So, now that we’re officially part of the Google News Initiative — one of only 23 U.S. companies to receive financial support for their news operations from the world’s largest tech company — a lot of people have been asking me what to expect in terms of our promised new formats and new online programming.
Some of what we’ll be doing with Google’s funding — in addition to making major changes to all of our online content (more on this below) — will be business as usual, there will just be more frequent releases.
We will still have News Desks with yours truly and former Bay News 9 reporter Susanna Martinez. I also will continue to provide Neighborhood Dining News and Entertainment segments. We’ll also have more North Tampa Bay Chamber (NTBC) Featured Business segments with our Featured Business host Mollyana Ward (see top right photo), as well as occasional news updates from the Chamber itself. For example, Mollyana recently interviewed Chamber president & CEO Hope Allen (photo below) and those segments have been getting a lot of views, both on YouTube and on Facebook.
But, we’re also working on a lot of new stuff, too, like the recently posted fun new segment featuring Jennifer Ames, the administrator of the Wesley Chapel Community Facebook page, which has more than 16,000 members. This is our first effort to tap into the power of local online resources outside of our own website (NTNeighborhoodNews.com), “Neighborhood News” Facebook page and our WCNT-tv YouTube channel.
Jennifer’s first segments have just been released and I think you’ll really enjoy them. Her personality is a big part of why the Wesley Chapel Community Facebook page is so popular and it definitely shines through in her first interview with me in front of the camera. Jen’s “Chappie Chatter” segments will be a light-hearted look at what’s been “blowing up” her Facebook page and I’ll be really surprised if Neighborhood News readers and Wesley Chapel & New Tampa Television viewers alike don’t love the “Chatter.”
Our senior video producer Gavin Olsen and I also have released the full video of each of our recent interviews on our WCNT-tv YouTube channel and then cut the videos into individual segments for release on Facebook, Instagram and our current website.
One thing we really want you to do is subscribe to our YouTube channel and start watching the full-length videos there.
As for our other programming ideas, we’re keeping them under wraps for now, but you can expect several more announcements about those new video/online segments in these pages very soon.
25 Years, Eh?
Yes, on February 25, 2019, yours truly will celebrate 25 years as the owner, publisher and editor of the Neighborhood News. Milestone or no milestone, I recognize that the state of the print business is changing and (even though “niche” publications like ours are the ones people will still read today), the fact is that if we don’t change some of the ways we do things, we could go the way of not only the dinosaur, but also of daily newspapers and general interest magazines around the country.
As I touched on in my last page 3 editorial, a big part of the changes to come this year is that all of our videos, “Neighborhood News” Facebook posts and our news magazine’s website will soon fall under one new umbrella — NeighborhoodNewsOnline.net, the “Online Network Serving New Tampa & Wesley Chapel.”
The new website currently only has a basic landing page, but we hope to roll it out in full to coincide with my 25th anniversary at the helm of Neighborhood News next month.
Tennis players Kanishkh Ramesh and Destiny Okungbowa (left) and soccer players Jake Bierhorst and Malcom Lewis (right) flank their coach, Dave Wilson (center).
Tampa Bay is littered with high school coaches who have built sports dynasties, at places like Plant and Armwood for football, Tampa Jesuit for baseball and St. Petersburg Lakewood for basketball.
Rare, however, is the coach who not only builds one dynasty, but simultaneously builds two.
In fact, the only boys soccer and tennis coach Wiregrass Ranch High (WRH) has ever known, Dave Wilson, may be in a class by himself, especially in Pasco County.
Wilson, who also is the school’s athletic director, has guided the boys soccer team to the state playoffs this season and the Bulls haven’t dropped a regular season game to a Pasco County opponent since January of 2013, a streak of 50 games. That run includes five trips to the Regional playoffs, including a State semifinal appearance in 2015.
Last month, Wilson’s Bulls beat Steinbrenner 2-0 for the 200th win of his career.
Meanwhile, the tennis team, which opened its season Feb. 12 against Cypress Creek, has been even better. The Bulls are currently on a 125-match regular-season winning streak, including 96 straight wins against Pasco County competition since a loss to Land O’Lakes in 2010. That run includes State championships in 2014 and 2015, as well as a runner-up finish in 2017.
Kanishkh Ramesh (and his brother) have been a part of the Bulls long winning streak.
When it comes to playing its local competition, the taste of defeat is an unfamiliar one for Wilson.
“I think about it, but I don’t think our guys think about it all that much,” Wilson says with a chuckle, adding, “except for the fact that I don’t think they want to be the team that has that first loss to a Pasco opponent.”
An Athletic Background
Wilson is a Falls State, NY, native, who grew up as a multi-sport athlete and attended the State University of New York (SUNY) College at Cortland (aka Cortland State) in Cortland, NY, where he was a regional All-American soccer player, played basketball and competed for the track team in the triple jump.
Competition has always been a part of Coach Wilson’s life. But coaching? He says that is, and always has been, where his true passion has burned.
“I never wanted to do anything other than coaching,” Wilson says. “My brothers both took great jobs and make lots of money, but that was never a draw for me.”
He adds, with a chuckle: “Don’t get me wrong, I’d love to be rich and everything. But, I enjoy every day of my life, coming to practice and going to the games. When you’ve been an athlete all your life, and you still get to wake up in the morning and say, ‘Alright, it’s game day,’ there is nothing better than that.”
Wilson, 54, got his first coaching experience as a senior in college, when he joined the Tompkins Cortland Community College (in Tompkins, NY) basketball staff as an assistant, he moved from there to SUNY Binghamton (in Binghamton, NY) where he was the head women’s basketball and soccer coach for 10 years, before moving to Florida to serve as the head women’s basketball coach at Saint Leo University outside of Dade City beginning in 1999.
However, after a few years at Saint Leo, with a wife and young children, the travel for games, long hours and recruiting trips started to wear on Wilson.
He knew he wanted to make a change, so he stepped down from coaching at Saint Leo in 2002 and spent four years as an elementary school physical education teacher. The itch to coach competitively, though, never went away, and when WRH opened in 2006, he jumped at the chance to get back into coaching.
For someone who sees coaching as a calling, there can be no bigger challenge than launching a program, building a tradition and finding success. Wilson got that chance when he took the job as both the boys soccer and boys tennis coach at the new school.
And success? That has not been a problem for Wilson and his team at WRH. He says that winning never gets old.
In the Bulls’ dramatic 3-2 District 5A-7 semifinal win Jan. 30 against second-seeded Plant, Wilson got caught up in the celebration after Justin Amis scored the winning goal with roughly 30 seconds remaining.
“I think I hurt my ribs,” he said, laughing. “I’m getting old.”
The next night, the Bulls gave Wilson his first district title since 2015 with a 1-0 overtime win over No. 1-seed Steinbrenner. The Bulls eventually bowed out of the state playoffs this season in the second round.
Off The Field Success, Too
Success for Wilson isn’t just what happens on the field — it comes in the legacy of a program, its growth, its traditions. The biggest point of pride, according to Wilson, is seeing those early players return to give back to their former programs, while his current players buy into the athletic culture they are helping to shape.
“The continuity of our program and the consistency started with the first group, that group being around for four years, set the bar,” Wilson says. “They started coming back after they graduated for summer stuff and supported the guys they left behind.”
“That’s so important having those players come back and let the younger guys know what this time here meant to them. Letting them know that the memories they had of high school (athletics) was the most fun they had and that’s trickled down. Every group after them has tried to raise the bar another level.”
(l.-r.) Devi Ndrita, Jori Ndrita, Malcom Lewis, Maurice Lewis, Camilo Torres and JP Torres pose with the District Championship trophy the Bulls won on Jan. 31. It was the school’s first district title since 2015, a team Devi, Maurice and JP all played on. (Photo courtesy of The Wiregrass Ranch Stampede school newspaper.)
Chris Madden, a member of Wilson’s first soccer team at WRH in 2006 and the current Competition & Development Director for the United Soccer League, remembers the first year of soccer at the school, playing without a senior class, and the struggles that squad had to overcome. Even then, Madden noted, the players knew Wilson was preparing them for successes ahead.
“We had a rough go that first year, but Coach Wilson, in all the years I played for him, always instilled a desire to be our best,” Madden says. “I think that is rare these days. I think he really understood the desires of young players and how to make them want to play and become better players.”
Four years later, the Bulls soccer team won 18 games, finished as the District runner-up and made the program’s first state series appearance.
For Madden, it was Wilson’s dedication to the kind of people his players would become, that shines over their successes on the field or courts. That, he says, is what has brought him back to his alma mater for the last 10 years to help out as an assistant coach for the Bulls.
“Getting to coach with him for about the last 10 years has been really important to me, because if I were to give credit to someone for helping me in my career in soccer today, I’d credit Coach Wilson, for sure,” Madden says. “You can tell he cares about you off the field, and when you are looking for someone to be that mentor, that’s very important. He made us want to play for him.”
Wilson’s third “coaching” job at Wiregrass Ranch comes as the school’s athletic director, and he approaches that position the same way he does his role as leader to his student-athletes.
“My belief, and what I preach to all of our other coaches here at Wiregrass Ranch, is that the experience has to outweigh the outcome,” Wilson says. “You can win a state title, but if you are being screamed at and made miserable the whole time, then it’s really not worth doing. We really focus on things so when these kids look back on their high school athletics in 10 years, this really was the best time of their lives.”
After being removed from the Long Range Transportation Plan (LRTP) during the economic downturn in 2008, the widening of Old Pasco Rd. will be getting a fresh look.
The county’s Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) voted unanimously last month to put the idea of widening the two-lane road back on Pasco’s LRTP.
While still a long way from any concrete design and plans, transportation projects can only be funded if they are on the LRTP, so it’s a start.
“Now, we can figure out how to get it funded, what it might cost and look at a newer study of the road,” said Pasco Commissioner Mike Moore, who represents District 2, which includes most of Wesley Chapel.
Moore says he has been pushing for an examination of Old Pasco Rd. for the past two years.
Old Pasco Rd. is no longer simply a minor roadway that winds through a sleepy part of Wesley Chapel from S.R. 54, past Overpass Rd., into San Antonio, and all the way to S.R. 52. Instead, it is evolving into is a main arterial roadway that goes by the new Cypress Creek High Middle/High School and future performing arts center, new housing developments and a soon-to-be-built business park.
“I personally feel it’s a priority to get it done,” Moore says. “It’s a pretty skinny road the way it is, and with a new school and additional homes, I have concerns about the traffic and the safety of those who live and drive in that area.”
It was during the summer of 2018 that Moore and District 1 Commissioner Ron Oakley ignited the debate, following the re-zoning request that cleared the way for 2,250,000 sq. ft. of office and light industrial entitlements to be built on roughly 91 acres of land on the east side of Old Pasco Rd., just south of Overpass Rd., near Cypress Creek Middle/High.
With plans already underway to widen Overpass Rd. and the addition of a new intersection with I-75, more traffic on Old Pasco Rd. — including big trucks coming to and from the Overpass Business Park, as it will be called — is a certainty.
Coming Soon: More Traffic
While portions of Old Pasco Rd. will be widened during the construction of the soon-to-be-built Overpass Rd./I-75 intersection, Moore would like to see a plan to widen Old Pasco Rd. all the way from S.R. 52 to S.R. 54.
He says he knows it will be expensive, but adds that the area is quickly growing. In addition to the school, there are 400 new homes approved for construction in Quail Hollow, and a 264-unit Arbours at Saddle Oaks residential development at the intersection of Old Pasco Rd. and Country Club Rd.
Commissioner Moore says he has met with local residents on a number of occasions over the past two years, and says a large majority of the people he’s spoken with want to see the road widened. But they want it done right — with a median and sidewalks and bike paths, all things that make it safer for pedestrians and vehicles.
“They want it done right,” Moore says, “and I agree.”
HDR Engineering, Inc., is currently conducting a road safety audit (RSA) and study for Old Pasco Rd., to determine if there is a need for the widening. That study is looking at the Old Pasco Rd. intersections with S.R. 54, Post Oak Blvd., Foamflower Blvd., Dayflower Blvd., Country Club Rd., Bonnie Blue Dr., Deedra Dr., Sonny Dr., Lindenhurst Dr., and Overpass Rd.
It will be years before the project comes to fruition, and the amount of right-of-way land that would need to be purchased will make it an expensive endeavor.
“It won’t be easy,” Moore admits, “but I really think it needs to get done.”
A mock-up of a proposed indoor athletic facility for Wesley Chapel District Park from 2004.
Plans to build a $3-million indoor athletic facility at the Wesley Chapel District Park (WCDP) are moving forward, following some heated debate at the Jan. 22 Pasco Board of County Commissioners (BOC) meeting about whether or not the commissioners should delay it.
At the BOC meeting, where commissioners were expected to approve the choice of the construction company tabbed by county staff to build the facility, District 4 commissioner Mike Wells seemed put off by the lack of notes by evaluation committee members in the committee’s final recommendation of Wannemacher Jensen Architects.
Comm. Wells said he wanted to see the notes the staffers took to make their final decision, which was unanimous. And, because those notes weren’t available, he suggested, “that all of the proposals be rejected and that the project be re-solicited.”
Requiring that every company that submitted bids and presentations do so again would delay the project by as much as six months.
The Consent Agenda is usually a list of items that the county staff has recommended for BOC approval. Sometimes, but rarely, items are pulled from the Agenda to correct a mistake, or to be debated. Wells pulled the Wesley Chapel facility item from the Consent Agenda, something he said he has done only one other time in his career as a commissioner.
“It’d be nice to be able to go back and look at the notes,” Wells said.
County purchasing director Stacy Ziegler told the BOC that proper procedure was followed during the selection process, and that tapes of those meetings are public.
“We followed a process that we have been following for the last six months, since we updated our purchasing manual,” Ziegler said. “We feel we’ve done our due diligence and our recommendation should stand.”
Wells, as well as District 5 Commissioner Jack Mariano — who originally seconded Wells’ motion to reject the selection — seemed miffed that Spring Engineering, Inc., wasn’t chosen.
Spring Engineering and its CEO, Richard Bekesh, each donated $1,000 to Wells’ reelection campaign in 2017.
Located in Holiday, FL, Spring Engineering was ranked as the seventh choice out of nine by the county’s evaluation committee, which was made up of assistant county administrator Erik Breitenbach, director of facilities management Andrew Baxter, chief project manager of the facilities management department TJ Pyche, director of parks, recreation & natural resources Keith Wiley and Brian Taylor, the manager of parks, recreation and natural resources.
Comm. Mariano said the county should be pushing local companies, and he had a problem with Spring Engineering, a local company, not making the top two, even though he did not attend any of the evaluation meetings. In fact, he and Wells both hinted at including county commissioners on the evaluation committees in the future, and later Mariano even suggested the companies should re-present to the commission.
Mike Moore, the commissioner for District 2, which includes most of Wesley Chapel, was visibly frustrated by Wells’ maneuverings, and argued that redoing the entire process would be a waste of time, and unfair to the companies bidding — as well as to the Wesley Chapel residents awaiting the new facility.
“If you go through the whole process and they write comments down and the results are exactly the same, then what?,” Moore asked.
Moore has been a proponent of building the indoor facility at WCDP, where the Wesley Chapel Athletic Association runs youth leagues in a variety of sports. The WCAA’s basketball leagues are currently held on outdoor courts, a less-than-ideal setting considering Florida’s hot and often rainy climate.
An indoor gymnasium would allow the basketball leagues to be played indoors. It also would create an opportunity for gymnastics and volleyball leagues to be played, as well as adult recreation sports like pickleball.
The 13,000-sq.-ft. recreation center would also have meeting rooms and offer local residents a place to gather for meetings, exercise classes and parties.
Moore said he thinks more than 1,000 local athletes and residents will be impacted by the facility.
“There are a lot of people waiting for this to be done,” Moore told his fellow commissioners. “They need this to happen on the timeline we said it was going to happen.”
The idea for an indoor facility at the WCDP, which is currently just a collection of lacrosse, soccer, baseball and softball fields, with outdoor basketball courts and three tennis courts, has been bandied about since 2005, but the money hasn’t been available to build it.
The county has allocated $2.5-million towards the project, which comes from developer impact fees, Moore said, and could be completed by summer 2020.
Last October, the county officially solicited bids for the project, reaching out to 551 vendors via email, including 34 from Pasco County. Nine responses were received, and Spring Engineering was the lone bidder from the county.
On Nov. 29, the evaluation committee independently scored the proposals, settling on a final four of two firms from St. Petersburg and two from Tampa. On Jan. 3, the remaining firms gave presentations to the committee, and all five members ranked Wannemacher Jensen Architects, Inc., of St. Petersburg, No. 1.
Harvard Jolly, Inc., also based in St. Petersburg, was named No. 2 by four of the five committee members.
Wells seemed perturbed that there was a wide difference in rating points between some of the firms during the process, seeming to suggest that those results somehow made the process flawed. Mariano hinted at some sort of bias. Spring Engineering, for example, was scored an 82 by one committee member, but only 46 by two others.
“This is about picking the most qualified person, and I don’t think we did that,” Wells said.
Following the debate, Wells again motioned for the recommendation to be rejected, but Mariano declined to second it and it passed 4-1.
The Pebble Creek Golf Club has been a part of the landscape in New Tampa for more than 50 years, but it appears that the golf course will be sold and replaced with more residential units. (Photo: John C. Cotey)
The rumored sale of the Pebble Creek Golf Club (PCGC) is, to use golfing vernacular, like a perfect approach to the green that stops a few inches short of the cup.
Now, interested developers are deciding whether or not they want to tap the ball into the cup.
Bill Place, the owner of PCGC since 2005, has confirmed that a purchaser for his 149-acre property has been identified, but says that there has been no sale yet.
“Completely wrong,” Place says of the rumors that the club had been sold.
But, it now appears the sale of New Tampa’s first golf course (it opened in 1967) may be just a matter of time.
The interested party, who offered the highest price among what Place says were eight interested developers, is currently going through a 90-day inspection process to help evaluate whether or not it wants to finalize its purchase.
That included meeting with Pebble Creek residents last week, as well as studying zoning issues and exactly how many units — whether apartments, condos or homes — can be built on the property.
“As I understand it, the company we chose has done this in a lot of places and works with the community,” Place says. “It’s not a company that comes in and just blasts away.”
Even if the sale is finalized, Place says that the rezoning process and securing government approval and permits likely will be an 18- to 24-month process.
“It’s safe to say we won’t be going away before then,” says Place, who along with wife Su Lee, owns the company, Ace Golf, that owns PCGC and three other Tampa Bay-area golf courses.
Place did not identify the potential buyers, or how much the offer was on the property.
As For The Community…
Mike Jacobson, the president of the Pebble Creek Homeowners Association, says he has been fielding questions about the potential sale since the rumors began swirling late last year.
“I put something on our web page that basically says Bill Place told me he has multiple bids and is actively planning on selling it,” he says. “Right now, we don’t know who the company is.”
Jacobson says not a single resident he has talked to is happy about the impending sale. He expected residents to make their voices heard when the rezoning comes before the Hillsborough County Commission.
“There’s so many great lakes on that property, there’s no way we’re going to allow those to go away,” Jacobson said. “The other thing I’m concerned about is lacking the infrastructure to handle more homes. Nobody is really looking at this as a positive.”
According to Place, the property already has underlying zoning permitting 600 new units, but he adds that, “there is no way they are going to put that many units on it.”
In September, the PCGC property was listed on the website of land brokers Cushman & Wakefield. The listing boosted the property by heralding its 12 existing lakes, homes in Pebble Creek that are selling “in the mid-$200,000s to upper-$300,000s,” an average household income within a three-mile radius of $106,179 and the 3,189,266 square feet of retail within a three-mile radius of the semi-private golf course.
The detailed listing, which Place denied ever approving, included a marketing flyer, water and sewage map, a zoning site plan, Pebble Creek’s declaration of covenants and restrictions (dated Sept. 2, 1986) and a unit count calculation that said 840 apartment and townhome units were potentially feasible to replace the golf course.
That’s about when Jacobson began hearing from residents, and he called Place for an explanation.
“What he told me was that someone reached out to him about selling it,” Jacobson says. “But, if bids come in and offers come in, he said, ‘I’m going to take it.’ I guess the company took that as an initiative to (list).”
Place has acknowledged that business has not been good at the golf course, which was designed by Bill Amick and offers 6,436 yards of play from the blue tees. He said revenues at the club were down in 2018 by a third, and profits were down by 50 percent.
The construction on Bruce B. Downs (BBD) Blvd. certainly didn’t help, but many golf courses in general are in an economic slump.
Pebble Creek Golf Club owner Bill Place says that Mulligans Irish Pub inside the golf course’s recently renovated clubhouse is the club’s only money-maker.
Place also said that although Pebble Creek boasts more than 1,000 homes, there are only 20 Pebble Creek homeowners who currently are members of the golf club. Place says the club has tried various specials to lure new members, with cheaper membership dues, to no avail.
Mulligans Irish Pub, the clubhouse restaurant and bar, continues to be successful, however. “Sad to say, but Mulligans is really the only area where we make money,” Place says.
For now, he is letting the transaction unfold as the golf course remains open for business as usual.
“We’re prepared for it to go either way,” Place says of the possible sale. “If it happens, it happens. If it doesn’t, we’ll continue to operate as long as it’s feasible. Unfortunately, that’s why we’re here in the first place (because it may not be feasible).”
