Category: Featured

Taste Of New Tampa Returning!

taste2web — (l.-r.) WCCC CEO Hope Allen, NT Rotary president Brice Wolford, WCCC Board Chair Tracy Clouser and WCCC Ambassadors Craig Miller and James Carner at the signing ceremony held at the Chamber office to officially give the New Tampa Rotary the right to host the 2017 Taste of New Tampa on March 18.

I will admit that I was crazy excited to learn that the Greater Wesley Chapel Chamber of Commerce (WCCC) — our exclusive webcast partner for WCNT-tv — was getting ready to sign off on having the New Tampa Rotary Club (which meets Fridays for breakfast at Tampa Palms Golf & Country Club) put on the next Taste of New Tampa.

Sadly, I thought that official announcement was coming a few months ago…and then, a few weeks ago.

Well, on Sept. 14, it became official. There will be a 21st Taste of New Tampa — and Wesley Chapel — on Saturday, March 18, 2017!

But somehow, the bigger news for all of us who plan to dive headfirst into bringing back one of our area’s most popular single-day events than the fact that there finally will be another Taste is the location for the event — Florida Hospital Center Ice (FHCI)!

FHCI co-owner/developer Gordie Zimmerman may not have been able to be on-hand for the signing ceremony between the WCCC and the New Tampa Rotary, but Zimmerman stepped up to the plate in a big way by agreeing to bring the event primarily back indoors for the first time since the first Taste back in 1994 (when it was held in and outside of Hunter’s Green Country Club), instead of outside in what has too often been either sweltering heat or sideways-falling, driving rain.

The signing ceremony, held at the Chamber office in The Grove at Wesley Chapel, featured New Tampa Rotary president Brice Wolford and WCCC Board chair Tracy Clouser signing off on a document that took a little while to finalize, but will definitely prove to be worth the wait for both the organizers and the likely thousands of attendees who will be on hand to help raise money for the New Tampa Rotary’s selected charities.

Also at the signing ceremony were Chamber president and CEO Hope Allen and WCCC ambassadors (and New Tampa Rotary Club members) James Carner and Craig Miller. Yes, that is the same Craig Miller of Full Throttle Intermedia who also is my partner on WCNT-tv.

Putting Together A Team

The New Tampa Rotary is already putting together a team of volunteers to help ensure the success of the event. I have agreed to be the Taste restaurant coordinator, while former Rotary Club of Wesley Chapel historian (who also has been a past Rotary District Governor) David West of Signarama of New Tampa, who is now a member of the New Tampa Rotary, will be the sponsorship coordinator. New Tampa Rotary member Karen Frashier will be among those responsible for marketing the event and more announcements will come in the future.

The 2017 Taste is only 25 weeks (a little more than six months) away, so the organizers need to move quickly to ensure that the first to be held since 2014 (on one of those sideways-rain days, when it was held in Primrose Park off Commerce Park Blvd. in Tampa Palms). I handled the restaurants for that event and there were 30 committed at one point, but the reports of likely bad weather that day caused numerous day- and week-of-the-event cancellations. That shouldn’t be a problem inside the 150,000-sq.-ft. FHCI — which will be the largest skating facility south of New York when it opens.

“It’s a great opportunity to revive an amazing event,” Allen said after the signing ceremony. “The Chamber is getting out of the business of putting on major events like these, so it was great that the New Tampa Rotary stepped up to bring back the Taste.” The Chamber also has divested itself of its own Fall Festival, which will have its 12th edition put on this year at The Grove shopping center the weekend of October 29-30. by Simply Events, which was introduced at the WCCC’s September business breakfast.

Look for more updates about the Taste in these pages, at WCNeighborhoodNews.com and on future episodes of WCNT-tv. We also will post information for those who want to help with putting on the event.

Taste of New Tampa

‘Project Innovate’ Brings New Laptops & Ways To Learn To Chiles

chilesweb — L.-r.: Chiles fifth graders Drew Moose, Ava Campbell, De’Vantae Jackson and Paige Duffield.

Chiles Elementary fifth-grader Aaron Back has his notebook open, and his laptop charged up. Instead of doing his research by paging through a book — and good luck finding a book on sand boils, which he currently is studying — Back is able to peruse the web, scribbling his findings and ideas on paper.

“I like that you have more than one option,’’ says Back, who is 10 years old. “When you’re reading, you only have one option, but (on the computer) you have lots of options you can go to.”

Back is one of 146 fifth-graders at Chiles, which is located in Tampa Palms, taking part in Hillsborough County’s “Project Innovate,” which provides students with a Hewlett Packard x360 laptop for a completely different — and a little more advanced — learning experience.

“The concept is to prepare our students for the digital age they are growing up in and to increase engagement with their teachers, as well as meeting the needs of students by differentiating instruction in a more confidential way,’’ says Chiles assistant principal Ashley Galfond.

The county has provided 150 of the laptops to Chiles, with the hope of changing the learning landscape and getting kids comfortable with more high-tech means of taking notes and producing projects.

Schoolwork is done using Microsoft products, and the work is all held in OneNote, a digital note-taking app. If insurance issues can be worked out, the students may even be able to take those laptops home during the second semester, but for now, they can still access their work on their families’ home computers.

Back and the other students will be able to ultimately file their assignments to English Language Arts (ELA) teacher Nancy Erickson in many different media. “They can do their projects however they want,’’ Erickson says. “If you’re passionate and an artist and want to make posters, that’s a great thing. I can’t draw to save my life, so I might be more comfortable doing something digital-oriented. The nice part is, they can look at the info and say, ‘This is the best way I can present my information, so I’m going to present it in a brochure, make a poster or make a movie trailer.’”

Galfond is in her second year at Chiles, after coming over from Turner-Bartels, the grades K-8 school in Live Oak Preserve.

chiles_aaron — Chiles fifth-grader Aaron Back. 10, works on his project about sand boils.

At Turner-Bartels, Galfond was part of preparing the first “cohort,” or group of students working together, for Project Innovate, before coming to Chiles last year to prepare the students for being the second cohort, which started this new school year.

“We’ve been doing it on a small scale to learn as we go and to be able to support the students so there is a successful implementation,’’ Galfond says, adding that the intent is to include other grades in the near future.

The current laptops have keyboards, but also can be flipped to work as a tablet. But, Erickson said the goal is to get kids used to the more traditional laptop form. In fact, she says, so many kids have iPads and other tablets that this has been their first work, for many, on a regular laptop computer.

“They don’t have the basic computer skills that, I guess, I use every day,’’ Erickson says. “They are not users, they are players, if that makes sense. So, things like editing, and copying and pasting things like URLs (Uniform Resource Locators), or typing and moving the cursor up and down, they didn’t know that.”

Erickson adds, however, that she expected the transition to be a learning process — even for her, since she is primarily an Apple user.

The students are enjoying their new tools. Their class, part of a daily “Genius Hour” afforded to students to work independently and on whatever they choose, is quiet. The students seem more earnest in their work, and the only sound is the tappity-tap of a keyboard or students softly whispering as they share their work with one another.

As for Erickson, she likes the options the project gives her as a teacher.

Instead of collecting papers and taking them home to grade, she can look at quizzes and assignments immediately and provide feedback while the topic is still fresh in the students’ minds. She also can make suggestions and help privately instruct individuals who might have questions they wouldn’t normally ask in front of the whole class.

“I can post something and ask them, ‘Type in your reactions to this,’” Erickson says. “I can take polls, and I can do really quick, down-and-dirty assessments that way. We can do quiz-like games, and (the students) are having a blast doing that, too.”

Erickson’s group is currently studying Crystal Springs, which is located in the southeastern corner of Pasco County, since the class will take a field trip there Sept. 14-15. The students have been tasked with producing reports on various aspects of the springs, from why they exist to the wildlife that lives nearby, to, well, even sand boils (which, according to Wikipedia, occur when water under pressure wells up through a bed of sand. The water looks like it is “boiling” up from the sand, hence the name).

For other things they study where a field trip is not possible, the students will be able to use their laptops to Skype with experts on location.

“The great things about (the laptops) is they (students) can take this as far as they want,’’ Erickson says, adding that one student already has asked if he can do coding for a Nintendo game. “I think you’ll see a lot more great things as we go forward.”

chiles elementary Project Innovate

USF Credit Union’s New Branch To Open In New Tampa

For the first time in its nearly 60-year history, the USF Federal Credit Union (FCU) is venturing off campus to open a new branch in New Tampa.

On August 29, USF president and New Tampa resident Judy Genshaft, USF FCU President and CEO Rick Skaggs, Tampa City Council chair (and USF grad) Mike Suarez and a number of other school dignitaries stuck ceremonial shovels into a pile of dirt during a ground-breaking ceremony at the northwest corner of Bruce B. Downs (BBD) and Imperial Oak Blvd., in the Trout Creek area near Winn-Dixie.

“It’s a fabulous location, and we know that the population is growing soooo fast in this area of our region and of our state,’’ Genshaft told the crowd. “(The branch) is modeled after the Marshall Center (branch) that has been fabulous and so well-received.”

The first-ever standalone off-campus branch of the USF Federal Credit Union, which boasts 52,000 members, which will be located in front of the plaza that houses Winn Dixie and LA Fitness and across Imperial Oak Blvd. from Burger King, is expected to open in mid-2017.

“It’s the first off-campus building of the credit union,’’ said Skaggs. “We’ve had other offices (off campus), but this is the first one that will be a standalone facility, so it’s a big day in our history.”

USF Building Bigger, Better

The new credit union will go up just a few hundred yards from its current location in the same plaza.

The impetus for acquiring the land to build the two-story, 12,300-sq.-ft. credit union, in fact, is due in part to the success of that New Tampa office, Skaggs said, as well as the knowledge that this area is home to many USF grads and employees.

“We have a lot of faculty and staff that live in this area as well, and going back from here to the university might as well be like going to St. Petersburg, so this is going to be a nice hub for us,’’ Skaggs said.

He noted that there have been numerous studies done on the membership base located in New Tampa, and those studies also reveal that many graduates settle in the area after attending USF and would like to remain members. Suarez, for example, said at the groundbreaking that he still has the same account he started 30 years ago when he was a USF student.

New USF FCU, New Offerings

The new facility will allow the credit union to expand the services offered at other off-campus locations, like in mortgage lending and wealth management. There will be a large community room available for meetings and functions, Skaggs said, equipped with a large TV for presentations and multi-media capabilities.

There also will be drive-through tellers and “universal service reps,” who according to Skaggs, are like bank tellers of the future. Since many patrons use electronic banking and don’t bother with the brick and mortar building for simple tasks like deposits and withdrawals anymore, universal service reps will be equipped to handle not only traditional teller duties, but also all of the other services offered by the credit union.

“The concept is like an Apple Store,’’ Skaggs said. “In the Marshall Center, the design we put in there has been very well-received. The open architecture feel, as well as all the electronic services, remote access, all of it, will be a totally different environment than a regular bank or credit union drive-through.”

USF FCU Highly Regarded

In July, the USF FCU, which was chartered in 1959 for the staff and faculty and began serving students in 1990, was named as the 2016 Credit Union of the Year by the League of Southeastern Credit Unions & Affiliates (LSCU) in the “$500 Million in Assets or Above” category.

Its merger with Darden Employees Federal Credit Union, the renovation of the Marshall Student Center Branch and the executive internship program, which allows students to work at the Marshall Center location and earn college credit, were cited in earning the award.

Skaggs said USF FCU has more than $500 million in assets, 135 employees and lends in excess of $100 million per year.

For more info, visit USFFCU.org or call 569-2000.

USF Credit Union

Wharton Volleyball Kids Could Lead Way

Wharton volleyball star Kathryn Attar poses for a picture, with a freshman to her right, and two others to her left.

“My babies,’’ the senior says, only half-jokingly.

This year, the Wildcats’ outside hitter might just be feeling like the team mother, as she adds a larger leadership role to go with her prodigious talents at the net.

Not that leadership is a new thing for Attar. The past three seasons, she has led the way for Wharton volleyball on the court, with 1,110 kills, including 358 last season. She has established herself as one of the top players in the state.

However, she has always been younger than other players on the team.

But, now that three starters — setter Tyler Sroufe, middle blocker Lindsey Schaible and libero Chanelle Hargreaves — from a team that went 43-12 the past two seasons are off playing Division I-A college volleyball, all that remains from that experienced and cohesive group is Attar.

She does have her babies, however: the freshmen trio of hitter Jeanette Henderson, middle blocker Jamie Koopman and setter Ella Hileman.

“It’s great for Jeanette or anyone in that position that every day, she gets to see and learn from the best in the game, in the state, at that position,’’ Barber says. “Kathryn is very much like an assistant coach this year. She’s always been the youngest on the team, so this is her year to really kind of be the leader not just physically, but also from a maturity level.”

Wharton Senior Providing Leadership

Barber says having Attar, who has verbally pledged to play college volleyball at Yale University, makes the Wildcats instantly competitive. But they they will need more. The team does return sophomore setter Gracie Viloria, who played a lot last season after Sroufe got hurt. Senior Allie Schneider, who transferred in last season, her first with Wharton, and junior Devyn Kettner, who was called up from junior varsity late last season, return.

What could push them even deeper into the playoff picture, though, will be the development of the youngsters.

“It goes in waves,’’ Barber says. “We were in this situation (losing a lot of starters to graduation) 3-4 years ago. Now we’re back to a new start. To me, that’s what keeps it fun in coaching. The challenge will be getting them far enough along to make a push at the end of the season and take advantage of having Kathryn.”

Because Wharton is changing from a 5-1 alignment (with one setter) to a 6-2 (with two setters), Hileman will play a key role. “She is going to be a really good setter,’’ Barber says.

Henderson, who plays the same position as Attar, is only 5-6 but has the kind of vertical leap that would make a lot of basketball players jealous. “She has great jumps,’’ Barber says. “She’s already has some good kills against some tough teams. I’ve been impressed.”

Koopman will try to step into Schaible’s role in the middle. Last year, Schaible had a team-best 180 blocks to go with 229 kills. Koopman, who is 5-foot-10, won’t be expected to put up those kind of numbers her first season, but Barber expects her to improve and become a force under the tutelage of Attar.

“Even though she doesn’t play the middle (blocker position), she knows everything,’’ Koopman says about learning under Attar. “She just knows what to do. It’s great, I love playing with her.”

Hileman agrees. “Kathryn can teach because she knows how everybody’s position is played,’’ she says. “I’m a setter, and she knows what I do. It’s good, because she’ll help all of us, not just one of us.”

Freshman Class To Help Wharton Volleyball For Years

While Barber says Hileman, Koopman and Henderson — all starters — will play the biggest role among his freshman, they won’t be the only ones making their mark in the next few years. He says he has a dozen first-year prepsters playing this year, some of whom he will reveal later this season when they get called up to varsity.

“Overall, our freshman group is outstanding, it’s the best we’ve had,’’’ says Barber, whose team is now 5-6, but after a stumble at the Academy of Holy Names tournament the Wildcats have won their last three matches, including a win over Wiregrass Ranch.

Attar thinks that talent will develop enough by the end of the season to make the Wildcats a team to be reckoned with come playoff time in October.

A player of her All-State talents can carry a volleyball team to a successful season, but the kind of help the freshmen can provide could mark the difference between good and great.

“I’ve seen noticeable improvement already, and there should be more noticeable improvement by the end of the year,’’ Attar says. “You wouldn’t look at us and think we haven’t played together before. We should be really good by the time Districts (begin).”

Wharton High 6th Annual Harvest Volleyball Tournament

WHEN: September 30-October 1.

WHERE: Wharton High gymnasium, 20150 Bruce B. Downs Blvd.

TEAMS: Wharton, Brandon, Durant, Freedom, Sunlake, Gaither and two teams to be named.

OUTLOOK: This annual event is also a food drive, with fans urged to help fill a large box outside of the gym with canned or boxed food items which is used to help feed people at three local food banks.

volleyball Wharton

Enter Our Dining Survey, Win Free Food!

Win $200, $100 or $50 In FREE Dining In Our 2016 Survey & Contest!

It’s baaaaack!

Our ever-popular annual Reader Survey & Dining Contest returns and the 2016 edition is another opportunity for you to help yourself to one of three outstanding FREE dining prizes, as well as help our local restaurants find out where our readers enjoy dining out the most in New Tampa & Wesley Chapel.

Just for filling out the entry form in our most recent issue, sending it by mail, fax or email (you can also enter below), you can win $50, $100 or even $200 in absolutely FREE dining at the restaurant of your choice, whether it’s located in New Tampa or Wesley Chapel or not!

Here are the rules to be eligible to win one of our prizes:

You MUST vote for your FIVE favorite restaurants in BOTH New Tampa and Wesley Chapel.
You MUST vote in every category.
Please do not write in or vote for any restaurant more than once in any category, or your votes are disqualified.
Please also do not write in a restaurant located in Wesley Chapel (zip codes 33543, 33544 & 33545) as your favorite in New Tampa (zip code 33647) or vice-versa, or your votes are disqualified.
Only one entry per person will be accepted.
The entry deadline is Friday, October 28, 2016. And, as always, no purchase of any kind is necessary to win any of our contests.

Now get going!:

Fill out my online form.

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