Category: Dining & Entertainment

THE GOLDEN TOUCH

In a tiny office tucked behind The Grove shopping center he recently bought for $62.7 million, Mark Gold is unveiling big dreams.

“Big, big, major,” he says. “This is major.”

Gold’s vision is all over the walls of the leasing office at The Grove, on blueprints and promotional materials.

There will be a family park, an amphitheatre for musical performances, a brewery, new restaurants, an indoor adventure facility, beautiful landscaping and lighting, and what Gold says will be the biggest shipping container park — think Sparkman Wharf, but on steroids — in the world.

A rendering of how a “container park” will look at The Grove.

There also is room for 400 homes, if Gold chooses to develop the additional acreage.

While others have, for too many years, seen a big box dead end office plaza with empty buildings and overgrown and unkempt land, Gold sees the future.

“This is a diamond that no one has touched for 10 years,” he says. “No one had the money to polish the diamond. That’s just crazy.”

The Grove, which opened in 2007 and whose current tenants include Best Buy, Dick’s Sporting Goods, Michael’s and others, as well as the Cobb 16 Movie Theater, may be an afterthought to many locals, a shopping center that once had great potential before development stopped. Gold and his Mishorim Gold Properties promise that will change.

“The message is, The Grove is coming back,” says Gold, emphatically. “It’s not owned by the bank or an insurance company anymore, it’s owned by creative developers that do this already all over the U.S.”

As Gold lays out his plan, it almost sounds too good to be true. However, District 2 Pasco County Commissioner Mike Moore, who arranged a meeting for Gold with county planners and administrators, loves the idea.

“I think he’s the real deal,” Moore says. “When he left after his presentation, there was energy and excitement in the room.”

Pasco’s uber-friendly-to-business county commission is likely to do what it can to make things happen fast. Many of the typical hold-ups — such as proper zoning and utilities — are all already in place.

The mostly vacant Village across the parking lot from stores like Best Buy, Marshall’s and DICK’s Sporting Goods has been mostly vacant but Gold already has new tenants signed to leases.

Gold, who has now owned the plaza less than a month, isn’t wasting any time starting to create a destination that he thinks could serve as a downtown Wesley Chapel one day.

“This is not only about money, it’s about vision,” he says. “Let’s bring something to Wesley Chapel that people like to come to.”

Just a few days after his purchase, he already had signed leases for 15 of the 60 containers, or micro-shops, that will populate the land between The Grove’s office “village” and Outback Steakhouse. Moore said he was impressed to see that overgrown grass had already been moved and some of the area was already being prepped.

Gold is hoping to create a European-flavored market or bazaar, with an emphasis on locally-owned stores and boutiques, and he says that in about two months, the containers will begin showing up.

“Things are moving fast,” he says. “This is big in places like Europe, Amsterdam…you see it all over the place. In the U.S., it is fresh. And, it is going to be the largest one in the world.”

Each of the container “shops,” which are former semi-truck trailers that will be outfitted with solar panels, is 40-feet long (although there are options to split the office containers into two or even three separate spaces), and here’s the big news — he is renting them out for only $1,500 a month for an entire container, with limited up-front costs for design.

“If you have a dream, let’s make it happen!,” Gold says.

“If you have a dream, let’s make it happen!,” he says. “This is your mom-and-pop opportunity, your dream. I care about my tenants. I want to help people come to us. Let me help you.”

A family park for children also will be one of the key components of The Grove’s transformation, as will a 36,000-sq.-ft. indoor trampoline/adventure park (see pg. 14)..

New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees is a part-owner of Surge Adventure Park, Gold says he already has Surge at four of his developments and that it is likely Brees will follow him to Wesley Chapel, too. Surge Adventure Park would be built near the Cobb 16 Movie Theater.

As we reported last issue, Double Branch Artisanal Ales, owned by Wesley Chapel residents, is expected to open in December, the first new project under Gold’s Mishorim Gold Properties.

“I think it is extraordinarily exciting for our community,” says Hope Allen, CEO of the North Tampa Bay Chamber. “It’s a long time coming. “It was disheartening to see (The Grove) not living up to its full potential over the last couple of years. I appreciate that new ownership is going to invest in it.”

Gold says he also has signed leases with at least four restaurants — pizza, sushi, gourmet hot dogs and frozen yogurt — for the currently mostly-vacant office park that he calls “The Village,” as well as a restaurant/duelling piano bar owned by Wesley Chapel resident Jamie Hess and his brother Joe.

“I met with him and was very enthusiastic and energetic,” said Jamie Hess, who signed his lease on Oct. 10. “I thought he had an amazing plan. I went home and researched his other properties and after that, I was sold. He’s going to make The Grove a huge success.” We’ll have a separate story about the piano bar in a future issue.

Gold has a reputation for investing in property that is undervalued and turning high-vacancy shopping and office centers into bustling, vibrant, family-focused entertainment destinations.

He bought the Lynnhaven North shopping center in Virginia Beach, VA, in late 2018 and quickly turned that around, with nearly $10 million worth of renovations and upgrades.

Whether you’re talking about the Regency Court Shopping Center in Jacksonville, or the Shoppes at Hickory Hollow in Antioch, TN, the DW Center in Newport News, VA, or a handful of other similar U.S. projects, Gold has swooped in to buy a failing shopping center and invested millions into transforming them.

And, the ebullient Gold is excited about The Grove’s prospects.

He says he has been looking to purchase land in the Tampa Bay area for years, but couldn’t find anything that suited him.

“It was like Mission Impossible,” he says.

He spent eight months negotiating to buy The Grove, when he says it usually takes him only about a month to complete similar deals.

The purchase included the 604,000 sq. ft. of existing shopping and dining space, as well as 1.3-million sq. ft. of retail and office space that he plans to build.

But, even better, The Grove is located in one of the southeast’s fastest-growing areas.

Not only are there thousands of homes at various stages of development within a 10-mile radius of The Grove in nearby communities like Mirada, Epperson and even Quail Hollow, but Wesley Chapel also boasts an average annual household income of $92,000.

The shopping center is located just off busy I-75, and can be seen by 100,000 drivers a day.

“I am in the middle of the all the action,” Gold says. “Right where I want to be.”

And soon, he hopes, where all of Wesley Chapel will want to be.

For leasing & more information about The Grove, contact keren@mgoldgroup.com.

The Grove

Nibbles & Bytes

Check Out The Sake House!

The Japanese restaurant and sushi bar formerly known as Fong’s Sushi and Sushi Raw, in the Shoppes at Amberly plaza in Tampa Palms (next to Crunch Fitness) is under new ownership and my first visit to the new Sake House will have be going back for seconds.

I didn’t get to speak to the new owner but I did enjoy some tasty fried pork shumai dumplings (photo above), a unique chicken fried rice and some super-fresh snapper sashimi. Hopefully, I’ll be telling you more about the Sake House in a future issue. In order to help make that happen, please call or stop in and tell them you heard about the Sake House from Gary at Neighborhood News!

The Sake House is located at 15311 Amberly Dr., Tampa. For hours and more information, call (813) 977-3838 or visit SakeHouseAmberly.com.

La Berry Is Now Ice Spice Café!

In our last coupe of issues, we’ve told you about several new Indian restaurants that have or are going to open in New Tampa.

Well, add one more to the list, as the former La Berry Frozen Yogurt Café, located in the same Trout Creek Commons plaza as Burger 21 at 20304 Trout Creek Dr., off Bruce B. Downs (BBD) Blvd., is now the Ice Spice Café. It is still a frozen yogurt shop that also carries Indian ice cream, milk shakes, smoothies, plus wraps, salads and Indian chaat, which is a savory snack I’ve never sampled or even heard of before.

What I can say with certainty is that Ice Spice Café has creamy frozen yogurt, with flavors like salted caramel (30 calories per ounce) and white chocolate (34) that are low-fat (1g per ounce), low-carb (5-6g sugar per ounce) and delicious!

Fore more info, call (813) 591-1758 or search “Ice Spice Café” on Facebook.

Coming Soon: Bubba’s 33!

Congrats also go out to Jeff and Crista Dean, the owners of Bubba’s 33, which is now going vertical between Ashley Furniture and Texas Roadhouse on S.R. 56, west of I-75, in Wesley Chapel. This will be the first location in Florida for Texas Roadhouse’s sports bar concept, which held a North Tampa Bay Chamber of Commerce-hosted groundbreaking (photo above) on Sept. 9.

For additional information, visit Bubbas33.com.

Congrats, Dr. Dave!

Congratulations to well-known local optometrist Dr. David Scamard and his office manager Eileen Popescu of Excellence in Eyecare on their August 14 ribbon cutting hosted by the Greater Pasco Chamber of Commerce.

You can visit Dr. Dave’s two-year-old independent optometry office inside the Costco on S.R. 56 — even if you’re not a member of the wholesale club — and he provides a full-range of eye care services, including comprehensive exams, visual field analyses, retinal imaging and more, with walk-ins welcome.

Dr. Scamard opened his first optometry office in our area more than 17 years ago and I can personally attest to the fact that he’s a great optometrist and a really good guy.

If you need more details, or it’s been a while since you had your eyes checked, call (813) 279-7038, visit ExcellenceinEyecare.net or see the ad on pg. 12 of this issue.

— GN

OTB Delights Café Now Offering Fresh, Locally Prepared Meals & More

I have seen the highs and the lows over the last six years with my friend Dirson De Mesquita, the owner of OTB Delights Café, now located in Nye Commons, on Bruce B. Downs (BBD) Blvd., just south of S.R. 54.

Dirson had started his successful, healthy-eating-oriented restaurant concept in the same plaza as The Hungry Greek and Dickey’s BBQ a little further south on BBD (across from AdventHealth Wesley Chapel) when he decided to find anther location in 2018.

What he didn’t know was that he would be closed for several months (basically, from August until December) that year, as he agreed to leave his old space in order for the new tenant — Umu Japanese & Thai — to get started on their build-out while he began building the new OTB.

Bottom line? Dirson and his wife Ana weathered the storm of several months with no OTB income and have been thriving in their new location ever since.

“Our breakfast business has definitely picked up since we’ve been here,” Dirson says. “And our lunch crowd has been about the same.”

The new location is definitely a nicer layout and even though OTB is the only restaurant in Nye Commons, which doesn’t have a particularly easy entrance to get into either, people have been finding it (it’s located less than four miles north of the Pasco County line) — and loving many of the changes to the menu.

But, What About The Food?

At its old location, when OTB only served healthier turkey bacon for breakfast, I’ll admit I didn’t go out of my way to enjoy my most important meal of the day there.

But now, with the new OTB even closer to my office, Dirson has added not only real bacon, but a variety of delicious new breakfast menu items.

My favorite is still the “breakfast plate”, with your choice of three regular or chocolate chip pancakes, two eggs any style (over easy for me, of course) and three strips of that (extra crispy) bacon — a bargain for only $9.99. And, even though it comes with pancakes, I still add OTB’s tasty marble rye to soak up my egg yolks.

Just as delicious, but understandably more expensive ($12.99) is the steak and eggs breakfast, with a nice portion of thinly sliced steak and three eggs your way. Newer breakfast items include “Omelette’ing You Go,” a three-egg omelet served with your choice of side (try the fresh fruit) and toast. You can choose any three ingredients from the following list: any cheese, grilled onions, grilled peppers, tomatoes, baby spinach, arugula, red onion, diced ham, diced turkey, sprouts, pepperoncini, black olives and mushrooms — and all for only $8.99.

You avocado lovers will flip for the Good Morning Ciabatta, with two eggs your way, tomato, avocado and provolone on a tasty seeded, multi-grain ciabatta hoagie roll.

There’s also a breakfast burrito, chicken-quinoa eggs-travaganza and a tasty hash-and-eggs breakfast made with real corned beef and sweet potato home fries; an asparagus-bacon eggs Benedict; the Yolko Ono, with eggs, Black Forest ham, tomatoes and Havarti cheese on a multi-grain ciabatta; as well as an Acai bowl (with granola, bananas, strawberies, coconut flakes and organic Acai.

And, since Dirson is from Brazil, you know he’s serving great coffee, too.

Don’t They Serve Lunch, Too?

Although most people don’t think of a hamburger as a “healthy” option, Dirson’s grass-fed artisan burger is seasoned, hand-pattied, grilled to order and delicious. There’s also tasty veggie and turkey burgers.

OTB’s lunch selections also feature a variety of salads, including the Asian orange ahi tuna salad, with a generous portion of seared rare tuna, Mandarin oranges, toasted almonds and sprouts; a blackened portabella Caesar as well as a chicken Caesar; a seared steak delight salad and “salmon gone wild” salad. OTB doesn’t have the biggest selection of salad dressings, but all of them are pretty tasty. I especially enjoy the sesame ginger and spicy Santa Fe dressings.

Many of the salads also are available as “Rice Rice Baby” bowls. My favorites are the Shanghai chicken (with jasmine rice, sesame seeds, toasted almonds and the sesame ginger dressing), and the steak delight rice bowl (top right on this page), with black beans, jasmine rice, tomatoes, caramelized onions and blue cheese crumbles, with balsamic.

OTB Has Meal Delivery, Too?

Busy working adults, especially those with younger kids, are turning more and more these days to meal delivery services like Hello Fresh and Blue Apron, but Dirson decided to get into the meal delivery business locally because he can promise the same dependable delivery of fresh meals with advantages over those other services.

“We don’t mass produce anything,” Dirson says proudly. Your meals aren’t taken out of a fridge and put into a box, they’re made to your order. You tell us what you want, we make it fresh and deliver it when you want it (guaranteed to arrive between 4 p.m.-9 p.m. on your chosen date to ensure freshness).”

The best way to get started is to call (813) 906-2229 or order online at OnlyTheBestDelivery.com.

You’ll find a huge selection of options online and even though there are actual menu items, Dirson promises that “everything is customizable. If the menu calls for an item to be served with broccoli, you can substitute asparagus, add sprouts, whatever you want.”

And, OTB’s portion-controlled meal delivery service has complete one-week meal plans, keto meals (like keto pesto parmesan chicken and veggies), plant-based meals (like mushroom taco lettuce wraps), special items for kids (kids’ sliced steak and sweet potato mash), desserts (like vegan, gluten-free cookies) and even raw, cold juices (try the cold press juice sampler, with green, yellow, red and bunny juice) available for delivery. There’s even a full catering menu that is fully customizable to your specifications, for events large or small.

Best of all, the food is delicious and guaranteed to arrive fresh, whether you like pulled chicken or ahi tuna with broccoli, quinoa or rice (two left photos on this page) or anything else on OTB’s extensive menu, Dirson’s delivery manager Jen will make sure your order is right — or she’ll make it right.

After six years, I’ve come to expect nothing less from Dirson and OTB!

OTB Delight Café, located at 4839 BBD Blvd., is open Monday-Sunday, 8 a.m.-4 p.m. For more information, call (813) 906-2229 or visit OTBDelightCafe.com.

“Fun” and “Fresh” Stuff Coming To New Tampa!

Good news for those bemoaning the lack of things to do with the kids in New Tampa, as well as the number of empty “big box” stores in New Tampa — an Urban Air Adventure Park is on the way to the Market Square at Tampa Palms, the shopping center anchored by BJ’s Wholesale Club on Commerce Palms Dr..

And it’s not alone.

While Urban Air Adventure Park will fill the former home of HH Gregg, Taza Market, an Indian supermarket and eatery, is expected to take over the old Staples location.

Urban Air Adventure is a Texas-based entertainment center franchise with locations all over the U.S.. The New Tampa location will be the company’s 10th in Florida, which includes centers in nearby Lakeland and Port Richey.

It has already announced on its website that it is coming to New Tampa, and according to plans filed with the City of Tampa, the facility will be 28,000 sq. ft. and include areas for a warrior course, spin/flip zone, slam dunk zone, family zone, wipe out area, adventure hub and private rooms for parties to go with a full service cafe.

The award-winning indoor activity center, which calls itself the “ultimate indoor playground for your entire family” and says it is more than just a trampoline park, typically offers high-flying activities, such as a Sky Rider Coaster, climbing walls and elevated ropes course, to name a few.

Taza Market, according to plans filed with the city, will be a 16,382-sq.-ft. Indian super market with fresh food made daily and a cafe-like area of roughly 1,700 sq. ft. with seating for 80.

Taza in Hindi translates to “fresh”.

A Restaurant Survey & Contest Update & My Wife’s Exciting New Job!

*Jannah & Gary Nager at a wedding on Cape Cod Aug. 17.*

Pretty much every year since I took over the Neighborhood News in 1994, we have held our annual Reader Dining Survey & Contest. At one time, it was just our most popular contest for our readers but today, it is the only one we still run year after year.

And honestly, it’s also a tremendous amount of work to put together (and tabulate the results of) the contest each year, as so many restaurants continue to come and go in our distribution areas, especially recently in New Tampa, where fewer newcomers have been replacing those that exit than in Wesley Chapel, where there are so many newbies, even though most of them are regional or national chains.

This year, after participation in this annual contest dwindled somewhat the past two years, I tried to find a way to ask you to name fewer favorites yourselves but hopefully, still find a way to give every restaurant currently operating in New Tampa and Wesley Chapel and those located directly adjacent to both markets a better chance to be among our readers’ favorites.

I also was trying to find a way to prevent “ballot stuffing” by local residents who only entered the contest to vote for one place. As always, entries that are not completely and/or incorrectly filled out will not have their votes included, but it seems that the format this year is already reducing disqualifications.

Also new this year is the fact that if you live in New Tampa, you only got to vote last issue (and this issue) for restaurants located in New Tampa (or on Bearss Ave. near BBD in Lutz). Likewise, those living in Wesley Chapel were only asked to vote for restaurants in Wesley Chapel (and on S.R. 56 and S.R. 54 in Lutz). In our October issues, New Tampa residents will get to vote for their favorites in Wesley Chapel and Wesley Chapel residents for their favorites in New Tampa, although both surveys are available online now, and you can submit one entry in each market at NeighborhoodNewsOnline.net or by U.S. Mail.

And, based on the fact that we already have more than doubled last year’s total number of entries in just the first two (of six total) issues the contest has run so far is an indication that I may be onto something, even though the task to include every restaurant, fast food place, café and cafeteria in both of our markets has proven even more daunting than I had anticipated.

Originally, I correctly listed all of the candidates for “Favorite Restaurant in New Tampa” by where they were located, rather than in alphabetical order, but I ended up excluding two of my favorite pizza places in New Tampa — Taste of New York in Highwoods Preserve and Woodfired Pizza on Bearss Ave. — from the “Favorite Pizza in New Tampa” list, completely by accident. You’ll note that both of them have been added to the second run of the New Tampa survey, and you’ll also find that I have reorganized the full list of New Tampa favorites alphabetically this time around.

I did even worse in Wesley Chapel, where, among a couple of others, The Brass Tap was inadvertently left off the “Favorite Bar or Tavern in Wesley Chapel” list, and my 2018 favorite restaurant in Wesley Chapel — Dempsey’s Steakhouse in Saddlebrook Resort — was left off the “Favorite Restaurant in Wesley Chapel” list, as was TD’s Sports Bar at Saddlebrook. Yeesh.

But, that’s one reason why we run the contest multiple times, so we can get the listings right. The other is that we want as many local residents in both of our markets as possible to participate because, quite honestly, it helps both us and the restaurants themselves get a better handle on which places our readers truly like best in and near their neighborhoods. And, despite the amount of work that it takes to create and score the contests, it also is a lot of fun for me, as one of our area’s better-known “foodies,” to oversee.

Congratulations, Mrs. Nager!

Loyal Neighborhood News readers know that Jannah has been working for the Pasco Education Foundation (the nonprofit organization that raises money to support the Pasco School District) for the past four+ years, but she has an exciting new job that definitely will make her even more well-known and popular right here in Wesley Chapel than she has become from all of the publicity she’s had in these pages.

As of Sept. 1, Jannah is now the director of marketing for the (mainly) indoor Wesley Chapel Sports Complex at Wiregrass Ranch (that is the working title) being developed by RADD Sports just off S.R. 56! It truly is a huge, exciting opportunity for her and Jannah already is looking to establish partnerships for the complex with local companies and sports organizations.

Stay tuned for more announcements and congrats, babe!