Wesley Chapel 2017 Year in review: Top business

Center Ice Transforms Wesley Chapel

There are many businesses that excite, fill a need in and make an impact on a community.  Very few, however, could be called “transformational.”

In 2017, Florida Hospital Center Ice was truly transformational.

“I think that’s the right word,’’ said Hope Allen, the CEO of the Greater Wesley Chapel Chamber of Commerce. “It has made such an important impact on our community. It has really changed the landscape.”

After officially opening on January 25, FHCI’s impact was felt immediately. The first night attracted 300 skaters, the weekend drew more than 600, and nearly 400 signed up for Learn To Skate classes.

That was just the beginning. From hockey tournaments and leagues to figure skating to corporate outings, the $28-million, 150,500-sq.-ft. FHCI made nearly every weekend in 2017 a big one.

By the end of the year, roughly a million visitors had passed through the doors of FHCI, located just northeast of the S.R. 56 and I-75 interchange.

“Definitely the demographics are good, the population is ripe for what we do,” says Gordie Zimmerman, managing partner of FHCI developer ZMitch, LLC. “The community is just totally excited about the facility. We have been blown away by the response and turnout. It’s been great.”

FHCI is the largest ice skating and hockey facility south of New York. Zimmerman estimates that more than 1,500 local kids have enrolled in various hockey and ice skating programs at FHCI, including a youth travel hockey program that was expected to start with four or five teams, but instead has nine.

There is curling on Saturday nights, and FHCI’s adult hockey league has 46 teams, and grows every 12 weeks when the next new season begins. In July, a roller hockey tournament attracted 120 teams, and is already scheduled for a return. There have been figure skating competitions and exhibitions as well, and FHCI hosted the Statewide Amateur Hockey of Florida (SAHOF) high school championships, where Wiregrass Ranch High, coached by Zimmerman, finished as the runner-up.

But FHCI, which is expected to deliver an economic impact of roughly $20 million a year, is more than just an ice rink, “which is kind of our slogan,” Zimmerman says.

To that end, it hosted events like the Taste of New Tampa & Wesley Chapel (which returns March 25), “American Idol” auditions and dozens and dozens of corporate events and things like holiday parties in 2017.

“It has become a facility for many in terms of sports and corporate, and the two blend very nicely together,’’ Zimmerman says, adding that 71 corporate outings and meetings are already on the books for 2018.

Zimmerman says that to pick his 2017 highlight is a difficult task.

“There have been a bunch of them,” he says. “Every weekend, there was something happening.”

But, while FHCI has already scored a number of coups leading to national exposure, the biggest “get” for the new facility was landing the U.S. Women’s Olympic Hockey team.

Since September, the team has trained at FHCI in preparation for the 2018 Winter Games next month in Pyeongchang County, South Korea. Wesley Chapel is mentioned prominently in practically every article written about the team, and their presence has helped ignite an interest in developing women’s hockey in Florida.

The U.S. beat Canada 4-1 at FHCI in a Four Nations Cup exhibition in November, and tickets sold out.

Wesley Chapel 2017 Year In Review: News

(l.-r.) Meadow Pointe III residents Javier Casillas, Ernie Rodriguez, Gary Suris and Nick Casillas begin cutting up the second of three trees they removed on Beardsley Dr. following Hurricane Irma. (Photo courtesy of Inelia Semonick).

TOP STORIES OF 2017: Hurricane Irma, The Curtis Reeves Trial & ‘American Idol’ Made Headlines!

From development to new businesses to the Curtis Reeves trial garnering national interest, there was no shortage of news in Wesley Chapel in 2017.

However, Category 5 Hurricane Irma stole the show.

News of her impending arrival set off a frenzy unlike any other Wesley Chapel has experienced in recent memory. A week before she even touched ground in Florida, water and plywood (to board up windows) became the area’s hottest commodities, flying off the shelves of local stores.

Many, quite literally, fled, clogging roads with evacuees heading for higher ground or, as the storm got closer, local shelters. Gasoline was sparse from Miami to Atlanta, GA.

In Pasco County, 24,000 residents spent the night in one of 26 shelters.

“We were scared. Everyone was scared,’’ Meadow Pointe III’s Inelia Semonick told us afterwards. When the storm cut a path up the middle of Florida and bore down on Wesley Chapel, she, and many others, took to their closets.

Cristy Norland and her family suffered serious flooding of their Quail Hollow home. (Photo: Cristy Norland)

Fortunately for Wesley Chapel and the rest of Tampa Bay, Irma didn’t deliver a knockout punch, just a gentle slap upside the head. Or, in the case of those who lost power in Pasco County — 217,382 out of 261,000 total addresses, or 83 percent — more like two slaps upside the head.

At Cat 5 strength, Irma devastated parts of south Florida, but hit the Tampa Bay area as a Category 2 hurricane, still enough to uproot smaller trees and scatter large branches. There was flooding in parts of Wesley Chapel, and many pool cages and fences did not survive unscathed. Clean-up, however, took weeks.

Among the other news making national headlines happened in Pasco County court, where, nearly four years after Curtis Reeves Jr. shot Chad Oulson, 43, to death in the Cobb Grove 16 movie theater, Pasco judge Susan Barthle ruled that Reeves could not use the “stand your ground” defense.

Reeves had hoped to use the argument that he was defending himself when he shot Oulson in January 2014. He is appealing Barthle’s ruling.

Pool photo: OCTAVIO JONES | Times
Curtis Reeves Jr. takes the stand to testify during his “stand your ground” hearing at the Robert D. Sumner Judicial Center in Dade City, Florida, on Tuesday, February 28, 2017. 

In happier news in 2017, the area attracted two significant sports stories, which you can read about on page 32 in our current issue — the women’s tennis Federation Cup at Saddlebrook and the U.S. Olympic women’s hockey team, which prepared for the 2018 Winter Games in Wesley Chapel.

Speaking of that gold-medal favorite women’s hockey team, their home ice since September has been Florida Hospital Center Ice (FHCI), which opened its doors in January (see page 11).

FHCI also has opened the way for a number of notable events to be held, including the Taste of New Tampa & Wesley Chapel.

The long-running Taste — which will be held for the 22nd time this year on Sunday, March 25, noon-4 p.m. — attracted nearly 2,000 people who got to sample the wares of nearly 50 local food and beverage vendors, and raised $11,000  for the charities supported by the event’s organizer, the Rotary Club of New Tampa and its partner, the Greater Wesley Chapel Chamber of Commerce.

“American Idol,” which is making a comeback and will air on ABC-TV  this year, held tryouts at FHCI in August, attracting 400 hopefuls. While no one has been officially reported as making it past the following stage, which was held in Orlando, some locals did make it at least that far.

And, on pages 11 and 38, check out 2017’s explosion of local businesses in Wesley Chapel, as restaurants like Noble Crust, Irish 31 and Ford’s Garage opened, to name a few, as well as at least a dozen other new businesses, including two more luxury auto dealerships (Audi and Lexus), as the area continued to be one of the hottest in all of Florida for growth and expansion.

Meadow Pointe II Residents Fighting Proposed 7-Eleven

Wesley Chapel may be developing at breakneck speed, but hundreds of Meadow Pointe residents think there are still lines that need not be crossed.

One of those lines is at the southwest corner of Mansfield Blvd. and County Line Rd., where developers are hoping to build a 3,010-sq.-ft. 7-Eleven gas station and convenience store — adjacent to the Kids R Kids Learning Academy of Meadow Pointe.

A petition started by Meadow Pointe II resident Chris Dillinger was quickly approaching 1,000 signatures last week, as residents expressed concern about having a 16-pump gas station located so close to a preschool.

“That is our No. 1 concern,” said Dillinger, a 39-year-old high school counselor at Sunlake High in Land O’Lakes. “The way the school is set back off of (Mansfield Blvd.), it will basically be blocked in by 16 fuel pumps. It’s not a good set-up. It makes the school less safe.”

Dillinger and other Meadow Pointe II residents have been in contact with Pasco County governmental officials, voicing their concerns.

Trout Creek Properties, Inc., is either making a request for a special exception to sell gas under its current C-1 (neighborhood commercial) zoning, or asking to be granted a Substantial Modification Request to have the 5.32-acre parcel rezoned from C1 to C-2, which is general commercial.

Trout Creek’s first meeting with the county’s Development Review Committee (DRC) in December was first continued to today, but Pasco County senior planner Corelynn Howell said the meeting this afternoon was likely to be continued as well, to a date to be determined.

According to Howell, the developers will need to re-notice the development, which involves mailing notices to all of the property owners abutting the proposed development, as well as re-posting signs.

“The county has concerns about it, so we’re going back and forth with the applicant, negotiating the issues on both sides,” Howell says. “Everyone needs to get their ducks in a row.”

Howell did say the county is leaning away from granting a re-zoning to C-2, because it prefers the property remain residential commercial. In that case, a special exception appears to be the way forward for Trout Creek.

Meadow Pointe II has an ally in Pasco County District 2 commissioner Mike Moore, who represents the area on the Pasco County Board of County Commissioners (BCC).

Moore told organizers that if the re-zoning request made it past the DRC to the BCC — which he chairs — he would vote against it.

“I agree with them,’’ Moore said. “This is a terrible location for these gas pumps. With a daycare center right behind it, it’s just not compatible with the area, in my opinion.”

Another proposed 7-Eleven is currently working its way through the permitting process, near yet another preschool. Developers are looking to build a 2,988-sq.-ft. 7-Eleven at the corner of Bruce B. Downs (BBD) Blvd. and Vanguard St., in front of the existing Goddard School and the new Premier Heart & Vascular Center.

The developers had their pre-application meeting with county planners in October.

For more information about the Meadow Pointe II petition, visit http://bit.ly/2CvXWYw.

Wesley Chapel 2017 Year in Review: Development

Residents who live near the Quail Hollow Golf & Country Club golf course packed the Dade City Courthouse hoping to keep a developer from replacing the golf course with 400 homes.

Connected City, Sports Complex & Quail Hollow Kept The BCC Busy In 2017

We could probably dedicate all 48 pages of our upcoming Wesley Chapel issue to its rapid growth in 2017. It was just that crazy busy.

In fact, one could argue it was the busiest year on record in Wesley Chapel, with massive projects either gaining approval, moving ground or sprouting up in almost every corner of the area.

Let’s focus here, however, on what was approved in 2017 and coming down the road, and save what actually opened its doors for our story on 2017’s best new businesses.

The biggest project, the 7,800-acre “connected city,” was approved by the Board of County Commissioners (BCC) in February by a 5-0 vote, which is expected to help create something no other city in America has — a built-from-the-ground-up gigabit community.

District 2 Pasco commissioner Mike Moore, who represents much of Wesley Chapel, said after the vote, “We actually made history today.”

After nearly two years of studies and planning, the BCC’s green light has already triggered major development in the connected city sector, which includes the area running north from Overpass Rd. in Wesley Chapel to S.R. 52 in San Antonio, and west from I-75 to Curley Rd.

Metro Development owns roughly 35 percent of the land, and has already begun, well…connecting. Metro’s Epperson development has its first residents (as we reported last issue) and the first-ever Crystal Lagoon is already filled (see page 8).

Still to come — another Crystal Lagoon in the nearby Mirada development, more homes, schools and business, alternative transportation along integrated roadways and, potentially, jobs as developers and planners have touted the connected city as a futuristic economic engine.

While Wesley Chapel is jumping into the high-tech community pool headfirst, it also is looking to take a piece of the $15-billion a year pie that is youth sports.

A large sports complex with adjoining hotel was also approved by the BCC in the spring by a 5-0 vote, which later agreed to double the county’s Tourist Development Tax (TDT), or bed tax, in order to help finance it.

The $44-million project will be built on part of a 224-acre parcel located northeast of the Shops of Wiregrass in the Wiregrass Ranch Development of  Regional Impact (DRI). The parcel is owned by the county and has had a history of failed efforts to build something sports-related on it.

While the project is currently only in the planning stages, RADD Sports, which will develop it, says it is shooting for a spring 2019 opening.

In conjunction with Mainsail Development, the sports complex will have one of the first full-service Marriott-branded Residence Inns, a 120-room hotel that will be L-shaped to create a courtyard at the entrance to the sports complex — which also will have an amphitheater for concerts, a trail system, seven soccer fields and a 98,000-sq.ft. indoor facility expected to attract the top youth sports tournaments and athletes from around the country, with thousands of visitors expected to make an economic impact on the area.

And, residents who live near Quail Hollow Country Club lost a long fight with the course’s owners and developers, who received approval in June to replace the golf course with homes.

Andres Carollo and his Pasco Office Park LLC received a zoning change, by a 3-2 vote, which allows him to build 400 single-family homes, 30,000-sq.-ft. of office and retail space and a 10,000-sq.-ft. daycare center on the former golf course property.

Hundreds of Quail Hollow residents attended a handful of BCC and other meetings to make their voices heard, and successfully delayed approval of the project for months.

All around Wesley Chapel, new businesses started construction. A slew of restaurants — including a much-awaited Bahama Breeze on S.R. 56 — and boutique or green grocery stores are planned to begin building on or near S.R.s 54 and 56 in 2018.

Will 2018 be as busy? Wiregrass Ranch’s J.D. Porter recently hinted at some more major developments coming this year, so our guess would be:

Buckle up!

Wesley Chapel 2017 Year in Review: Sports

Hockey, Tennis & Lots Of Firsts For Area High School Teams

Wesley Chapel has had the occasional high school team break through. Saddlebrook Resort trains world-renowned tennis players. But, to call our community a sports “mecca” would be an overstatement.

That may, however, be changing.

Consider in 2017 alone: Wesley Chapel hosted the U.S. Women’s Olympic Hockey team training camp, some of the best professional women’s tennis players in the world competed in the Federation Cup semifinals at Saddlebrook, a new indoor sports facility received approval (and will break ground next year) and even the local kids made a little history at Wiregrass Ranch, Wesley Chapel and Cypress Creek high schools.

Not bad for one year.

As for ranking what we feel were the top stories, where do we start?

* The U.S. Women’s Olympic Hockey team training for the 2018 Winter Olympics was huge news. We wrote about it on page 11.

* The RADD Sports indoor sports complex will break ground in 2018, and could be open by spring of 2019. While we’re still not sure how much use Wesley Chapel residents will get out of the complex, its overall local economic impact is likely to be significant.

* The Fed Cup semifinal pitting the U.S. against the defending champion Czech Republic at Saddlebrook Resort in February put a buzz in the area’s significant tennis population.

Saddlebrook constructed a temporary 3,500-seat stadium around one of the resort’s Har-Tru Classic Green Clay Courts, and it was nearly full on both days of the event, despite temperatures that were blazing.

The Fed Cup, started in 1963 as the women’s version of the men’s Davis Cup, is the world’s largest annual international team competition in women’s sports, with roughly 100 teams competing.

The semifinals were a good get for Wesley Chapel, and the U.S. delivered an exciting down-to-the-wire 3-2 win as Coco Vandeweghe and Bethanie Mattek-Sands won the final doubles match to clinch it.

Many of those who watched from the stands in Saddlebrook that weekend were also watching from their couches in November on The Tennis Channel as Vandeweghe (this time with Shelby Rogers) again clinched a 3-2 win in Minsk, Belarus, ending a 17-year Fed Cup championship drought for the Americans.

* Wiregrass Ranch High (WRH) became the first team from Wesley Chapel to win a Florida High School Athletic Association football playoff game, despite a few 10-0 seasons back in the early-2000s by Wesley Chapel High (WCH).

The Mark Kantor-coached Bulls, led by 1,000-yard rusher Adrian Thomas, managed a school best-ever 9-3 record, and a 17-10 win over Lake Nona in the first round of the Class 7A playoffs (before a loss to state powerhouse Lakeland ended their season).

The Wesley Chapel softball team won almost as many games this season (19) as it had in 10 previous seasons (22), setting a school record.
(Photo courtesy of Steve Mumaw)

* At WCH, the softball team made some of its own history. Losers of 27 straight games and 43 of 44 over a three-year span at one point, coach Steve Mumaw and freshman pitcher Jordan Almasy led the Wildcats to their first playoff appearance ever. WCH won a school record 19 games, beat Robinson 4-0 for their first postseason win, and had eventual Class 6A champ Land O’Lakes on the ropes before losing 4-2 in the Regional semifinals.

* And, the new kids on the block at Cypress Creek Middle High (CCH) hit the ground running — on August 25, the Coyotes, coached by Mike Johnson, won the first football game they ever played, beating Gulf 12-0.

The closest anyone came to winning a state title in 2017?

* The WRH boys tennis team, which already won state titles in 2014 and 2015, fell short in their bid for No. 3 in four years, in April. The Bulls lost to Parkland Stoneman Douglas High 4-1 in the State Class 4A championship match, just the third time in their last 114 matches the Bulls boys have lost a head-to-head battle.