Category: Business

Spotlight On The Middle Place Accounting & Clean-it!

*Donna Ray of The Middle Place (photo provided by Donna Ray)*

The Middle Place Accounting

Donna Ray, the owner of The Middle Place Accounting & Consulting Services, and I have a friend in common — Paula Nuñez, the owner of the Tampa City Dance Center and the founder of the Tampa City Ballet.

“I used to be the executive director of Tampa City Ballet,” Donna says, “and they are currently still one of my clients. I still handle their bookkeeping and accounting.”

Donna says she first launched The Middle Place during the pandemic, “while I was still the executive director of the ballet, because I have two children and their school was closed, so I needed to home school them and work from home. I also was taking care of my father, who has since passed away, so it just made sense to be as independent as I could be based on the needs of my family.”

She adds, “I sent out a big email blast at that time to people I’ve known around the Tampa Bay area for a very long time that my services were available and that seemed to be all that it took.”

The idea for her company didn’t just come out of nowhere, however. Donna has a total of 30 years of experience working in accounting.

After a decade of working in the Cayman Islands as an IT director with Cox Lumber Co. and Senior Accounting and later as project manager with Fidelity Group of Companies, she returned to the U.S., which was still recovering from the financial crash of 2008. She enrolled at the University of South Florida and graduated with a Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) degree in Women’s and Gender Studies.

After that, Donna says, “I found myself working for nonprofits for the first time. I accepted a job at the Helen Gordon Davis Center for Women as director of the Women’s Business Center in Hyde Park, where I worked with hundreds of entrepreneurs at all levels of experience and with a variety of needs — from writing business plans and building financial projections to accessing capital. That’s where the Tampa City Ballet found me.” Both nonprofits also extended Donna’s skills with grant writing, reporting and building relationships with community stakeholders and corporate partners, as well as with city, county, state and federal funding authorities.

She adds that since then, she has served, “a lot of female entrepreneurs, helping them either launch or with their business. But, my focus was on finance and accounting, and that was sort of my specialty, helping people build business plans, financial statements and projections.”

A Diverse Range Of Experience

She brings all of that experience with her to The Middle Place, “and I’ve been really lucky because I have a wide variety of clients. Some are in for-profit industries, some are nonprofit. I also work with a law firm and some retail companies.”

Donna says she provides a professional level of service that goes beyond just bookkeeping.

“I focus a lot on software implementation,” she says. “One nonprofit contract [I have] right now was implementing seven different unique technology stacks for them, and implementing Quickbooks Online and payroll and basically automating their entire organization.”

Originally from Chicago, Donna moved to the Tampa Bay area in the 1980s. She grew up as an aspiring young dancer, “but I had a very practical father who said, ‘If you break your leg, you need to have a backup.’ So as a teenager, she started out in business administration and, at age 19, as a legal secretary at a law firm in Clearwater.

While her extensive professional career was focused on accounting, IT, project and nonprofit management, Donna continued to study and dance with a local Tampa dance company and also performed with the Cayman Islands National Dance Company, where she also taught ballet and Gyrokinesis, a movement therapy specifically designed for dancers. After returning to Florida, she taught at the Patel Conservatory for Next Generation Ballet summer program.

Donna was thrilled when Paula Nuñez approached her needing help for the Tampa City Ballet. “I thought, ‘This is a perfect opportunity to work in an industry I love and provide my business expertise to help TCB grow and to help professional dancers in Tampa,’” she says.

She also works with Diaz Shafer, P.A. an immigration law firm in Tampa that was on Quickbooks Desktop but wanted to switch to Quickbooks Online, “so I did that for them.”

Donna also has done contract work for Davis College in Rwanda, Africa, as well as for Drong Ngur Jangchubling, a Tibetan Buddhist Center in Wesley Chapel, and Skate Park of Tampa: She’s also the Board treasurer of Dance Tampa Bay, led by Shana Corrada, E.D.

Donna provides full-service monthly accounting services for businesses of all sizes and industries, including payroll, sales tax filing and software integrations. “A lot of clients first come to me to handle their bookkeeping,” Donna says, “But I also do software implementation, financial projections and can help you grow your business by offering financial advice from a unique perspective. For more info, call (813) 391-6890 or visit TheMiddlePlace.com.—GN

Celly De Freitas Of Clean-It!

Clean-it owner Celly de Freitas has been cleaning homes and businesses in the New Tampa, Wesley Chapel and surrounding areas for the last 26 years.

But, she says, that wasn’t always the plan. She was a teacher in her native country of Brazil and planned to continue that career when Celly and her husband, Rogério Buchner de Freitas, moved to the Tampa Bay area, “but it was very hard for me to go to college (USF) here, because I didn’t speak English as well then as I do now,” she says. “I ended up leaving USF to go to school for the skin care business.”

In order to help pay for that schooling, she started cleaning houses and, even though she did end up opening a skincare spa, “I was making a lot more money cleaning houses, so I let the spa go after about two years,” Celly (above left) says.

Today, not only does this Wesley Chapel resident speak and understand English (as well as Spanish, Italian and her native Portuguese) fluently — despite still having a fairly thick accent — she has a team of twelve Brazilian women working with her, all of whom also speak and understand English, Spanish and Portuguese.

“I tell everyone who works for me that they have to be able to communicate with clients in English,” Celly says. “You have to be able to understand what the clients want and do whatever they ask when it comes to cleaning their homes.”

She says she usually uses a “team” approach, sending at least two and sometimes three members of her team to each job. “It’s much more efficient this way,” she says. “We can clean a lot more places when we work together.”

Celly, who has been an American citizen for about 20 years, isn’t usually actually working with the teams — she’s the one coordinating the schedules and checking up on all of her employees to make sure they are getting to each location on time (and calling or texting the clients when one of “my girls” is running late). “But, when I have someone out sick or they’re stuck someplace, I will still go and help out,” she says. “And, I try to be as flexible as possible when a client needs to change their schedule, too.”

The Covid-19 pandemic definitely took a toll on Celly’s business, but says she was able to survive because she received a PPP (Paycheck Protection Program) loan from the government, “and continued to pay all of my employees who didn’t go back to Brazil, even though they weren’t able to work for several months. Without that money, I might have lost all of my clients.”

Clean-it offers (and is licensed to provide) residential and commercial (“We are licensed to do medical and dental clinics, but not hospitals,” Celly says) cleaning services, including monthly, bi-weekly and weekly services, one-time cleans and move-in and move-out cleans. “We have amazing references, too.,” she says.

Most of Clean-it’s clients are in Wesley Chapel, New Tampa, Lutz and Land O’Lakes, she says, “but we do travel a little further for some clients, especially those one-time cleaning clients.”

She adds, “We really specialize in those move-in cleans. We usually end up getting the [new homeowners] as clients because we do such a great job.”

For more information about Clean-it and/or a free job quote, call (813) 505-0431. — GN

What A Life! Che Vita Italian Restaurant Opens At The Downtown Tampa Hilton!

“I began this journey, to create a new brand for Hilton, a year-and-a-half ago,” says James King, the Executive Chef at Che Vita, the new Italian restaurant in the Hilton Tampa Downtown. “Che (pronounced “Kay”) Vita means ‘What a Life!’ in Italian and we want everyone who eats here to say ‘Che Vita!’ when they finish their meal!”

King, who spent the last four years at the Hilton by Logan Airport in Boston, running Connolly’s Publik House, an Irish pub, also earned certifications in French cuisine, at Le Cordon Bleu, and multiple Master certifications in Italian cooking — including pizzas and pastas — during his training in Naples, Florence and Rome.

“But I’m a New York kid,” he says. “I grew up in Brooklyn on New York-style pizza and Italian cooking, but I went to a wedding in Puerto Rico and got bit by the palm tree ‘bug,’ because I was tired of snow. So, when this opportunity came up in Tampa, I said, ‘I never heard of Tampa, I’ve only heard of Miami.’ But, I came down here and this restaurant was an American fusion place with a big buffet. But, after the pandemic, buffets weren’t as popular anymore. So, I came up with a small, seasonal menu that we will change maybe six times per year.”

That menu, designed by Chef King (at left in top photo) and his equally amazing sous chef Fabio Zaniboni (at right in same picture) has a mix of Italian favorites and local seafood, with Antipasti (appetizers) like arancini (risotto balls with a cacio e pepe sauce fried inside and served with a lemon pesto aioli; photo right), zucchini & artichoke fritti, calamari and polpette (beef, pork & veal meatballs), as well as my favorite starter of the evening, the ahi tuna crudo (below photo), which is thick slices of raw sushi-grade tuna with a chili aioli, saba (or sweet grape must) and soy glaze, caperberries, bottarga (a Mediterranean roe) and microgarden herbs. It was slightly spicy and amazing.

“I love combining all of my influences and the crudo will give you an experience like a great Japanese restaurant,” Chef King says.

The polpettes (left) and arancini were no slouches, either, especially the meatballs, which were tender, delicately spiced and had just the right amount of tomato sugo (similar to marinara) on creamy burrata.

“I needed a sous chef like Fabio, who is from Italy, but came here from St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands after one of the hurricanes last year closed the yacht club where he was working,” Chef King says. “He told me, ‘I’m your Italian chef, but I don’t want to cook Italian. I love sushi, I love fish. I love Latin.’ I said, ‘You’re hired,’ without even tasting his food, because we shared the same vision for Che Vita. He’s like my brother from another mother when it comes to Italian cuisine.”

Jannah and I didn’t sample any of the “Zuppe & Insalata,” but they include a baby kale Caesar, a tomato & mozzarella salad and a cannellini bean and Tuscan kale soup with garlic fennel sausage, ditalini pasta, sofrito and herb brodo (broth), as well as a chilled tomato freddo soup.

It was super-hard to decide on our “Primi” or pasta dish, but we wanted something different, so we tried the agnolotti blue crab (right), which is a delicious stuffed pasta (different from ravioli) from the Piedmont region of Italy. It was fully stuffed with blue crab, lemon-basil artisan ricotta and served with crispy parmesan in a Tampa citrus gremolata (a green sauce made with chopped parsley, lemon zest and garlic). The pasta was al dente and the crab and ricotta combined with the lemon and garlic perfectly.

Other pastas on the menu include rigatoni salsiccia (with spicy sausage and broccoli rabe), which I will definitely try on my next visit, shrimp scampi, a tagliatelle tre pomodori, which is served with three different kinds of tomato sauce, a primavera and, of course, spaghetti & meatballs.

Chef King insisted that we try one of his Neapolitan-style pizzas, because he says he uses the same Italian wheat that you can’t get at most places serving Neapolitan (wood-fired) pizzas here. “If you love a Margherita pizza (left), we use that beautiful dough, San Marzano tomatoes, authentic mozzarella di Buffala and basil…Italians don’t eat pizza by folding it. They eat it with a knife and fork. The crust blisters and is crisp on the outside, but is fluffy soft on the inside.”

The Margherita pizza was excellent and there are plenty of other pizza options to try, including the Rossa Moderna, with San Marzano tomatoes, Calabrian chili oil, oregano and beekeeper’s honey that Chef King says he produces in his own bee hives. There’s also Romana style (with ricotta, mozzarella, cracked peppercorns, lemon and arugula); Capricciosa (with pomodoro, artichoke hearts, olives, exotic mushrooms and Parma ham); and Diavola (house-made spicy Italian sausage, Calabrese salami, crushed tomato sauce, Fior di Latte cheese, chili oil and oregano) pizzas on the menu.

Despite already being full, Chef King said we also had to try at least one of the “Secondi” (or main course) dishes on the menu. We had steak the night before, so we stayed away from both the Steak Tagliata (grilled & shaved Ocala Ranch tenderloin with crispy rosemary potato spears, arugula, parmigiana, lemon and aged balsamic) and the NYC-Style Strip Steak. If we weren’t so stuffed, we probably would have ordered the chicken parmesan, but instead, we opted for the one fish entrée — the Acqua Pazza, although Chef King modified it for use because it is supposed to be a spicy “fumetto di pesce” served with gulf shrimp, mussels and clams, as well as the local catch of the day, with Calabrian chili oil, crisp fingerling potatoes, blistered tomatoes, Tuscan kale and house-made biga focaccia bread. But, because (as you readers know) I’m allergic to the to the shrimp and mussels, Chef King had Fabio prepare the dish with just the fresh catch — a huge filet of grouper — sitting atop just those yummy side dishes in that delectable broth (above right). The Acqua Pazza was a perfectly grilled piece of fish and a spectacular dish. The biga focaccia was crispy, with an authentically airy interior, and was perfect for mopping up the broth. Now, we thought for sure we were done.

“But of course, you must also have dessert,” Fabio said as he poured Jannah an Aperol spritz, and it’s really hard to say no to him or Chef King, so we each ordered a dessert — just to sample, of course. Yeah, right.

Jannah got a scoop of raspberry sorbet (one of her favorites) and I got the house-made tiramisu semifreddo (below). It fills a huge cup with espresso martini-soaked ladyfingers with rich marscarpone cream and is topped with powdered chocolate and chocolate-covered coffee beans. I love a good tiramisu and this was a great one.

Of course, it was hard to not also sample the triple (dark, white & milk) chocolate mousse layered over Genoise sponge cake with chocolate fudge and biscotti crostini, or the cannolo with Nutella & ricotta mousse, luxardo cherries, pistachio crumbs and Chantilly cream. There’s also an olive oil cake, lemon thyme sorbetto (house-crafted lemon-thyme sorbet served in a frosted lemon cup with a shot of Limoncello liqueur), multiple other sorbets and four different gelato flavors (chocolate, vanilla bean, pistachio and salted caramel). Decadence.

Che Vita also features a full premium liquor cocktail list, with two Negroni cocktails, a Limoncello martini and three kinds of spritzes, including the Naples spritz Jannah started her meal with (which is Riondo prosecco, with Limoncello and St. Germain liqueurs, plus club soda).

There also is a nice selection of red, white, rosé and sparkling wines by the glass and bottle, including the Maggiolo Lamole di Lamole Chianti Classico Sangiovese I started my meal with a glass of, as well as Italian and other imported, domestic and craft beers, hard seltzers and more.

And, although Che Vita is open for breakfast (there’s even a breakfast buffet), Chef King says the breakfast crew is separate from his dinner line cooks, because, “Che Vita isn’t a hotel restaurant,” he says, “it’s its own thing. It’s Che Vita!”

The lunch menu has many of the same Antipasti, Zuppe & Insalata and Pizzas as the dinner menu, but also offers a nice variety of panini sandwiches, including a grilled chicken pesto, a parma panino (with prosciutto, sopressata, mozzarella, provolone, arugula, sundried tomato pesto and a pepperoncini remoulade), “The Local” (fried or blackened grouper), a caprese panini and two different burgers — all served with parmesan herb fries (or enhance with truffle fries for $6 additional or a side salad for $2 more).

“For me, it’s about the three Fs — family, food & futbol (soccer),” Chef King says.

All I can say is: What a meal! What a chef! What a place! What a life!

Che Vita is located inside the downtown Tampa Hilton (211 N. Tampa St.) and is open every day for breakfast, lunch & dinner. For reservations and more info, call (813) 222-4975 or visit CheVitaTampa.com — and please tell them I sent you!

Che Vita Downtown Tampa Hilton Fabio Zaniboni hilton Italian Restaurant James King Tampa

North Tampa Bay Chamber Helps The Performance Lab Host A Truly Grand Opening!

It’s not every day that we cover the Grand Opening of a business located on N. Dale Mabry Hwy. in Tampa. But, when North Tampa Bay Chamber (NTBC) president & CEO Hope Kennedy tells me “This is one you shouldn’t miss,” I generally take her at her word.

And, oh boy! The Grand Opening and NTBC ribbon-cutting event for The Performance Lab (TPL) not only included Tampa Bay Lightning coach Jon Cooper, (as the Lightning have a partnership with TPL), it also unveiled a state-of-the-art, 25,000-sq.-ft. facility “uniting world-class medical care, advanced diagnostics, and progressive rehabilitation under one roof.”

As described by founder Bahir Manios during the Grand Opening event attended by more than 200 people, TPL features top-of-the-line imaging (MRI, X-ray, ultrasound & C-arms) technology, including wide-bore MRIs, more than 25 exam/treatment rooms (including handicapped-friendly rooms and exam tables), multiple procedure rooms for interventional pain management, a dedicated brain health suite equipped with multiple modalities to assess and treat patients, including hyperbaric oxygen therapy (bottom photo), a rehabilitation suite equipped to allow patients of all abilities to progress to complete recovery in a comfortable environment and a unique performance center.

“In other words,” said Manios, “TPL is much more than a medical center. It’s a destination for recovery, performance and total wellness. Whether you’re a first responder, an athlete, a veteran, or just an ordinary person simply seeking strength, clarity and recovery from an ailment, TPL was built for you, and it’s all under one roof. We’ve put together physical medicine and rehabilitation, interventional pain management, brain health and neuro recovery, advanced imaging and diagnostics, sports performance and recovery, and life care planning for long term support.”

The event was as spectacular as the place itself, with a catered lunch outside, the ribbon cutting with (l.-r., top photo) Hillsborough County Sheriff Chad Chronister, Coach Cooper, Manios and TPL chief revenue & legal officer Shant Melkonian. Once inside, Manios played a short video showing the remarkable technology patients can expect to be treated with, and there was an informative panel discussion featuring (right, l.-r.) executive director of brain & strategic partnerships Marissa McCarthy, MD, executive medical director Michael Lorenz, MD, and chief medical officer Hadi Shah, MD, plus tours of the former (but completely gutted and recreated) Harley-Davidson dealership.

In other words, if you missed it, you really did miss something special.

For more info about TPL (6920 N. Dale Mabry Hwy.), visit TPLTampa.com or call (844) TPL-TAMPA. — GN, photos by Charmaine George

Bahir Manios grand opening Hope kennedy Jon Cooper New Tampa North Tampa Bay Chamber NTBC ribbon cutting The Performance Lab

Azteca D’Oro Unveils New Menu Items — So Of Course, We Had To Try Them All!

When Azteca D’Oro co-owner Victor Ramos told me he wanted to highlight his new menu items in his next ad (about a month or so ago), I definitely wanted to check out the new items the authentic Mexican restaurant in The Shops at Wiregrass would be bringing to the table (pun intended).

But, when I saw the photos of those new items he sent me to put in that new ad, I knew Jannah, photographer Charmaine George and I had to try them — all of them, that is!

Already one of the Wesley Chapel area’s favorite restaurants (based on Azteca being named our readers’ second favorite restaurant in Wesley Chapel in our annual Reader Dining Survey & Contest each of the last two years — the first two years it’s been open here), I also knew that Azteca was due for its 2025 Dining Feature, so I figured the new menu items were a great way to tell you more about the restaurant this year. And yes, we were all impressed with the new options.

We started with the Azteca Dip Sampler (left photo), which includes nice-sized cups of non-spicy esquites (Mexican street corn), queso, spiced bean dip and Azteca’s already-famous, house-made guacamole. We all liked the esquites the best, but the queso, bean dip and guacamole were all pretty tasty, too.

We also took the plunge by ordering the huge, 55-oz. “Big Azz Margarita,” served “Grand Vida Style” — topped with two small bottles of Grand Marnier orange liqueur. It certainly was big enough for all three of us (and maybe a fourth person) to share. But no, I had the great idea to also order a regular-sized (16-oz.) Grand Vida Style margarita, so we could show just how much bigger the Big Azz Margarita is by comparison (right photo). Azteca’s full premium liquor bar has lots of top-shelf tequilas if you want to truly make your margarita your own or add a shot to it, as well as my Jameson and a nice variety of Mexican and other beers.

We all also agreed that our favorite of the new menu items was the birria “pizza” (top photo), which layers melted cheese and a unique combination of lamb, pork and beef between two large flour tortillas (like a quesadilla), garnished with fresh cilantro, pickled onions and lime and served with a cup of birria consommé that is plenty large enough for dipping every delicious piece of the “pizza.”

We did also enjoy the huge 12-taco Taco Sampler Platter (left photo), where you can select up to three different proteins (four tacos of each) from: pollo adobato (chunks of chicken marinated in flavorful adobo sauce, made from dried chiles, vinegar, garlic & spices), pastor asada (pork with chiles and spices), carnitas (crispy pork chunks), chorizo sausage, shrimp, lengua (beef tongue) or tripa (beef tripe).

Since I couldn’t eat the shrimp, we chose to have four chicken, four carnitas and four of the crispy fish tacos and all were yummy. My favorites were the crispy fish tacos, served with a semi-spicy chipotle ranch sauce. Jannah preferred the chicken tacos, which also had their own zesty sauce, and Charmaine liked the carnitas the best. Being able to sample at least one of each was fun, too!

And of course, Azteca still has upscale favorites you can’t find at most other Mexican places, like pescado frito (whole fried snapper), grilled salmon and molcajete d’mar (snow crab, clams. mussels, scallops, shrimp & octopus), as well as Mexican standards like fajitas, quesadillas, enchiladas, vegetarian dishes and more.

And, don’t skip dessert! Try the deep fried ice cream, churros, tres leches, flan or the cream cheese-filled mini empanadas (right) we had for the first time. All delectable ways to finish a meal!

Azteca D’Oro (2000 Piazza Ave., Unit 170) is open every day for lunch and dinner, from 11 a.m.-10 p.m. (and until 11 p.m. on Friday & Saturday). For more info, call (813) 527-6033 and visit AztecaDoro.com.

Azteca Azteca D’Oro Azteca D’Oro Mexican Restaurant Wesley Chapel

Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital Provides Updates At Chamber Event!

(L.-r.) Justin Olsen & Dr. Joseph Perno of Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital, Teresa Campbell of HKS Architects & Bryan Durkin of Robins & Morton, with NTBC president & CEO Hope Kennedy, discuss the process of building Wesley Chapel’s pediatric hospital at the NW corner of Overpass Rd. & McKendree Rd.

The North Tampa Bay Chamber’s quarterly Economic Development Briefing on Sept. 24 brought four of the principals involved in the design, construction and staffing of the Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital of Wesley Chapel, which is being built just off the Overpass Rd. exit of I-75. The event was held at Pasco Hernando State College’s Porter Campus at Wiregrass Ranch.

NTBC president and CEO Hope Kennedy led the panel discussion that included Justin Olsen, the chief operating officer and Dr. Joseph Perno, the VP of Medical Affairs of Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital, as well as HKS Architects partner Teresa Campbell, and Bryan Durkin, the operations manager from Robins & Morton, which is building the 230,000-sq.- ft., 56-bed hospital at the northwest corner of Overpass Rd. and McKendree Rd.

Wesley Chapel’s first and only pediatric hospital is expected to be completed in late 2027, but this was the first real opportunity for the local business community to get an update on the progress of the hospital since the groundbreaking ceremony for it back in April of this year.

“The overall land purchase was about 112 total acres, and the hospital will be on about 30 acres, which is actually the same size as our St. Petersburg campus,” Olsen said. “The facility itself will have a full-service pediatric ED (Emergency Department) and will offer perioperative and surgical services and also will have our first inpatient rehab program for physical rehab. I will tell you that in St. Pete, we have a need for that service, so this project is going to become a center of excellence for us, to be able to provide rehab following traumatic injury. It’ll have med-surg beds, or general admission beds, and it’ll also be ready for a pediatric intensive care unit. We may not launch with that, but the facility will be designed so that, if we need to turn that on right away, we can. Lastly, it will have a really extensive outpatient footprint, with approximately 30,000 sq. ft. for kids coming in for ambulatory visits. And, we’ve already started recruiting a host of subspecialists to join the staff and live in Wesley Chapel to provide that care.”

Dr. Perno added, “It’s more than just a building. It’s moving our culture and our attitude about how we care for children, and replicating that from what we do in St. Pete to provide that same high-quality care. I’m really excited about finding the physicians that want to be part of this community and provide that care to our local pediatric patients.”

He added, “I’m probably not telling anybody in this room something they don’t already know, but this is a growing area. There’s a lot of young people here and there’s a dearth of pediatric care in this area. I’ve seen a lot of patients from this area coming to the emergency department in St. Pete and I know they’re commuting all the way down there to see our caregivers. And, I knew that we could bring the care we deliver in St. Pete closer to home for our patients in Pasco County, so we feel we’re fulfilling a big need for the community and really helping children, which is what we’re all about.”

Campbell said, “We love designing pediatric facilities. Just because a patient is having a stressful health situation doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be in an environment that’s elevating and inspiring and playful. We also think about the patient’s family, and we need to be really thoughtful about the design We work with the Patient Family Advisory Council, to really ask them, ‘What do they need? What do they want? What do they like? What do they dislike?’ We work with real patients with real parents, who provide feedback and input that really helped influence the design aspect of this project.”

As for the construction process, Durkin said, “As important as the doctors and nurses are to a hospital, subconratctors and trade partners are the folks who get the job done on the construction side. We’re getting our door knocked on consistently by high-quality contractors who want to work in a health care facility and understand the unique challenges of building health care and hospitals.”

He added, “And, what’s unique about this arrangement is that Johns Hopkins hired the construction manager at the same time as they hired the architect design team, so there was a collaboration right from the get-go of budget, design and purpose. I’m happy to continue to extend our invitation out to additional trade partners throughout the area, but our outreach started almost two years ago, when we were awarded the project . We’ll have 400-500 people on the site on any given day and 1,200-1,300 different folks come in throughout the course of the overall project. It’s important that we engage folks in Pasco County, specifically — it’s one of our contractual requirements.”

And, speaking of that workforce, Olsen said, “Yes, we’re bringing 500 jobs to the community, which is good news, but it’s also anxiety-provoking. We all know health care team members are in short supply, so making sure we can find people is going to be a challenge. We will hire a myriad of different types of roles, from administrators through nursing, and all those areas that go into a hospital and make it work. So we’re gonna have a lot of hiring to do here, and it is gonna be certainly a challenge as we look at some of our in-demand specialty areas.”

He added, “I didn’t appreciate how many of our current team members actually drive to St. Pete from this community. So, a lot of them have already started sending emails almost every week. ‘When do I get to apply for it?’ I love that people who are currently part of that culture and our team are going to join the facility here, and they will help make it the exact same in terms of always putting the kid first. It is going to be a big lift, to bring 500 new, really well-paying jobs to this community.”

Dr. Perno also noted that, “We’re looking for physicians who want to care for kids and be embedded in this community. And I’m already hearing interest on that. And, you know, we, already have people asking, ‘When is it opening? When can I start working there?’ I’m like, well, we’ve just got dirt right now, but we’re working on it.”

He added, “We have a clinic in this area now that’s bursting at the seams (on Allegra Way, off Wesley Chapel Blvd.) with physicians and practitioners working there, seeing patients. So, we’re looking at more opportunities up in this area and the physicians are fighting to go there and be part of it.”

Campbell also talked about how the building itself is being designed to be as hurricane-proof as possible, with multiple backup systems for power and water, high-wind-rated windows and more. And, Durkin talked about the challenges of dealing with two more hurricane seasons while the hospital is being constructed.

Olsen noted that this $300-million project, “is not Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital of St. Pete coming to Wesley Chapel. We are building Wesley Chapel’s children’s hospital. We will provide the departments and services this community asks for. This is a partnership. We’ve already been accepted amazingly by this community and will do what the community asks to improve kids’ health.”

Bryan Durkin Economic development briefing Hope kennedy hospital Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital Joseph Perno Justin Olsen North Tampa Bay Chamber NTBC Teresa Campbell Wesley Chapel