Council and town hall meetings.

That’s probably because some local residents remain convinced it would actually help solve some of New Tampa’s current traffic woes. As originally proposed, the E-W Rd. would direct traffic through West Meadows and connect from where the Gateway Bridge ends at Commerce Park Blvd. in Tampa Palms to a new interchange on I-275. The roadway was expected to help decrease the delays at the I-75/S.R. 56, I-75/BBD, and I-275/Bearss Ave. interchanges.

As Hagan recalled, most of New Tampa was in favor of the road, but residents of West Meadows and Tampa Palms Areas 4 & 8, where the road was proposed to go through, banded together as a formidable opposition group.

There were other problems with the proposed road as well, from environmental concerns to whether or not to make it a toll road.
“I would still support taking a look at it and making another run at it,” said Hagan, whose parents lived in West Meadows at the time, but still supported the E-W Rd. “I can certainly see how that would relieve a significant amount of congestion.”

At the other end of the same road, Hagan also was asked if there are any plans to extend Cross Creek Blvd. to U.S. 301, but he said there are not.
“When you look at our unfunded list of projects, priority-wise that would be pretty far down the list,” he said.

The same goes for widening Morris Bridge Rd., north of Cross Creek Blvd. Although it is a constrained road and currently prohibited from being widened due to environmental concerns, with the extension of S.R. 56 and the continued development in K-Bar Ranch in that area, the two-lane, well-worn Morris Bridge Rd. has “future problem” written all over it.

Surprisingly, no one complained about the intersection of Cross Creek Blvd. and BBD, which continues to be a major nuisance for commuters in peak hours, although the City of Tampa is currently studying it.

A BBD Pedestrian Bridge?
The idea of a pedestrian bridge, or a foot bridge, crossing over BBD from Live Oak Preserve (or even the Pebble Creek area) was presented again by Sigrun Ragnarsdottir and, is it just us, or does it make more and more sense every time it is brought up?

Think of it — a bridge for students to be able to walk, ride a bike or otherwise cross over an extremely congested road to get safely to Wharton High. It would be safer than relying on traffic lights — and the common sense of drivers probably holding their cell phones in one hand — to cross BBD, and surely more parents would let their kids walk or bike to school, reducing the number of cars piling up on BBD for drop-off and pick up.

Yes, a pedestrian bridge recently collapsed in Miami, and the cost of construction probably kills any chance of making this happen. But, when you look at the other high schools in Hillsborough County, there are aren’t any others – even Chamberlain (Busch Blvd.), Plant (Dale Mabry), Sickles (Gunn Highway) — where the majority of its local students have to cross a busier and more dangerous road than BBD to get to and from school.

Police On The Radar?
As the population of New Tampa continues to grow, so does the need for a police substation in the area, according to a few local residents.
Viera said that, at the moment, however, a police substation is a “want…whether or not it’s a need is a point of distinction.” He added, however, that the idea of a police substation is on his radar.

“It’s something that, as we see more growth in this area , we are going to want to take a look at because right now, we’ve pretty much got police hanging out at 7-11, and that’s not the most amenable plan,” he said.

Hagan said a Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office (HCSO) substation is being put at a new park in Carrollwood he is championing, and then it hit him — maybe it’s something that could be done at the proposed K-Bar Ranch park. “I hadn’t thought of that before,’’ he said.

The Elephant In The Room
You kind of got the feeling from the start that people were just killing time waiting for someone to bring up the whole Kinnan-Mansfield thing, and of course, it came up.
Short recap: Nothing has changed.
Hagan wants it connected, and said it was a travesty that the issue has dragged on this long. It appeared everyone in the room pretty much agreed.
Someone in attendance joked about sneaking in there and connecting them overnight, another said they could just borrow the equipment being used to widen BBD, and another suggested a boycott of Wiregrass Ranch businesses.
Judging by our stories on pages 1 and 4, however, it is a situation that hopefully is entering its endgame this summer.

City Council Puts Hold On K-Bar Expansion

Craig Margelowsky says he is one of many residents of K-Bar Ranch that would prefer to see more roads built before allowing more homes.  The Tampa City Council agrees. (Photo: John C. Cotey)

 

Stop!

That’s the message from Tampa’s City Council, which is tapping the brakes – something quite familiar to New Tampa residents trying to get around our already congested roads — on allowing any more new homes to be built in K-Bar Ranch, at least until there is a way for the people that buy those homes to leave the community in their automobiles.

Ideally, the city says, connector roads into Pasco County would help reduce some of the transportation issues facing New Tampa.
At the City Council’s May 3 meeting in downtown Tampa, District 7’s Luis Viera led the charge have the Council postpone a decision to allow 698 more homes to be built in K-Bar Ranch, located in the northeast corner of New Tampa between Kinnan St. and Morris Bridge Rd.

A final vote is scheduled for Thursday, June 28.

Pasco has concluded it’s Wesley Chapel Roadway Connection study by then, which is expected to clarify some of Tampa’s issues.

That study, commissioned more than a year ago, is looking at three connections between Tampa and Wesley Chapel — at Kinnan St.-Mansfield Blvd., at K-Bar Ranch Pkwy. and Meadow Pointe Blvd., and at a two-way connection where Wyndfields Blvd. would connect to K-Bar Ranch Pkwy. as well as to Morris Bridge Rd.

Until they are agreed to, Viera says new homes will just exacerbate a major problem in the area, where residents currently only have one road (Kinnan St.) out of K-Bar Ranch.

Any connections are dependent upon the City of Tampa and Hillsborough County finding a solution to the decade-long standoff with Pasco County, which has been resistant to the idea of connecting Kinnan St. to Mansfield Blvd.

Negotiations have been, at times, very contentious.

“The way I see this is, we have a constant crisis in the New Tampa area and it’s not just the things we’ve heard today (about traffic),” Viera said at the May 3 meeting. “This is really a crisis of governments not really working together.”

Viera was the only council member who opposed the plan to build more homes in K-Bar Ranch when the first reading of the plan was held in April. But, between then and May 3, he gained an ally in District 2 councilman Charlie Miranda.

“Although I supported this the first reading, I was hoping between the first and second reading Pasco would come out of its coma,” Miranda said. “Evidently, it has not.”

Miranda lamented the speed of development in the current economic environment, without the sufficient infrastructure to support it. Those two things, he said, need to go hand in hand.

“It’s a problem for the whole area, the whole city, they whole county, the whole state, the whole country,” Miranda said. “When you do not invest in infrastructure, something is going to give….we can’t continue to have prosperity with no parking or transportation.”

The decision to delay any further development in K-Bar Ranch was greeted with a clap of the hands by Craig Margelowsky, the president of Heron Preserve in K-Bar Ranch.

“Nobody wants it,” he says of more development. “Not without the roads.”

K-Bar Ranch already has 700 homes built, with another 500 or so already approved and coming. If M/I Homes, the developer, is successful in gaining approval for another 700, more than 2,000 homes will complete K-Bar and add thousands of cars to New Tampa’s already congested roads.

A member of the New Tampa Council, Margelowsky has long been a proponent of making the connection between Kinnan St. and Mansfield Blvd., as well as pushing for speedier construction of K-Bar Ranch Pkwy., which will run from Kinnan St. east to Morris Bridge Rd. Because morning traffic currently only has one road out of K-Bar Ranch, it backs up to the point of taking residents 10-15 minutes just to get out of their neighborhoods.

An accident last month near Pride Elementary blocked traffic for 45 minutes. And last summer, Margelowsky said there were traffic jams during Hurricane Irma evacuations.

“There’s a choke point there,” he says. “There was nothing anyone could do.”

Margelowsky says he warned the city and developers last year that the roads in and around K-Bar Ranch cannot support any new homes. He told the Tampa City Council, “We can’t get out”, and asked that before issuing any more certificates of occupancy (COs), that K-Bar Ranch Pkwy. should first have to be completed out to Kinnan St.

COs, however, were issued in March of 2017 he says, but the parkway wasn’t completed to Kinnan until two months ago.

“We have 1,200 homes, and we still don’t have two exits out,” Margelowsky says. “We have Kinnan. What are we supposed to do?”

Connecting Kinnan St. and Mansfield Blvd. has been argued as one solution, but the City of Tampa is now demanding that all three connections be made.

If not, no more homes in K-Bar Ranch.

“We need to connect them all,” said Melanie Calloway, the senior transportation planning engineer for Tampa. She said the city is stipulating that if Meadow Pointe Blvd. is connected to K-Bar Ranch Pkwy — as they believe Pasco desires, — “then Kinnan gets done at the same time.”

If Pasco does not agree, then the Wyndfields Blvd. extension connections to K-Bar Ranch Pkwy. and Morris Bridge Rd. — connections that Pasco officials want to see built — will not be considered.

“We hope that it gets done,” Calloway said. “We can’t make another municipality connect to our roadways. But, we try our best to let them know we are open. All connections. Not just pick and choose. It is important for traffic distribution.”

No one on the Tampa side seems overly optimistic that all of the connections can be agreed to, but all fingers at the May 3 meeting pointed to Pasco County for being at fault.

Attorney Donna Feldman, who is representing M/I Homes, the developer, said the City of Tampa has gone out of its way to get the connections made, but Pasco “is really standing in the way.”

Feldman pointed out that the two counties were able to work together on a Sunlake Blvd. extension from Land O’Lakes in Pasco County into Hillsborough a few years ago, but can’t solve their current quandary.

“That was done cooperatively,” Feldman said. “Okay, Pasco, so what’s wrong with these? That’s the question.”

Hillsborough County Commissioner Ken Hagan, who says he has worked on connecting Kinnan-Mansfield for a decade, said that years ago, Pasco County commissioners agreed to make the Kinnan-Manfield connection.

He said at the time, he had stats showing that large numbers of Pasco County residents were flocking to New Tampa to use the recreation center, library and parks.

However, as Pasco County Dist. 2 commissioner Mike Moore has noted, the tide has turned. Because of the massive growth along the northern end of Mansfield Blvd., in Wiregrass Ranch and along S.R. 56, he doesn’t think Meadow Pointe’s residents desire or need the connection to be made anymore.

And despite the City of Tampa’s claims, he says it is Tampa that has declined to work with Pasco in the past, perhaps missing its chance.

Even at a time when metropolitan planning organizations and transportation boards in Hillsborough, Pasco and Pinellas counties seem to be urging regional cooperation and connectivity, the gap between Kinnan St. and Mansfield Blvd. continues to be more of a cavernous valley than the 30-foot patch of grass, dirt and trash that remains there.