USF’s New Tampa Business Climate Study Begins With Packed Meeting

Compton Park at Tampa Palms was packed for the first “New Tampa Business Climate” meeting organized by Master’s degree candidates at USF, where (l.-r.) Hillsborough county commissioner Ken Hagan, Tampa city councilman Luis Viera & State Rep. Fentrice Driskell were among those on the panel. Photos by Andy Warrener & Ricky Rodriguez.

In order to begin a study by students in Master’s degree programs at the University of South Florida as to why so many businesses have exited New Tampa the last few years, USF helped organize a unique meeting on July 16, featuring a panel of elected officials and local business owners.

The meeting was Phase 1 of the USF group’s efforts to study New Tampa’s faltering business climate as the students endeavor to figure out what, if anything, can be done to stem the business red tide.

A panel that consisted of the director of the USF School of Public Affairs (where the Master’s degree candidates are studying) Ron Sanders, Rotary Cub of New Tampa past president Karen Frashier, Oliver’s Cycle Sports owner Randy Myhre and three local elected officials (see below) was greeted by a packed house of spectators (who were mainly New Tampa residents; see photo on next page) at the meeting, which was held at Compton Park in Tampa Palms.

Hillsborough County District 2 commissioner Ken Hagan, District 7 Tampa City Council member Luis Viera and newly elected District 63 State Rep. Fentrice Driskell agreed to be on the panel because all of them share concerns about why major companies and mom-and-pop businesses alike are having so much trouble surviving, much less thriving, in zip code 33647. 

Sanders said that the study is being conducted by USF students seeking their Master of Public Administration (MPA) degrees in either Urban & Regional Planning or Public Affairs, after then-mayoral candidate (now Tampa Mayor) Jane Castor campaigned in New Tampa.

Castor said many local residents asked her why the business climate in zip code 33647 seemed so poor, especially when compared with the booming economy in Wesley Chapel, just to New Tampa’s north, on Bruce B. Downs (BBD) Blvd. and S.R. 56. 

One of those Castor was talking to just happened to be Sam Becker, a graduate assistant in the School of Public Affairs, and she asked Becker to look into what, if anything, USF could do to help her figure out what could be done to help New Tampa’s businesses. By the time Castor was elected in March, the wheels were already in motion.

“This meeting is the kickoff to Phase 1 of the study — to meet with the community,” Sanders said at the meeting. “Phase 2 will be individual interviews with community staples — elected officials, business owners and residents — such as those in this room. In Phase 3, the students will look at the literature (facts and figures) and the (business) practices going on in the area. For example, is (New Tampa’s situation) just part of a national phenomenon or are there local factors” causing our area’s economic gloom (or both)?

Although Hagan, Viera and Driskell all agreed that the meeting was important, there didn’t seem to be too much help for the USF students coming out of this first get-together.

Among the factors pointed to as to why so many businesses have closed in New Tampa were the high rents, the lack of tax incentives to open major businesses, and even some things brought up by Frashier and Myhre.

Frashier, who also is the co-chair of the Taste of New Tampa & Wesley Chapel, mentioned that New Tampa doesn’t have a large enough gathering place for major events, such as the Wiregrass Wobble 5K road race her club hosts (at the Shops at Wiregrass) every year on Thanksgiving morning, or the Taste (held at AdventHealth CenterIce), “So, we have no choice but to put on these events in Wesley Chapel.”

Hagan and Viera both touted the new Village at Hunter’s Lake development that will be home to a 20,000-sq.-ft. New Tampa Cultural Center, as well as several unique restaurants and retailers (as we reported last issue), but that those are all coming online in 2020 or even 2021.   

Myhre said he thinks that bicycle paths connecting the subdivisions in New Tampa would make getting to and from local businesses easier, without having to drive a car, but Hagan said, “Connecting communities is great, but have you seen how hard it is to get even one road connected between communities?” — an obvious jab at the whole Kinnan St.-Mansfield Blvd. flap between Hillsborough and Pasco counties.

Residents at the meeting also brought up how long the widening of BBD in New Tampa took, which affected local businesses, while one noted that S.R. 56, where so much of Wesley Chapel’s growth is taking place, currently has very few residences directly off of it. No one came up with any reason why this helped or how it has affected the economy in the Wesley Chapel.

For New Tampa’s businesses, the hope is that more answers will come out of Phases 2 & 3 of the study.

Freedom Sophomore Qualifies For Olympic Trials!

Freedom sophomore Michelle Morgan is congratulated by swimmers from other clubs after posting a time that qualified her to compete at next year’s Olympic Trials (Photo courtesy of Rene Piper)

Michelle Morgan started swimming competitively when she was 7.

By the time she was 8, she knew she wanted to go to the Olympics.

Now, at the age of 14, the Freedom sophomore will get her chance.

Morgan, one of the top distance swimmers in Florida and a member of the Pipeline Swimming Club that trains at Tampa Palms Golf & Country Club, last month became the first swimmer in the Tampa Bay area to qualify for the 2020 U.S. Olympic Trials, making the cut in her marquee event, the 400-meter Individual Medley.

At a meet in Orlando, the New Tampa resident swam the 400 IM in 4 minutes, 51.42 seconds, just under the Trials cutoff of 4:51.79.

“It was pretty exciting,” said Morgan, who will be one of the youngest competitors at next year’s Olympic Trials, which will be held in June in Omaha, NE. Only the top two finishers in each event at the trials make the U.S. Olympic team.

Morgan, the top-rated mile swimmer in the country in her age group, said she expected to make the cut at some point this year, but still didn’t believe it when she touched the wall and looked up at her time. Swimmers from a number of other clubs were there to congratulate her as she exited the pool.

“When she hit the time, my wife went crazy and a whole bunch of families around us went crazy,” said Glynn Morgan, Michelle’s father. “It was exciting for her. We knew at some point this was coming, but it’s nice that she won’t have to chase it from meet to meet frantically trying to qualify.”

She is not done yet, however. Morgan missed the trials cut in the 800m freestyle at the same event in Orlando by less than half a second, swimming her race in 8:48.50; the cut is 8:48.08, a time Morgan seems poised to better.

Pipeline coach Rene Piper thinks Morgan also has a chance to make the Olympic Trials cut in the 200 IM, the 400 and 1,500 freestyle and the 200 butterfly, although the coach admits the last event is not Morgan’s favorite.

Morgan could eventually have some local company at the trials — Piper says fellow Pipeline member Carly Joerin, also a sophomore at Freedom, has an outside chance of posting a qualifying time between now and June 2020.

Setting aside the long odds of making any Olympic team, just making it to the trials is an impressive milestone. 

There are roughly 400,000 swimmers registered with USA Swimming. At the 2016 trials, there was an average of 120 swimmers per event.

In the 400 IM qualifying races, there were 125 swimmers. Morgan’s time would put her in the top 30 of that group.

A daunting challenge, to be sure, but Morgan is the complete package, Piper says. She’ll have her choice of colleges next year when coaches are allowed to begin recruiting her, and her ceiling appears to be unlimited.

“She’s super smart academically, a super great student, and has a high swimming IQ, too,” Piper says. “Her focus is just incredible, and she is determined.”

Piper also says that Morgan’s work ethic is unmatched, and she never misses a practice. The one time she was late, everyone was so surprised and worried they couldn’t start the practice until she got there. Piper jokes that they have a saying at the club: “If Michelle isn’t at practice, she’s dead.”

Morgan, who finished third at the Florida Class 3A State championships last year as a freshman in the 200 IM and the 500 free, is currently chasing more Olympic trial cuts — particularly in the 800 free — at the 2019 Speedo Junior National Championships in Stanford, CA — her first big national meet.

“I’m just trying to see how good I can do in my other events,” Morgan says. “I’m trying not to jump ahead too far.”

That could be tough, with the Olympic Trials on the schedule. While the 2024 games in Paris, when Morgan will be 19, may be a more realistic goal, the experience next year will be a big boost to the promising young swimmer.

“It’s so tough to make the Olympic team,” Piper said. “But, we have already made the hotel reservations, and I am so excited for her to go and experience this. It will be great.”

Garbage Collection Point Of Contention

Hillsborough County will be entertaining waste management options that will possibly reduce garbage pickup in New Tampa’s city and county communities from two days per week to only one.

That stinks, say many.

“I have not talked to one person that likes this idea,” says Mike Jacobson, the president of the Pebble Creek Homeowners Association. â€śI can’t even believe they’re considering it.”

Hillsborough County solid waste director Kim Byer says the decision isn’t based on how much trash is collected or how many residents actually leave their bins out on both days of pickups, but is purely a financial one that could produce savings for the county of up to 30 percent.

If those savings were significant, they could be passed on to customers, Byer says.

Currently, three companies —Republic Services of Florida, Waste Connections and Waste Management — together handle a $188-million contract to collect garbage, recyclables and yard clippings in Hillsborough County.

The County Commission will review new proposals this fall, and will vote on contractors for a new contract  sometime before the end of November (which would go into effect in September 2020, Byer says).

“We say it’s the same garbage, just being picked up one day versus two,” she says.

Part of the process will include the results of an online poll that ended on August 5, which asked participants what they wanted from their waste management services. 

More than 13,000 people had taken part in the survey at our press time. Byer says the majority were opposed to cutting weekly trash pickups in half.

District 2 County Commissioner Ken Hagan, who represents the New Tampa area, says it is far more than a majority of residents who are opposed, according to the emails his office has received.

“It’s 98 percent, maybe 99 percent, in support of maintaining twice a week pickups,” Hagan says, adding that he is not in favor of any options that include only once-a-week pickups.

“While once a week collection is definitely  cheaper,” Hagan says, â€śI certainly do not believe it’s in the best interest of our residents and our neighborhoods.”

Because New Tampa is so community-oriented, with Homeowners Associations requiring that trash bins be kept from public view, meaning most likely in your garage.

And, with Florida’s blistering heat, the idea of trash being stored in those conditions for seven days isn’t appealing to most people.

“The concern I have is with no makeup day, and with the disproportionate number of (pickup) days falling on Mondays which are holidays, you could go 2-3 weeks between trash pickups,” says Scott Darby, the Arbor Greene HOA president.

Darby is so concerned that he says he has reached out to all seven commissioners, and only one response — from Hagan — has reflected steadfast opposition. He fears the decision already has been made.

Hagan is more positive, having been through this process three times.

“We’ll look at various proposals,” Hagan says, â€śand at the end of day, I’m confident we’ll remain with twice-a-week pickup.”

An Update On Our Distribution & The Latest About NeighborhoodNewsOnline.net

Over the course of the past several months, we’ve received quite a few calls from long-time, avid readers who said they’ve always received the Neighborhood News in their mailboxes in the past, but suddenly stopped receiving them.

As the guy who has to write the checks to the post office to mail our publications in both of our markets to every residence and business in every postal carrier route we serve, I knew I had to investigate.

But somehow, even though I first started taking a look at our recent distribution numbers when we received the first phone call, I’ll admit that other things always seemed to take precedence — e.g., I got married in March, celebrated my 25 years of Neighborhood News in April and have been redoubling my efforts to use the funding we have received from the Google News Initiative to continue to expand our video and online content.

Towards that end, we also recently finally changed our website’s address — to NeighborhoodNewsOnline.net (see below) — and our primary YouTube channel is now “Neighborhood News Online,” instead of the old WCNT-tv.

In other words, we’ve been busy, but not too busy for me to finally sit down with the online Every Door Direct Mail service offered through the U.S. Postal Service (USPS.com) and figure out how people who always got our publications — especially the Wesley Chapel edition — suddenly stopped receiving it.

I also had another hint that something was up because our distribution number in fast-growing Wesley Chapel had actually gone  down since late 2018 — even though we were still paying to mail to every home and every business in all of our carrier routes.

Just as an explanation, our communities are all on what the post office calls “rural” (and a few “contract”) carrier routes, where we don’t have to address each individual piece that gets mailed, as you have to do with “city” carrier routes, like in South Tampa. All of our large, master-planned communities have multiple carrier routes serving them, and we always try to make sure we distribute to all of the carrier routes serving all of the largest (and some of the smaller) communities in zip codes 33543, 33544 & 33545.

The problem is that Wesley Chapel continues to grow so fast that even we — and the post office (like your GPS, right?) — have had trouble keeping up with all of that growth.

What happens is that when a new community — like, says, Estancia at Wiregrass or Epperson — first starts building, the USPS simply adds those homes to an existing carrier route, usually a route that is geographically near the new development.

But, once that community reaches a certain threshhold, the post office will usually create a new carrier route, with all of that new community’s homes and businesses. And no, the USPS doesn’t tell us when they take this type of action — it’s up to us to update our count every 30 to no more than 90 days.

In the case of Wesley Chapel, several hundred addresses were taken off a few existing carrier routes to create new routes. If we didn’t immediately add those new routes, not only did those new communities not receive our editions, there were even some older, more established communities (like WaterGrass) that may have been taken off one route and added to one of the new routes, to “fill them out” with more “drops” for the carriers handling those new routes.

So, after I did my research, I found that in late 2018, the carrier routes we delivered to included more than 23,000 “drops” total. As of April of this year, however, those same carrier routes had closer to 22,000 total drops. I knew that there had to be new routes that absorbed some of the drops from our existing routes, but it took me a while to figure out which routes I had to add in order to serve all of the homes and businesses in all of the communities we choose to send issues to by direct mail.

So, welcome back all of Epperson, all of WaterGrass, all of the homes in Wiregrass, and welcome Union Park and a couple of the newer sections of Meadow Pointe. In all, our new all-direct-mail distribution in Wesley Chapel is now more than 25,400 residences and businesses (and nearly 60,000 people) — and we might still add one or two more routes to that total. 

So, go ahead — ask any other local publisher how many homes and businesses receive their publications in the mail — and ask to see their postal receipts. I’ll gladly share mine if they share theirs with you.  

NeighborhoodNewsOnline.net    

As I mentioned earlier, we have now officially changed over our website to NeighborhoodNewsOnline.net. If you’ve already been visiting our website to keep up on all of the latest local news of New Tampa and Wesley Chapel — with new news stories added every weekday — you can still find us at our old web address, but now, you will be redirected to our new site.

However, if you’ve normally been accessing our website through our “Neighborhood News” Facebook page, the change to the new web address won’t affect you at all. 

Whether you’re trying to watch one of our ever-increasing stockpile of new videos or just want to read a story that may or may not have appeared in your print edition of the Neighborhood News, you can still click through to our new website from any of our Facebook posts.

We also recently changed over our YouTube channel from the former WCNT-tv (Wesley Chapel & New Tampa Television) to “Neighborhood News Online” on YouTube and yes, our videos continue to attract a lot of attention — and we are still adding more advertisers buying our Video & Online Subscriptions.

I will update you about our impressive viewership stats next issue. For more info about Neighborhood News print and Video/Online advertising, call (813) 910-2575! 

Wesley Chapel School Grades

Once again, every school in Wesley Chapel but one received either an A or B grade from the state, including John Long Middle School (an A school for the 13th consecutive year, and Sand Pine Elementary (an A school for the 19th time in 21 years). Also, Wiregrass Elem. earned its first-ever A & the Union Park Academy charter school has received an A after its first full school year.