Buying food from a gas station used to be unthinkable. But, the days of stopping in to your local convenience store for a shriveled up hot dog or to stick a frozen burrito in a microwave are over.
You can count Racetrac, including the new one getting ready to open on the southeast corner of BBD and Cypress Preserve Dr., among the convenience stores that have been evolving over the years and making food service, good coffee and even household items a staple of its business.
The new Racetrac, which is located directly across Cypress Preserve Dr. from the Chase bank and LA Fitness in Tampa Palms, is expected to be open by mid-June. It is among those gas stations putting an emphasis on making themselves into food destinations.
Wawa, located right up the road in Wesley Chapel on S.R. 56, has perfected this experience. Many mornings, there are more people sitting at red iron tables outside eating than filling their cars with gas, and the quality food has attained a cult-like status.
Racetrac, which also has a S.R. 56 location, is spending millions remodeling its stores to have extra seating and WiFi, so customers can order food and even stop in with the kids for frozen yogurt at one of the Swirl World stations — boasting 40 or so toppings for your dessert — without having to eat it on the go.
The 5,928-sq.-ft. Tampa Palms location will have 18 gas pumps and is one of 50 the Atlanta-based company is opening in Florida (and 10th overall in Tampa), as well as remodeling others.
MORE FOOD: According to paperwork filed with Pasco County, Culver’s Restaurant, which already has a location in front of the Tampa Premium Outlets (or TPO), as well as one on Bearss Ave. near I-275, is hoping to build another near the Shops at Wiregrass.
Culver’s, which is popular in the Midwest (it started in Wisconsin) with its frozen custard and Butterburgers, submitted a pre app form to build a 110-seat, 4,476-sq.ft. restaurant with 66 parking spots immediately east of the Shops at Wiregrass.
The new Culver’s will have direct access off S.R. 56 and the under-construction Wiregrass Ranch access road.
URGENT CARE: BayCare Urgent Care is coming to the New Tampa area, taking over the space formerly occupied by Pier 1 Imports (now at The Walk at Highwoods Preserve). We’ll provide more details in a future issue.
Tampa City Councilman Luis Viera, who represents District 7 (which includes Forest Hills, Terrace Park, New Tampa and the University of South Florida area), insists he will represent New Tampa’s best interests, but he also says he can’t do it alone.
That’s why he has created the New Tampa Council, a collection of representatives from local neighborhoods that he hopes will soon carry weight when it comes to getting things done in the area.
Still relatively new, the New Tampa Council has met a few times, and is still hoping to add members before it becomes a full-fledged and effective organization.
“The idea is really twofold,’’ says Viera, a Hunter’s Green resident. “One, it’s to help give me ideas from each neighborhood, so I know what they want and what is important to them. Secondly, I hope the Council can help effectively lobby the city.”
Along the same lines, Viera is hosting a New Tampa Community Town Hall on Monday, June 5, 6:30 p.m.-8:30 p.m., at the New Tampa Recreation Center in Tampa Palms.
Viera will host representatives of the Tampa Police Department and Tampa Code Enforcement, and issues like transportation, crime, code enforcement, parks and recreation, the city budget and others will be discussed.
Many of the things discussed at the town hall could end up on the New Tampa Council’s agenda as well. Viera says the members of the group are trying to develop a platform and purpose for the council.
Because New Tampa is a bit “compartmentalized” (where residents are more identified by which community they live in than in other areas of the city), the needs of the entire area can sometimes take a backseat. The New Tampa Council is hoping to, in some cases, erase any barriers between the communities.
“Hunter’s Green, Tampa Palms, Cory Lake Isles, Heritage Isles (and others), they all have their own concerns,’’ Viera says. “But, they are separated when it comes to lobbying the city. The council could bring those groups together (with more of a collective voice). I think that could be a real game-changer for New Tampa.”
Viera also has been active in appointing local residents to some of the city’s many advisory boards.
Included in those appointments are Michael Stephens of Grand Hampton (City of Tampa Charter Review Commission), Rob Gidel of Tampa Palms (Metropolitan Planning Organization Advisory Board), Joe Farrell of Grand Hampton (Citizens Advisory Budget Committee), Cory Person of Cross Creek (Civil Service Review Board) and Mike Gibson of Tampa Palms (Code Enforcement Magistrate).
Viera also continues to hold meetings for the newly formed North Tampa Veterans Council (picture above), which he says has been drawing 15-20 people to each of the three meetings the group already has held.
To contact Luis Viera, call (813) 274-7073 or email him at Luis.Viera@tampagov.net.
Based on the number of spirited debates that highlighted the first public meeting hosted by Pasco County planners last month at Pasco-Hernando State College (PHSC)’s Porter Campus at Wiregrass Ranch, the county’s year-long study looking at three possible roadway connection points between Wesley Chapel and New Tampa should be an interesting one.
The long-debated connection of Kinnan St. in New Tampa to Mansfield Blvd. in Meadow Pointe predictably drew the most conversation.
However, a crowd of more than 100 people milled about while also discussing the potential connection of Meadow Pointe Blvd. to a road in New Tampa’s K-Bar Ranch that is planned, as well as a connection between Wyndfields Blvd. and a road in K-Bar that is not yet approved by Hillsborough County but would eventually link Wesley Chapel to Morris Bridge Rd.
Pasco’s District 2 county commissioner Mike Moore made it clear at the outset that this was a Pasco County project, and that Hillsborough County and the City of Tampa both have nothing to do with it. Moore had met with then-City of Tampa District 7 City Council member Lisa Montelione last year in an attempt to get Kinnan-Mansfield connected, but the Tampa side declined to pay, or contribute to the cost, for any study, he said.
That didn’t stop a good number of New Tampa residents, including Montelione’s replacement on the City Council — New Tampa resident Luis Viera — from showing up to voice their opinions. Viera called the inability to connect the two roads, “government at its worst.”
K-Bar residents Joe and K.D. Ann Avinger were among the New Tampa residents on hand to voice their desire for a connection between Kinnan and Mansfield.
Pasco Roadway Connections Meeting Draws Interested New Tampa Residents
Avinger argued that the fears of Meadow Pointe II residents, probably the biggest opponents to the connection because of concerns about increased traffic on Mansfield, which runs through their community, were unfounded. He said he believes most of the traffic on busy Cross Creek Blvd. would bypass Kinnan and continue to Bruce B. Downs (BBD) Blvd. before turning north, especially since the widening of BBD could be completed before any connections are even made.
“Why would you get off a wider street, to get on a 35-mph street that is a further trip and puts you right back on the same road (BBD) you were going to anyway?,” he asked.
The Avingers, who have relatives in Wesley Chapel they like to visit, think the Kinnan-Mansfield connection would be more of a weekend convenience for shoppers going to the malls than a new path for commuters.
Proponents of that connection say it would improve public safety by creating another north-south route connecting New Tampa to Wesley Chapel in case of emergencies, as well as benefitting businesses on both sides.
Opponents cited an increase in dangerous traffic on Mansfield, which already is an important and busy artery in the mornings and afternoons connecting the area to four nearby Pasco schools — Sand Pine and Wiregrass elementaries, Long Middle School and Wiregrass Ranch High. If you add Pride Elementary in K-Bar just beyond where the connection would be made — a point of concern for some New Tampa parents — that’s five schools.
Dennis Smith, the chairman of the board of the Meadow Pointe I CDD, said that he would like to see the connection made.
“We are at loggerheads with Meadow Pointe II,’’ he said.
Smith said it is ridiculous that in the vast area between Livingston Ave. and Morris Bridge Rd., there is only one road — BBD —that goes north and south between New Tampa and Wesley Chapel. Even after listening to all of the debate, however, he still has little hope the connection will ever be made.
“This is my fifth time through this drill,’’ said Smith, who bought his home in 1998. “I’ve been around a long time, I’ve been active a long time and I know what’s going on and I have serious doubts this ever gets done.”
Moore said that of all the correspondence he has received at his office about Kinnan-Mansfield from his Pasco constituents, 70-80 percent of it is against a connection.
He added, however, that the proposed link between Meadow Pointe Blvd. and a planned road in K-Bar Ranch may prove to be a better option. He said it seemed to be favored by the majority of the (Pasco) people he talked to at the meeting.
Moore said he expects the study, for which Pasco is paying engineering firm AECOM $112,000 to conduct, should take about 6-7 months. The study’s findings will be presented at another public meeting.
“I think the important thing is we are now looking at all possible connections,” Moore said. “Hopefully, we can figure this all out.”
Senior SS Drew Ehrhard leads the Wildcats in almost every offensive category this season.
By the looks of things midway through the 2017 season, the Wharton High baseball team was nothing special.
It was, however, nothing that a few lineup tweaks and a bolt of confidence couldn’t fix.
After back-to-back losses to Freedom and Newsome dropped the Wildcats’ record to 8-8 on April 6, the team has been, well, perfect.
“We saw everything was kind of going downhill,’’ said senior shortstop Drew Ehrhard. “We kind of looked at each other at one practice, and just decided it was time to pick things back up.”
The Wildcats have now won 10 straight games, including a second straight Class 8A, District 4 title and regional playoff wins over Ocoee and Ocala Forest.
Tonight, the Wildcats travel to Tallahassee to take on Lincoln High in the regional final, with the winner advancing to the state final four starting June 2.
Lincoln, ranked No. 6 in the state by MaxPreps, has won 16 straight games, but face a Wharton team that seems to be peaking.
The recipe for the Wildcats’ success has been right out of the baseball handbook: great pitching, solid defense and clutch hitting.
Aaron Cohn
In the 7-6 extra-inning win over Ocoee in the Region 8A-1 quarterfinal, the Wildcats got a tremendous relief outing from senior Aaron Cohn (6 innings, 2 hits, 1 run and a season-best 7 strikeouts), two hits from Ehrhard, two RBI from senior catcher Zach Sirois and a walk-off sacrifice fly from Brian Baughman to win the game in the eighth inning.
“And, that was not a routine fly ball,’’ said coach Scott Hoffman. “That was a missile.”
The Wildcats improved to 18-8 with the win over Ocala Forest a week later, as junior leftfielder Ricky Viloria singled in Duncan Pastore in the bottom of the seventh in a 6-5 win.
Wharton has outscored opponents 78-17, and 11 of those runs surrendered coming in the last two games.
“We always thought that If we get hot, we feel good about our chances,’’ Hoffman says.
Not too many of the ‘Cats have been hotter than Ehrhard, who will play next season for the Division II powerhouse University of Tampa Spartans.
Wharton’s on-field leader is hitting .438 with nine doubles, four homers and 24 RBI, all team and career highs.
He has played every inning of every game for four years, and this season, he has hit safely in 22 of the team’s 26 games.
“Drew is the most unbelievable player we’ve had here,’’ said Hoffman, as he watched his star blast three batting practice pitches over the centerfield fence at a recent practice. “He’s a dream kid as an athlete, academically and with his character.”
He has not been alone in putting up big numbers for the Wildcats.
Pitchers Austin Appel, Pastore and Cohn also have played big roles in Wharton’s charge down the stretch. When the year began, pitching was one of the team’s biggest question marks.
However, Appel stepped up to be the team’s senior ace, and is 7-1 with a 1.81 ERA.
Pastore fit into the relief role successfully, with a 0.93 ERA, and in eight appearances, he has allowed hits in just two of them.
In arguably the team’s biggest regular season win of the season, Pastore struck out four in two innings to get the victory over highly-touted Plant, 2-1.
“I definitely think it was the Plant game that turned everything around,’’ Ehrhard says. “We played some competitive games before that, but the game against Plant was to see what we were really made of. After that, we knew that everyone who steps on the field in front of us, we have a chance to beat.”
Cohn, a Fairleigh Dickinson University (in Teaneck, NJ) signee, has turned in some fantastic late-season performances as well. In his six appearances (including three starts) during the winning streak, Cohn has gone a perfect 6-0, allowing just 13 hits and two earned runs in 27.2 innings (for a tidy 0.50 ERA) while striking out 28.
While the Wildcats thrived with great pitching and hitting from Ehrhard, junior Leo Alfonzo (.307) seniors Ricky Nieves (.328, 16 RBI) and Clayton Coringrato (.275, 17 RBI), Hoffman was expecting another player to surprisingly emerge in the late season run.
“One of you guys will be the difference maker,’’ he told them at a practice. “I don’t know who it is, but it will be one of you.”
It turned out to be Sirois. In the past six games, the team’s catcher is 12-for-24 (after going 11-for-61 the first 19 games) with seven RBI (compared to four the rest of the season).
“He’s emerging, he hasn’t done that all year,’’ Hoffman said. “He’s a different person.”
And against Ocala Forest, it was Viloria getting his first game-winning hit to lift the Wildcats, who now appear to be a different team, hoping to make it back to the State final four for the first time since 2012.
“This is a great group,’’ Hoffman says, touting the team’s work ethic and 3.4 cumulative grade-point-average, second in the county. “We get overlooked a lot. The newspapers like to talk about the same schools all the time. Find another school that has played for the district championship five of the last six years, and won it three times. There aren’t many. I think they think because we’re in New Tampa (we can’t play), but every time it’s tournament time, we’re there.”
The project, approved 6-0 by the Council, will include 241 multi-family units, the long-awaited New Tampa Cultural Center and a strip shopping center.
The Village at Hunter’s Lake project, which is seeking to have the property located directly across the street from the main entrance to Hunter’s Green on Bruce B. Downs (BBD) Blvd. rezoned from community commercial (CC) to mixed use (PD), passed its first hearing before the Tampa City Council.
The City Council approved a number of waiver requests by the developers, including the most important one — adding both a second and third access point from BBD into the development.
The second reading is scheduled for Thursday, June 1, 9:30 a.m., at the Old City Hall on Kennedy Blvd. in downtown Tampa.
If the project is approved, that will pave the way for developers Harrison Bennett Properties and Regency Centers to begin work.
The developers requested the rezoning change for multi-use on the 14 acres of developable land on the 80-acre parcel to accommodate a 30,000-sq.-ft. Cultural Center; a four-story, 241-unit multi-family project called The Haven at Hunter’s Lake; a green grocer; a retail shopping strip center; a restaurant (with a drive-in window) and a community park with a dog park.
At the May 11 meeting before the City Council, the Hunter’s Lake developers requested a waiver to reduce the number of loading zones and parking spots and some slight wetlands reduction, which didn’t spark any debate.
City of Tampa senior planning engineer Melanie Calloway, however, did object to the request for additional access points.
City Council member and Hunter’s Green resident Luis Viera voted to pass the Village at Hunter’s Lake project onto a second reading.
The main entrance into the Village at Hunter’s Lake will be directly across BBD from Hunter’s Green Dr. However, developers want additional access points south of the proposed main entrance (where there is currently a maintenance road) and to the north at Hunter’s Lake Dr., which already leads to Suntrust Bank and LifePoint Church on the east side of BBD.
Calloway pointed out that for the last 20 years, the City of Tampa has been very deliberate and consistent about granting access points on BBD to preserve capacity limits and limit anything detrimental to the roadway.
“We have spent a lot of money (on BBD),’’ she said.
Calloway also noted that other areas in New Tampa along BBD have been developed with fewer access points, like Tampa Palms Area 4 — which has 701 development units, 484 single family units, 400 hotel rooms, 85,000-sq.ft. of commercial and business office — and only three access points along BBD.
“This proposed property has 250 multi-family, 72,000-sq.-ft. of commercial, a cultural center and a dog park,’’ Calloway said. “And they want three access points. We find that being a little bit excessive.”
If an access point at Hunter’s Lake Dr. is approved, the left turn lane at that intersection would be lengthened to reduce traffic backing up. Without that access point, lawyers for the developers argued, drivers who miss the main entrance would have to make a U-turn and traffic would likely back up on northbound BBD. The other concern was that the existing HART bus stop on the southbound side of BBD would create a public safety issue.
“It (the bus stop) would be safer with the access we are proposing,’’ said Steve Henry, a transportation and civil engineer and president of Lincks & Associates. Henry pointed out that Walmart and other smaller locations already have two access points along BBD.
Jeff Cobb, the vice president of the Hunter’s Green Community Association, voiced support for the project, calling it a “Hyde Park-esque effort that will serve, support and enhance New Tampa.”
But, with 5,000 residents and 1,000 visitors a day (according to Cobb), he voiced concern that without a second access point, and the likelihood of traffic backing up at the only left turn into the project, would create problems.
Patrons, he said, would make the decision to turn right at the light at Hunter’s Green, and once inside, make a U-turn to enter the Village at Hunter’s Lake from Hunter’s Green.
“It’s a safety issue,’’ he said. “We think it’s critical you support this second left turn.”
Despite the city’s concerns about additional access points, the City Council ultimately voted 6-0 to approve them (and the rest of the project) and send it to a final reading and public hearing next month.
According to the New Tampa Commercial Overlay District Development Standards, a proposed new access point to BBD, “shall constitute a substantial change to the approved zoning site plan, as well as an amendment to the DRI, where applicable, both of which shall require approval by City Council.”
District 2 Hillsborough County Commissioner Victor Crist, a Hunter’s Green resident,has long championed the project, the jewel of which is the Cultural Center that will be home to the New Tampa Players (NTP), a local theatre troupe. In December, he told NTP that he hoped the Cultural Center could be open by 2019, and was working hard to secure funding.
NTP has been lobbying the county and city of Tampa governments for a Cultural Center since 2000.
The Harrison Bennett Properties proposal was initially approved by the Hillsborough Board of County Commissioners by a 7-0 vote in December 2014.
“This has taken a lot of effort over three years,’’ said David Freeman, the president of Harrison Bennett Properties, which also developed The Walk at Highwoods Preserve.
Freeman sees this Village at Hunter’s Lake project as New Tampa’s downtown.
“We’ve got these communities, like Hunter’s Green and Tampa Palms, which individually are great master-planned communities but don’t really work together as a whole. We see this project really as the linchpin to bring everything together.”
Buying food from a gas station used to be unthinkable. But, the days of stopping in to your local convenience store for a shriveled up hot dog or to stick a frozen burrito in a microwave are over.
