DHI Communities has closed on 34 acres of land it plans on developing as a multi-family residential community just west of I-75 and S.R. 54.
The multifamily division of national homebuilder D.R. Horton says the DHI Communities development is located between Old Pasco Rd, and Oakley Blvd., north of Wesley Chapel Blvd. and adjacent to The Grove.
DHI paid $9.5 million for the parcel, which is zoned for 330 apartments and 82 for-sale townhomes. The $80-million development will be called Ascend at Grove West, and is DHI Communities’ first multifamily project in the Tampa Bay area. It will be within walking distance from The Grove entertainment complex, which will soon include dozens of new restaurants and businesses at the under-construction KRATE container park.
“Developers are taking every opportunity to develop along the State Road 54 corridor,” says Mark Eilers, executive managing director of land services at Colliers International, which represented DHI Communities in the sale. “This is a great location for DHI Communities to enter the Tampa Bay market due to its superior access to State Road 54 and Interstate 75, proximity to major employment centers and walkability to nearby retail and restaurants.”
Construction is expected to begin this month, with completion by early 2022. — JCC
GEICO Insurance is known not only for its humorous TV commercials, but also for its online service, thanks to a mobile app that makes it easy to have control over all of your accounts.
Need to add a driver? Need to change a car? Need to change your plan? Well, there’s an app for that when it comes to having your insurance with GEICO.
However, not everyone is proficient with their cell phones, nor do they prefer doing business online.
To that end, customers in the Wesley Chapel area can now meet with GEICO agents face-to-face, thanks to the new office opened by Jaime Bryant in the North Woods Shopping Center (anchored by the Super Target just north of County Line Rd.).
Although GEICO has had offices for years, including one in Tampa for 40 years, as well as others in Clearwater and New Port Richey, Bryant’s new location, which features an aquarium with — you guessed it — a real gecko lizard, is the first even close to Wesley Chapel.
That is a surprise to many, due to GEICO’s strong TV and online presence.
“A lot of people don’t expect a local office because most people think of GEICO as a digital company,” Bryant says. “So, they are surprised to find us in this shopping center. But, we’ve been in the Neighborhood News, and people find us online as well, so they are noticing.”
That may not sound like a big deal in today’s tech-crazy society, and a good many people still prefer the convenience of using a web browser, mobile app or even a 1-800 number, to do their insurance business. There are, however, benefits to going into an office.
Jaime Bryant and his wife Shannon pose with the costumed GEICO gecko at the office’s grand opening, while a real gecko (below left) says hi from his aquarium, where he greet visitors to the new location.
Bryant, who has six agents working at his location, says many customers like talking to the same person every time. Others just prefer dealing with a human being.
Although known mostly for its auto insurance (insuring more than 30 million vehicles), GEICO also offers motorcycle, RV, boat, condo and renter’s insurance, as well as life and umbrella policies, which provide extended liability for those with a lot of assets.
Coming to the office won’t get your rates any cheaper than those of someone using the online platforms, but Bryant says it provides a comfort level for many — especially customers who have multiple things insured by GEICO.
“We can handle almost all of the products they have (online),” Bryant says, “where if they call the 1-800 number, they might talk to three different people for three different products. We can sell auto, renter’s, RV, we can do all of that. And, you can have the convenience of one person handling everything.”
On Google, Bryant and his staff have yet to receive a negative review. They have been praised for explaining the different types of auto coverages, making the process easy and, of course, finding the cheapest rates possible.
However, the online game remains one that GEICO is winning, thanks to the 24/7 access to your account and the easy-to-use, multiple-award-winning mobile app.
“You can do it online or do it with an agent,” Bryant says. “It’s really every way you can possibly do business, you can do it with GEICO.”
A Little History…
GEICO was founded in 1936 by Leo Goodwin and his wife Lillian to provide auto insurance directly to federal government employees and their families. Bryant says very few people know that GEICO is actually an acronym for Government Employees Insurance Company.
Bryant says GEICO was the first insurance company that he can recall that began selling insurance directly to customers, as opposed to working only through agents. That has helped GEICO, headquartered in Maryland, become the second-largest auto insurer in the U.S., behind State Farm, as well as the largest auto insurer here in the state of Florida.
Bryant says that’s because GEICO offers two very important things for those looking for insurance: its competitive rates and discounts, and its customer service.
“It’s like you are paying a discounted rate for a high-quality product,” he says.
GEICO also has done a masterful job of marketing itself in a competitive field where NFL quarterbacks and fictional characters like Flo become familiar standards in today’s pop culture.
GEICO currently is still repped by its beloved “spokes-lizard,” a gold dust day gecko with a cockney accent that is familiar to almost everyone. Along with the charming lizard, GEICO has used the Cavemen, Maxwell the piggy, and a humorous campaign comparing how easy it is to use GEICO to things that are not easy, as well as others. Almost every campaign has left a lasting impression.
Bryant has lived in the Tampa Bay area for roughly 20 years, and is a University of South Florida graduate, with a Master of Business Administration (MBA) degree.
He worked for GEICO in Lakeland for 16 years, the last few while driving a long commute from his family home in Live Oak Preserve in New Tampa, which he shares with his wife of six years, Shannon.
When GEICO decided to open an office in Wesley Chapel, Bryant says he jumped at the chance.
“You want to be your own boss and have that freedom.” Bryant says. “But, we love it here, too. We plan on retiring here, and we plan on having this office in Wesley Chapel for many, many years.”
The GEICO-Wesley Chapel local office is located at 1227 Bruce B. Downs Blvd. It is open Monday-Friday, 9 a.m.-7 p.m., and 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Saturday. For more information, visit Geico.com/wesley-chapel-bryant, call (813) 953-4200 or see the ad on page 29.
First of all, Campbell (photo), the Wesley Chapel resident who also is a former Tampa Bay Rowdies player and head coach, will be the first-ever head coach of the new women’s soccer program Pasco-Hernando State College (PHSC).
PHSC, which already competes in basketball, volleyball, baseball, softball and cross country at its main campus in New Port Richey, is adding girls soccer to its athletic program beginning in August.
The twist is that PHSC’s women’s soccer side won’t play in New Port Richey, but instead will call the PHSC Porter Campus at Wiregrass Ranch home. That also means the women will play their home matches at the new Wiregrass Ranch Sports Campus off S.R. 56.
But wait, there’s more! Campbell also will also head up Wesley Chapel’s entry in the Women’s Premier Soccer League (WPSL), which will be called RADD FC and also will play its home games at the Sports Campus for this upcoming season.
The WPSL is the longest active women’s pro soccer league in the U.S. It was created in 1998 and is an affiliate of the United States Soccer Federation (USSF), the ruling body of soccer in this country. Most of RADD FC’s players are current student-athletes.
There are 141 WPSL teams nationwide, in 32 different states, as well as teams in Vancouver, British Columbia.
RADD FC will compete in the Northern Division of the Sunshine Conference, along with the Clermont Kicks FC, Florida Krush (Winter Park) and Tampa teams Florida Premier FC and Tampa Bay United.
“I can’t wait to be part of RADD FC’s WPSL team,” Campbell said.“This will take women’s soccer to another level, as well as grow within our community.”
Campbell, 43, was born to Scottish parents in England, played professionally from 1996-13, including a stint with Leicester City of the renowned English Premier League. He signed with the Tampa Bay Rowdies in 2013, playing one season, and then served as an assistant coach from 2014-15 and as the team’s head coach from 2015-18.
Both RADD FC and the PHSC women’s team are expected to elevate the footprint of women’s soccer in the Tampa Bay area.
Go, Bobcats!
The PHSC Bobcats will be a member of the National Junior College Athletic Association (NJCAA) at the Division II level, as well as the Florida College System Activities Association (FCSAA).
PHSC athletic director Steve Winterling thinks the idea of providing another opportunity for women athletes is great timing, considering that many colleges are dropping athletic programs to save money in the wake of Covid-19, while also offering an extra year for the athletes already at their schools, creating a potential backlog. It also helps PHSC meet Title IX requirements.
“The college was looking to expand its athletic program, and you’re always dealing with gender equity so it helped balanced us out in several areas,” Winterling says. “Also, financial times are tough, and we were looking at also giving women an opportunity to participate (in what is a relatively inexpensive sport).”
As for playing at the Wiregrass Ranch Sports Campus, Winterling says he has been thinking about ways to bring PHSC athletics to the east side of the county for years. While the school considered playing at other sites on the west side of the county, he says RADD Sports CEO Richard Blalock, who manages the private side of the Sports Campus in the public-private partnership with Pasco County, expressed interest in a relationship, especially with soccer.
“It’s a great opportunity for us,” Winterling says.
Campbell was chosen to lead the program from a pool of 13 applicants.
PHSC has a lot of work ahead of it before it opens the season in August against Polk State College. One of the first issues to solve after finding players will be finding teams to play. Winterling says there are only three other NJCAA Division II women’s soccer teams in the state — Daytona State College, Eastern Florida State and Polk State College. PHSC has already scheduled Polk State four times this upcoming season.
“We’ll have to scramble a little and maybe travel out of state to find some competition,” he says. “We have a few questions to iron out, but we’re really excited to get this going.”
Time To Go Camping!
Meanwhile, Campbell also will be part of the Nike US Sports Camps at the Sports Campus, which will include basketball, soccer, volleyball and cheerleading camps for boys and girls, ages 8-18.
A likely-to-be-proposed development will affect three different communities, according to Quail Hollow residents opposed to it.
Lane Mendelsohn has had his eye on the more than 1,000 acres of land next to where his family lives in the Quail Hollow area for a few years now. Not because he wants to buy it, but because those who own it have plans he feels aren’t best for that area.
SoHo Capital, LLC, the developers of the proposed Dayflower Master Planned Unit Development (MPUD), may be prepping to ask the county for a rezoning that will increase how many homes it can build on the land from roughly 1,000 to almost 1,500. Mendelsohn is worried about overcrowding, flooding, damage to wetlands and roads buckling under an influx of new traffic, to name a few.
So, instead of sitting back and waiting to see what happens, Mendelsohn and a group of Quail Hollow residents are on a mission to stop a potential rezoning of the land before it even gets started.
Mendelsohn has spent a good deal of his own money founding the Quail Hollow Alliance (QHA), creating a website and forming a team of land and environmental experts. He has rallied the communities of Quail Hollow, Angus Valley and Lexington Oaks — and residents of those developments account for the many of the more than 2,000 signatures in opposition he has collected — in a proactive effort to save the area.
“I’m not an activist that goes around county looking for a fight,” Mendelsohn says. “I got involved because this affects me, my family and my community. We’ve got one shot to stop this proposed development on a very environmentally sensitive piece of property and once built on, that’s it, there’s no turning back. If someone didn’t step up with the time and financial resources, my feeling was we may blow it and have to live with the adverse effects. If I didn’t do this, I would never be able to forgive myself.”
SoHo Capital is likely to bring its plans to the Pasco County Planning Commission in the near future. It owns 1,007 acres north of Wesley Chapel Blvd. and west of Old Pasco Rd. The property touches three established communities, but mostly Quail Hollow and Angus Valley, communities which date back to the 1950s, where home lots are generally three quarters of an acre or larger.
Mendelsohn owns a 75-acre lot just north of the property, a six-acre plot and a 2-acre plot where he lives next to his parents’ 14-acre lot.
Mendelsohn says Soho Capital wants to fill the developable areas (probably 500 acres, due to how much of the property is wetlands) with 40-foot lots.
While he says he respects a land owner’s rights to do what is allowed under its zoning, he is opposed to rezoning to allow even more homes.
While SoHo is already permitted to build around 1,000 homes (2.2 homes per buildable acre due to its current Res-1 zoning), Mendelsohn says the developer is working towards a rezoning which would allow for 1,439 homes.
“My feeling is development has to be responsible, and has to be consistent and compatible with the surrounding areas,” Mendelsohn says.
Jennifer Seney, a Quail Hollow resident who researches most of the information that fills the group’s website, feels the same.
“I’ll even go a step further,” Seney says, “I’ll say that what is being proposed for this piece of land is completely inappropriate.”
The additional density from a rezoning, not what is currently allowed, is where the QHA finds the problem.
According to Mendelsohn, SoHo Capital estimates the development would add 13,309 additional day trips on three small country roads that run right through Quail Hollow and Angus Valley. Mendelsohn says those roads — Sandy Ln., Mangrove Dr. and Armenian Ln. — are already classified as substandard by the county for not being thick or wide enough, and there is no room to widen them without getting rid of the swales that help control the area’s persistent flooding.
Seney has particularly strong feelings about the roads, because she says SoHo Capital is requesting that the county allow it to pay “fair share” on the road improvements, which means splitting the costs with the county, rather than footing the bill themselves. She believes the county’s share would end up as an assessment on those living near and using the roads. In other words, the residents of Quail Hollow and Angus Valley.
“The road improvements are solely for the benefit of the developer,” Seney says. “We don’t need them (with the current population that uses them), and would never ask for them, but will have to pay for them.”
Seney, who worked for Pasco County as a recycling supervisor from 2008-18, fears the county may see this as an opportunity to bring the roads up to a higher level of service without having to pay for anything.
Following a March 1 required virtual public meeting with the developer, QHA members also claimed the project, which is adjacent to the Cypress Creek Preserve, would destroy “at least 11 acres of pristine wetlands, which help recharge Tampa, St. Petersburg and Clearwater’s water supply through Pasco’s Cypress Creek Watershed.”
SoHo Capital, or SoHo Dayflower LLC, does not yet have any meetings scheduled yet before the planning commission, which would be the next step. Mendelsohn is hoping that such meetings won’t happen at all. The main goal of his group is to convince county staff that the project isn’t worth putting to any vote, due to the numerous questions — which Mendelsohn says have not been answered — put forth by the QHA.
“I don’t want this to get in front of the planning commission and then the county commissioners and have us have to fight this out in front of them,” Mendelsohn says. “If the Pasco County Planning department really takes a look at this, they would see that this project is not a good project for this area.”
District 2 County Commissioner Mike Moore says he has been contacted by the group, but until the project moves onto the planning commission agenda, he has little to say about it.
The QHA is not trying to stop SoHo from building any homes on the land it owns. Mendelsohn says he is not anti-development. And in fact, if developers were only trying to build the number of homes the property was currently zoned for, the QHA wouldn’t even exist.
However, if a rezoning does take place, he feels that more homes will equal more problems for long-time residents of Quail Hollow and Angus Valley.
“My main point is, building 40-foot lots is just not compatible in an area where the lots are bigger and there isn’t that kind of density,” Mendelsohn says. ““I do believe property owners have rights and I respect that, however my hope is that the county commissioners are listening to the people and just because a developer requests a rezoning, that is not something they are entitled to or that the commissioners are required to grant.”
For more information, check out QuailHollowAlliance.org
Schwartz has nine home runs in just 13 games this season, while pitcher Hailey Vazquez (below) is sporting a sub-1.00 ERA, and both have helped Cypress Creek High to an impressive 10-3 start this season. (Photos: Charmaine George)
Mandy Schwartz digs the long ball.
Through the first 15 games this season, the Cypress Creek High (CCH) junior third baseman has launched 10 pitches over the softball fences at various high schools, from Zephyrhills (twice) to Wiregrass Ranch to Berkeley Prep, where home run No. 10 in the sixth inning lifted the Coyotes to a 1-0 district win.
Her eighth home run, which came in the sixth inning against Class 5A, No. 3-ranked River Ridge, tied a game the Coyotes eventually lost 5-4, but it also set a school record for a season, breaking Neely Peterson’s previous mark of seven set in 2019.
Schwartz’s ninth homer, three days later, tied her for the state lead with two other players.
Her 10th, April 8 against the Bucs, is merely putting the record further out of reach for the coming classes of Coyote softball players — and there’s still three games to play.
She’s not just a player who can crush a lot. In fact, Schwartz doesn’t see herself as a home run hitter, just someone who hits the ball hard.
“I definitely think I am a power hitter, but not necessarily a home run hitter,” she says.
Schwartz combines her power with contact, and is hitting .608 with only three strikeouts in 48 plate appearances this season. It is one of the primary reasons the Coyotes got off to a surprising 12-3 start in 2021, including 6-0 in the District.
Hailey Vazquez
And, there have been other bright spots. Senior centerfielder Emma Coons is hitting over .300 with 12 stolen bases, junior Jillian Hudson is batting .382 with a team-high five doubles, and senior Hailey Vazquez has given Cypress Creek a legitimate ace in the circle for the first time in its four years of existence.
Vazquez boasts a 0.74 ERA, and has struck out 112 batters in 66 innings while posting a 9-2 record.
“I can’t ask more of Hailey,” says first-year Coyotes’ head coach Jennelle Day. “She’s a great leader on and off the field and has a confidence the girls follow. She’s done a lot of big things for us.”
Schwartz has been a starter since her freshman year, when she batted .467 with three homers, eight doubles and 25 RBI. That team won a District title, a Regional playoff game and came within a run of making it to the Regional championship game.
She credits her offensive numbers to Tommy Santiago, who was her private hitting coach before rejoining the staff of the University of South Florida softball team last year. Santiago changed Schwartz’s swing a few years back, and after struggling a few months to get the mechanics just right, she has been on a tear.
Last season, she didn’t get a chance to follow up her impressive freshman season due to Covid-19, which cut the season short (but not before she was able to hit a home run in the Coyotes’ season opener against Mitchell).
Schwartz was unsure what to expect in 2021, and has been a little surprised by CCH’s hot start.
“Honestly, I really didn’t expect this because we lost a majority of our players (the past two seasons),” Schwartz says. “We currently have eight freshmen on our roster, so I thought it might be a little rocky. But, everything just clicked early on.”
Even with Schwartz’s big bat and Vazquez’s stalwart arm filling two important areas, the CCH defense may deserve just as much credit for the team’s success. Through 15 games, the Coyotes had committed just nine errors.
“The bats can be shaky, but the defense has really stepped up,” Schwartz says.
As a result, she thinks this year’s version of the Coyotes can match what the 2019 team did, and maybe even advance in the State playoffs.
“I think as long as we stay focused we can definitely do that again,” Schwartz says.
