Category: News

New Tampa Recreation Center Expansion Plans Put On Hold…Again

Plans to expand the New Tampa Recreation Center (NTRC) — whether by adding more room for a gymnastics program that already has a two-year waiting list, adding a pool or perhaps building covered areas for parents to watch their kids play youth sports — are on hold.

Again.

For the second time in five years, the Tampa City Council has voted to provide funds for another project, keeping the NTRC as it is and adding to the ire of many New Tampa residents that the area is not getting a fair return on the large share of city taxes they pay.

“We are tired of being treated as a cash cow for the city,’’ said Tampa Palms attorney Warren Dixon.

The Tampa City Council voted Feb. 4 to spend the money instead to fix the 79-year-old Cuscaden Park pool, which will receive $3.1-million for its upgrade.

In 2005, the city spent $2.5-million on the pool, which was then closed in 2009 because of structural damage that was causing leaks. It hasn’t re-opened since.

District 7 Council member Lisa Montelione, who represents New Tampa and the surrounding area, was the lone vote against funding the pool.

While she said she respects the historical and cultural importance of the pool, the money used was not only diverted from the NTRC, but also from another project at the Greco Sports Complex off Fowler Ave. that also sits in her district.

“I wasn’t surprised by the vote, based on the previous support for the repairs at Cuscaden Pool,’’ Montelione says. “What I can tell the people of New Tampa is they need to reach out to my fellow council members and let them know how they feel. I’m on the side of New Tampa, I just need others on the council to see how important this is.”

Dixon said he has already written a letter of complaint, and others, like Maggie Wilson, has voiced their displeasure..

“The prevailing feeling is that there is a disregard for the needs of the (New Tampa) area,’’ said Wilson, a well-known community consultant for the Tampa Palms Community Development District. “‘Just send us your tax money.’ I’m not sure that’s my feeling, but when it comes to enhancements (for our community), it certainly is.”

Wilson’s feelings are nothing new. Even as folks line up to run for Montelione’s District 7 seat, they all seem to mention the need to help make the tax monies work for the area.

The New Tampa Rec Center, which was built in 2008, boasts more than 19,000 sq. ft. of indoor space, mostly for bustling gymnastics and tumbling programs, also is home to a skateboarding park and multi-purpose fields in the adjacent New Tampa Community Park.

In 2012, it was announced that the NTRC would be expanding the following year by adding an additional 14,000 sq. ft. to the facility with more gym space, locker and multi-purpose rooms, a workout center and a rock-climbing wall. But, the $1.5-million addition never came to fruition.

“It was actually in the budget draft, and then when the final budget came out it was gone,’’ says Montelione. “I raised numerous questions to staff about where the money went, and no one could ever really answer the question.”

Dixon says that the original developer of Tampa Palms had to set aside the land for nearby Freedom High and where the New Tampa Recreation Center is located, and with the CDD bonds all paid off, “we essentially have paid for that land.”

“When you realize that we (as Tampa Palms residents) have already made a significant contribution to the rec center, you can understand why we get a little short tempered,’’ he added.

So, will the rec center ever get the improvements promised in 2012, and then promised again for 2016?

“It’s on the books,” Montelione says. “It does have a line item. It’s just a matter of making it the mayor’s priority to keep it funded and to keep them from reallocating the funds.

“This is getting a little repetitive, year after year after year.”

How Smart Is This Tampa Palms Kid? ‘Very Smart…Final Answer!’

John Barreto not only made it onto “Who Wants To Be A Millionaire” as part of the nationally syndicated game show’s “Whiz Kids Week,” he answered a handful of questions correctly and walked away with $20,000.

His most impressive feat, however, may have been keeping that a secret for more than six months.

“How did he do that?,’’ asks his mom, Jill. “How does a 12-year-old do that?”

John, a Tampa Palms resident and 7th grader at Corpus Christi School in Temple Terrace, was finally able to let the secret out last week, when the two episodes he was on — which were filmed in Stamford, CT, on Aug. 7 — aired locally on WTOG-TV Ch. 4 on Feb. 9-10.

When John walked into school the morning after his first appearance aired, he was greeted with an announcement and an ovation from his fellow students.

“Obviously I wanted (to win) a million dollars, but I didn’t have my mind set on any particular amount,’’ John says. “I just wanted to get on the show and have fun and have a good experience.”

His questions involved geophagy, palindromes and Thorium, yet John managed to make his way through to $20,000 by answering eight questions — with one assist from his lifeline, his dad Ron — and smartly avoided gambling on his last question.

Nattily dressed in red slacks, a blue blazer and a plaid bow tie, Barreto decided not to risk it all on his last, and trickiest, question: “There’s not a single United Nations’ member whose name begins with ‘X’ or which other letter?

His choices were J, Q, V and W.

John thought the question might be referring to the names of actual ambassadors representing their countries at the U.N., so he decided to go to his final lifeline, the crowd, and 52 percent chose “Q.” That wasn’t enough to convince John to risk his fortune, so he stopped there.

The audience, by the way, was wrong: it forgot about Qatar.

“I was kind of disappointed I had to stop,’’ John says. “But, when the audience was wrong (the answer was W), I was really excited about that. If it was Q, I would be kicking myself all the way back to Tampa.”

His mother, Jill, had hatched the plan for someone in the family to appear on the show, which once enjoyed massive popularity on the ABC-TV network and was picked by TV Guide as No. 6 on its list of the greatest 60 game shows of all time.

Jill says she was doing dishes and watching “Good Morning America” one morning and the host of “Millionaire,” Chris Harrison, was a guest. He mentioned that the show would be filming in Stamford, CT, in the summer. It just so happened that Jill was from Connecticut, and the family was going to be vacationing there while John was attending camp.

“My mom was like, we’ll be in Connecticut this summer, let’s see if they can get your dad or your sister on because they know a bunch of stupid facts,’’ John says, chuckling.

Since it was Whiz Kids Week, Dad was obviously ineligible, and Julia, a 15-year-old sophomore at the Academy of Holy Names, declined.

That left John, who began an arduous process with a 250-word poem on why he should be picked (“Info and facts seem to stick to my brain, my trivia skills are simply insane”). That led to a 30-second video, a 4-page application that involved taking pictures of all his awards and included his IQ (141 when he was last tested, in the second grade), and then an hour-long Skype interview with 42 more questions.

An aspiring magician with an in-progress jump shot he practices while playing on a basketball team at the New Tampa YMCA, John was picked as a finalist, along with 10 other kids, meaning that even if he didn’t get on the show he’d still get $1,000 a day with a chance to return within two years. And, he got to extend his summer vacation, which was supposed to end in July, for two extra weeks for the show’s August shooting.

“I told him that at the very worst, how many 12 year olds can say they made $1,000 in one day?,’’ Jill says.

While some of the kids didn’t even make it on the show, and others flamed out on one question, John also made a run at some big bucks.

“I think it was more nerve wracking leading up to it, rather than doing it,’’ John says. “I was worried, would I get on the show? Will I have a chance to win some money? Once I knew I was getting on the show, I wasn’t really scared anymore. I knew I couldn’t walk out of there with less money than I walked in with.”

John hasn’t received his check yet, but he plans on pocketing a little of it for fun, maybe indulge himself with some new magic tricks, and the rest he’d like to invest.

Here’s the other questions John faced on Millionaire. See how well you can do:

$500
Your dentist wouldn’t want you to know this, but according to WebMD, what do only about half of Americans do daily?
a. Breathe
b. Floss
c. Blink
d. Use the bathroom

$1000
The Declaration of Independence originally said, “We hold these truths to be sacred and undeniable,” before “sacred and undeniable” was changed to what?
a. Self-Evident
b. Probably True
c. Hopefully Accurate
d. Possibly Correct

$2000
Which element contains the name of the Marvel Comics superhero who also happens to be the Norse god of thunder?
a. Spidermanium
b. Thorium
c. Magneton
d. Praseodymihulk

$3,000
Which Beatles song has a value in its title that is equal to four cubed?
a. Eight Days a Week
b. Two of us
c. When I’m Sixty-Four
d. Revolution 9

$5,000
“Go practice geophagy” is a technical way of telling someone to “eat” what?
a. Their words
b. Their hat
c. Your shorts
d. Dirt

$7,000
For the 113,760 individual frames of the Disney Classic “101 Dalmations,” animators had to draw a total of how many Dalmation spots – about 57 per frame?
a. 48155
b. 309,400
c. 6,469,952
d. 978,157,554

$8,000
What British author named a villain in one of his most well-known books after his real-life boyhood friend Bob Fagin?
a. Kipling
b. Dickens
c. Tolstoy
d. Wells

$10,000
What phrase completes a famous palindrome that begins with “A man, a plan” and ends with “Panama”?
a. A canal
b. A harbor
c. A tower
d. A bridge

$20,000
In 2014, Dr. James Watson raised money for scientific research by auctioning off his Nobel Prize, which he won for discovering that DNA had what shape?
a. Double helix
b. Pascal triangle
c. Convex polygon
d. Cubic honeycomb

Answers: b, a, b, c, d, c, b, a, a.

Field To Fill Montelione’s District 7 City Council Seat Expanding

The list of those seeking to replace Lisa Montelione on the Tampa City Council continues to grow as two more potential candidates have declared that they will run for the seat she is vacating to challenge Shawn Harrison for the Florida House District 63 seat, bringing the total to three people who have expressed their interest in running for the seat to Neighborhood News.

As we reported in last issue’s News Briefs, Tampa Palms resident and local attorney Luis Viera had stated that he is exploring a run for the District 7 seat. Joining Viera in expressing their intent to run for Montelione’s seat when it becomes available are Cory Lake Isles Community Development District (CDD) chairman Dr. Cyril Spiro, M.D., M.B.A.; and Tampa Palms resident and La Gaceta (Tampa’s largest Spanish language newspaper) assistant editor Gene Siudut.

Since Montelione has filed to run for the state legislature, state law requires that she resign and vacate her council seat by June 10 of this year, according to Hillsborough Supervisor of Elections office spokesperson Gerri Kramer.

Although all three of the people who have expressed their interest in the seat so far are New Tampa residents, District 7 is actually a large and diverse area which runs north from Waters Ave. to County Line Rd., and includes Forest Hills, Terrace Park, New Tampa and the University of South Florida area.

Dr. Spiro, who has served on the Cory Lakes Isles CDD for nearly five years, is currently the Chief Medical Information Officer at HealthAxis, a Tampa healthcare information technology company that in 2013 bought M.D. Web Solutions — which Spiro founded in 2004.

Dr. Spiro also founded a not-for-profit organization, the Sunshine Board Cooperation, which is designed to make government more effective and transparent and facilitates cooperation between representatives and their constituents through open online workshops, or forums. The Cory Lakes Isles CDD has been an active user of the workshops to facilitate action.

Dr. Spiro also says that as a city council member, he would emphasize technology, particularly online communications between government officials and their constituents, to fight for what residents in an area really want and need.

“I very much believe in using technology for improving democracy,’’ Dr. Spiro says. “We have used (resident) survey systems in Cory Lakes Isles with great success. That’s very exciting to me. It’s something that I think can be carried across the country at all levels of government. It will make government more effective at doing what the people want.”

Dr. Spiro, who received his M.D. degree from the University of Maryland Medical School in Baltimore, has also developed Lotterease, software that is used in charter schools to manage their lottery systems, like at Terrace Community Middle School (TCMS) and Lutz Preparatory School and others.

He says he has worked with Montelione on previous issues, including helping with resident surveys in District 7.

“We did some surveys in North Park, between Busch Blvd. and Fowler Ave.,’’ he says. “There, the primary concern is crime. When you go north to New Tampa, it’s transportation. For each of those areas, you have to be aware of what those needs are. Oftentimes, the city will address needs of groups that make the most noise. I’d like to help identify with data and more evidence what’s really in need of most repair.”

Dr. Spiro has lived in New Tampa for 13 years, with his wife of 18 years, Laura. The couple has two children, Arden, 12, and Alenna, 14.

Siudut (pronounced Sue-Dit) grew up in New Jersey before moving to Florida in 1999, where he landed a job at La Gaceta, which is renowned for being the only trilingual (English, Spanish, Italian) publication in the U.S.

As an assistant to the editor and columnist for La Gaceta, Siudut says he has been active on the city’s political scene, as well in the community in and around Ybor City.

“I’m familiar with everyone on the (current) city council,’’ he says. “I feel it’s a job I can do.”

The longtime Ybor City resident, married two years ago to wife Keri and a newly-transplanted Tampa Palms resident, Siudut says the job requires a fighter who is willing to get in the ring for the New Tampa area’s fair share of the city’s budget dollars. He says he would fight for both New Tampa and the USF area.

“New Tampa needs to have a strong voice,’’ he says. “Whatever the issue, you have to keep fighting for those dollars.”

The 42-year-old is president of the Ybor City Lions Club, a Board member of the Ybor City Development Corporation (YCDC) Executive Committee and chair of the Ybor City Retail Arts and Special Events Committee, which operated with a $1.2-million budget.

“The focus of city government is downtown, and everyone has to fight for city dollars to get their fair share, so that’s a good stepping stone,’’ he says.

Siudut has served as vice-chair of the Hillsborough County Human Relations Board (the county’s anti-discrimination board), and has done volunteer work for The Cuban Club Foundation, Cigars For Soldiers and the Ybor Mural Project.

Siudut says he has a strong understanding of how city government works after watching it closely and interacting with the players for 17 years. He says that has helped sparked his own interest in serving. “I actually got the itch about five years ago,’’ he says, adding that he had initially planned to get into politics in 2019, at the end of Montelione’s current term. Her decision to leave the city council, however, expedited those plans.

“This is a window of opportunity,’’ Siudut says. “After 17 years working in Ybor City, I understand that number 1, the squeaky wheel gets the grease and number 2, you have to keep asking. No one is going to ask, ‘You know, I really wonder if Tampa Palms needs anything.’”

Hotels, another movie theater on the way for Wesley Chapel area

hyatt-place copy — A Hyatt Place-Wesley Chapel, like the one pictured above at the Tampa International Airport, is coming soon to the area.

Where there is room to grow, there appears to be rooms growing, as the areas around the Tampa Premium Outlets, the Shops of Wiregrass mall, Florida’s soon-to-be-largest ice skating facility, a potential indoor sports facility and a host of other new retail projects is helping spur the growth of hotels and much-needed hotel rooms along S.R. 56 in the Wesley Chapel area.

“We have five hotels moving through the permitting process,’’ Ed Caum, Pasco’s tourism manager says.

Impact Properties is the latest looking to grab some of the expected hospitality dollars, with plans to build a six-story, 130-room Hyatt Place-Wesley Chapel in the Cypress Creek Town Center Development of Regional Impact (DRI) on the west corner of S.R. 56 and Wesley Chapel Blvd., located at the east end of Sierra Center Rd.

According to its website, Impact’s properties include the 255-room Westin Tampa Bay on the Courtney Campbell Causeway and the Castillo Real Resort in St. Augustine, FL, as well as the Cypress Ridge Professional Center on Cypress Ridge Blvd. in Wesley Chapel.

The only hotel currently serving the S.R. 56 corridor is the Hampton Inn & Suites Tampa-Wesley Chapel off S.R. 56 (next to the under-construction Florida Hospital Center Ice {FHCI} facility), which has 94 guest rooms.

Overall, the county’s hotel occupancy rate is around 70 percent, said Caum.

“If we’re at 75 percent capacity, new development will happen,’’ he said. “That’s why we’re seeing the development.”

Caum said the average daily rate of a hotel room in Pasco County in December was $82.79, an increase from last year’s average of $78.29. In 2015, Pasco County reached a new “Bed Tax” high, collecting $968,263 between October 1, 2014 and September 31, 2015.

Here are the hotels on the way on and near S.R. 56:

• Brightwork Real Estate is planning to build a 100-room hotel at the northwest corner of S.R. 54 and Wesley Chapel Blvd. in Land O’Lakes, across from the Tampa Premium Outlets.

• A Holiday Inn Express & Suites will be built just east of I-75, west and south of the Florida Hospital Center Ice (FHCI) that is planned to open later this year. The Holiday Inn will have 80 rooms.

• A Hilton Garden Inn has been proposed for S.R. 56 and Silver Maple Pkwy. in the Wiregrass Ranch DRI, west of Bruce B. Downs (BBD) Blvd. The Hilton will be six stories tall and will have 125 rooms.

• A 92-room Fairfield Inn & Suites is expected to complement the potential indoor sports complex in the Wiregrass Ranch DRI, which we’ve reported about several times over the last year or so.

Caum said the Urban Land Institute, a 501(c) (3) nonprofit research and education organization that focuses on land use and real estate development, issued a report two years ago saying that Pasco would experience an annual growth in hotel rooms of about 75 a year through 2020. “And, we are bearing that out,’’ Caum says.

The reason for the growth is due in part, Caum says, to the county’s waiving of transportation fees for builders, saving them up to $100,000. “The incentive is definitely working,’’ he says.

Movie Theater To Be Part Of Wiregrass Mall Expansion

The Grove in Wesley Chapel has a movie theater, as does New Tampa.

Now, in between those two established theaters, a new multiplex is expected to be part of the next phase of development at the Shops of Wiregrass mall.

A 1,035-seat cinema is being planned by Cleveland-based developer Forest City Enterprises as part of a residential and commercial project to be located just east of the existing mall. Forest City is currently seeking permitting for the movie theater project, which does not yet have a name.

The 39,000-sq.-ft. theater will be on the west side of the new development along S.R. 56, which will also include 249 upscale apartments, four restaurants ranging in size from 4,200 sq. ft. to 12,000 sq. ft, a specialty grocery store (one of four coming to our area we told you about in our last issue), as well as other yet-unnamed retail stores.

Here We Go Again — Politicians To Debate Kinnan St./Mansfield Blvd. Link

The infamous and befuddling barricades (photo) blocking Mansfield Blvd. in Meadow Pointe from Kinnan St. in the K-Bar Ranch/Live Oak Preserve area of New Tampa continue to stand as the area’s most notorious roadblock. But, whereas the barricades themselves have had zero movement in years, that can no longer be said of talks to remove them.

Pasco County District 2 commissioner Mike Moore and Hillsborough County District 7 City Council member Lisa Montelione sat down for a conversation last month and the two have agreed to re-open discussions to resolve the long-standing Kinnan-Mansfield impasse.

“Lisa and I met and had a great conversation,’’ Moore said. “We agreed to sit down with both of our sides either the first or second week in March. Obviously, there’s a lot of work to get through, but we both agree we want to do what is best for the region and the citizens.”

Montelione placed tackling the Kinnan/Mansfield dilemma — which, if resolved, would give Wesley Chapel and New Tampa drivers an alternative north/south route to Bruce B. Downs (BBD) Blvd. (and the two-lane Morris Bridge Rd.) — on her list of things to do in 2016. She sent a letter, dated Jan. 21, to the Pasco County Board of County Commissioners (BCC) in the hopes of sparking a new debate.

Moore, however, already had agreed to meet with Montelione before the letter even arrived. He said his first priority has been seeing that the S.R. 56 extension was approved, but once that was settled, he was going to set his sights on Kinnan/Mansfield.

“There are a lot of people for (the Kinnan-Mansfield connection),’’ he said, “but a lot of people have concerns.”

Moore said he will be accompanied at the meeting by Pasco County administrator Michelle Baker, assistant county attorney David Goldstein and Ali Atefi, Pasco’s transportation engineer.

A Scary Situation…

In her letter to the Pasco BCC, Montelione laid out the human side of the City of Tampa’s case for removing the barricades. She wrote that in early November of 2015, K-Bar Ranch (located off Morris Bridge Rd. in New Tampa, just south of the Pasco line) resident Otto Schloeter was cooking lunch for his family when a pan caught fire and severely burned his arm.

The 9-1-1 call from a cell phone ended up going to a tower in Wesley Chapel. The Pasco County 9-1-1 Dispatch Center transferred the call to Hillsborough County Fire Dispatch, which then alerted the wrong Hillsborough County station — nearly 20 miles away — in Thonotasassa, when there are two Tampa Fire Rescue stations (Nos. 21 & especially 22, which is only a mile or so from Morris Bridge Rd.) on Cross Creek Blvd. that are both only a few minutes away from K-Bar.

Hillsborough County’s fire truck eventually made it to Schloeter’s, and called in a Tampa Fire Rescue ambulance.

Due to the confusion, it took nearly two hours to get an actual ambulance to Chloeter and get him from his home in New Tampa to the emergency room at Tampa General Hospital.

While Montelione suggests that more updated emergency responder technology be implemented near the border of New Tampa (which has both unincorporated Hillsborough and City of Tampa communities) and Wesley Chapel, she also says that the pathways that should be connecting counties and cities should be open and as easily accessible as possible.

If Kinnan St. and Mansfield Blvd. had been connected, Montelione wrote, Pasco County Emergency Service Station 26 in Meadow Pointe would have been recognized as the closest station:

“With the mutual aid agreement between our governments, I believe it is fair to say that the completion of this road could have prevented Mr. Schloeter from waiting 45 minutes for emergency responders.”

A similar argument was put forward in 2012 by John Thrasher, the CEO of Excel Music (located in the Cory Lake Isles Professional Center on Cross Creek Blvd.). Thrasher organized and submitted a petition with 61 signatures representing roughly 40 businesses on both sides on the county line, to the City of Tampa attorney’s office urging for the completion of the Kinnan/Mansfield connection.

“This is not only about commerce and convenience, but in an area of wildfires, sinkholes, floods and hurricanes, it is a matter of public safety to provide citizens with as many routes as possible in and out of an area,” Thrasher wrote.

The issue of connecting Kinnan St. to Mansfield Blvd has been mired in dispute since the 2,000-ft.-long roadway was paved north to the county line in 2007 by the developer of Live Oak Preserve in New Tampa.

In November of 2012, Goldstein reached out to the City of Tampa attorney’s office about Kinnan/Mansfield and laid out of a list of Pasco’s requirements — which included a commitment from the City and/or K-Bar to pay for traffic-calming improvements at the intersection of Mansfield Blvd. and Beardsley Dr. (which runs along the southern border of Meadow Pointe), as well as at Mansfield Blvd. and Wrencrest Dr. to the north, with a funding commitment by Pasco capped at no more than $500,000.

Those requirements were rejected by Julia Mandell, senior assistant attorney for the City of Tampa, in February of 2013.

Thrasher’s petition a month later also failed to bring about any action.

One of Pasco’s requirements from 2012, however, could be part of any new 2016 negotiations. Pasco asked for four lanes of right of way, or land on which to construct the “Beardsley Extension,” which would link Beardsley Dr. east to Morris Bridge Rd. and take some of the traffic pressure off Mansfield Blvd.

Montelione did not comment on the specifics of the Beardsley Dr. request from 2012, but is open to the extension if the two sides can agree to terms. She did say that it seems unlikely that a Kinnan/Mansfield agreement can be negotiated without the Beardsley Extension being a part of the deal.

Moore says that after years of failed attempts, though, he has hopes for success in 2016.

“I feel good about it,’’ he says.

bruce b. downs blvd. Cross Creek Blvd. hillsborough county k-bar ranch Kinnan Lisa Montelione Mansfield Mike Moore New Tampa