Kalarickal Resigns As Chairman Of The Board Of North Tampa Bay Chamber

Local dentist Dr. Zack Kalarickal has officially resigned his position as Chairman of the Board (and the Board itself) of the North Tampa Bay Chamber of Commerce (NTBC) only six months into his one-year term, citing family concerns.

Immediate past president Jennifer Cofini of the Parks Auto Group, who read the Chamber’s official statement to more than 100 NTBC members at this morning’s Monthly Business Breakfast at PHSC’s Porter Campus at Wiregrass Ranch, has stepped in to serve the remainder of Dr. Kalarickal’s term.

Look for more details in the June 15 & June 29 editions of the Neighborhood News.’

Editorial: Evolution Of WCNT-tv And Kayaking Editor

I hope you’re continuing to enjoy watching our WCNT-tv — Wesley Chapel & New Tampa Television— segments on YouTube and Facebook. It at least appears that quite a few of your enjoy watching and sharing the segments, whether they’re “News Desks” with yours truly and my co-host Susanna Martinez or senior video editor Gavin Olsen’s outstanding slide videos, which continue to grow in popularity.

So, while we haven’t quite yet reached a million total views on Facebook and YouTube, we are approaching 700,000 total views and a total Facebook reach of more than 1.2 million people in a little less than two years (WCNT-tv debuted in June of 2016).

In fact, Gavin’s slide video a few weeks ago, about the “green” grocery store known as Earth Fare breaking ground at the corner of S.R. 56 and Wesley Chapel Blvd./S.R. 54, has been our most-viewed segment of 2018 to date, with a reach of nearly 30,000 people on Facebook, nearly 17,000 views and 1,100+ engagements (likes, comments and shares).

The most recent slide video Gavin put together for us (which also includes quite a bit of beautiful drone video footage shot by our friend Sergio Venegas of Eagle Fly Media) that was released on May 24 was about everything happening on S.R. 56 near and across from the Tampa Premium Outlets and had already reached nearly 6,000 people, with hundreds of engagements, as we went to press with this issue — only two hours after we released it!

The most recent WCNT-tv News Desk segment provides even more info about everything happening in and around the Tampa Premium Outlets. It was expected to be released shortly after Memorial Day, so I hope you’ll keep an eye out for it and let me know what you think.

The new News Desk segment also will include full captioning, so more people can watch it without having to have the volume on. Gavin and I believe that having the captioning of every episode will be a factor in finally getting us over the one million total views on YouTube and Facebook I’ve been hoping for since the show started.

Over the next couple of weeks, I also hope you’ll look for the return of WCNT-tv business correspondent Mollyana Ward, who held a North Tampa Bay Chamber of Commerce Ribbon Cutting, after the Chamber’s own ribbon cutting at its new office, for Lagoon Realty, the local real estate company in Epperson, where the first Crystal Lagoons® amenity in the U.S. recently held its own Grand Opening celebration.

Also, over the next month or two, you’ll also see WCNT-tv segments updating the S.R. 54 and S.R. 56 areas near Wiregrass Ranch, and hopefully, an update from the new Bahama Breeze Island Grill opening this summer.

I also want to thank our webcast partner, the North Tampa Bay Chamber and CEO Hope Allen for continuing to support the show and this publication (see ad on pg. 12), even though it’s been a little while since Mollyana has gotten to host a Chamber Featured Business segment.

Please call (813) 910-2575 for email ads@WCNT-tv.com for information about promoting your business on our show.

Gary Won An Award? For Kayaking?

Although I was happy with how I fared in the first race I ever finished in my Neighborhood News/WCNT-tv “Banana Boat” surfski single kayak on April 14, I was even happier when I finished my second race on May 19 — The Florida Cup off Madeira Beach.

The planned 3-mile “open” race was reduced to 2.2 miles because of the inclement weather that was expected but never arrived that day, and I was thrilled to finish the race in 27:47 (less than 14 minutes per mile), which had me in 31st of 48 finishers in every type of paddling craft.

But, I was even more excited to have been the third 50+ male on a surfski single to finish the race, more than 5 minutes ahead of the fourth-place finisher.

Even so, Susanna makes fun of me again on the S.R. 56 WCNT-tv segment, but only because I scripted it that way. Check it out!

Storage Wars

It Seems That Even With All Of The 2- & 3-Car Garages In New Tampa & Wesley Chapel, The Need For Storage Facilities Continues To Grow With The Community. How Many Is Too Many? 

Wesley Chapel is its own little boomtown.

New restaurants are popping up on every corner. There is shopping everywhere you turn. Major sports facilities are breaking ground. Hundreds of new hotel rooms are almost ready to be booked. An avalanche of houses and apartments is under construction.

Wesley Chapel is a sexy place for developers.

But, the seemingly most popular business in the area these days might be the least sexy of them all: Self-storage facilities.

Within one roughly 10-mile radius, five storage facilties have landed on the local map the last two years.

A three-story, 80,000-sq.-ft. CubeSmart (with 94,000 square feet of storage space in all) on S.R. 54 recently opened, with another three-story, 80,400-sq.-ft. CubeSmart facility under construction, on S.R. 56.

Morningstar Storage, another three-story unit boasting 100,000 sq. ft. of storage, is currently being built in Wiregrass Ranch, behind the new Fairfield Inn.

The Storage Center In Wesley Chapel — arguably the most straightforward name of any local business — was putting the finishing touches at the end of May on a four-floor, 76,500-sq.-ft. facility off S.R. 56 and Trout Creek Dr. (behind WaWa).

And, developers have already met with the county about yet another 110,000-sq.-ft. storage facility, to be located behind the Walgreens on S.R. 54 and Bruce B. Downs (BBD) Blvd.

Why the explosion? It’s simple.

“There’s tons of money to be made,’’ says Patrick Rairigh, managing partner of Rairigh Realty & Investments, LLC, “and they are a great business to own.”

The facilities are inexpensive to build, have low overhead costs, require few employees — some can be run by less than a handful of workers — and have great profit margins, Rairigh says.

When it comes to investments, self-storage has proven to be safe and reliable.

It is a $38-billion industry, according to SpareFoot, a company that covers the storage industry. While the vast majority of the facilities are mom-and-pop owned, it’s no wonder that many are backed by Real Estate Investment Trusts, also known as REITs.

Nearly 1- in-10 Americans pay an average of $91.14 per month to store their overflow in more than 50,000 self storage facilities across the U.S., offering more than 2.3 billion square feet of total rentable space. The average price in Florida is closer to $88 a month.

The five aforementioned new storage facilities in Wesley Chapel offer roughly a half-million square feet of previously unavailable storage space.

Those facilities, which offer a variety of unit sizes (a 5’ x 10’ unit, for example, is the most popular size in Florida, which would run you $100 a month at the recently opened Cube Smart on S.R. 54) generally operate at an 80-90 percent occupancy rate.

The industry even spawned a hit reality television series on the A&E Network, “Storage Wars,” which followed professional scavengers who would bid on storage lockers that had been abandoned or were no longer being paid for.

According to SpareFoot, the self-storage industry as we know it today got its start in the Midland-Odessa area of West Texas in 1964, when two local oilmen constructed a building for customers to house their belongings.

Russ Williams and stepson Bob Munn called it A-1 U-Store-It U-Lock-It U-Carry-the-Key, which today sounds like someone trying to get their business web hits with Search Engine Optimization (SEO), but back in the 1960s it was merely a ploy to get listed near the front of the Yellow Pages.
The two men built six more facilities around Odessa, and expanded to places like Austin and Houston. The bigger players in the “biz,” like Public Storage Inc., currently the largest self-storage company in the U.S., didn’t arrive until 1972.

Storage facilities may be money makers, but they aren’t exactly the kind of businesses that excite county planners or chambers of commerce.
North Tampa Chamber of Commerce CEO Hope Allen has been a happy promoter and champion of new businesses coming to Wesley Chapel and creating excitement in the community, but she is more muted about the recent proliferation of storage facilities.

“Demand is going to drive the market,” Allen says. “If that is what is driving the market, then so be it.”

While there is no doubting their money-making prowess for investors and developers, there are areas around the country that are now recoiling in the face of the self-storage industry’s impressive growth, as saturation becomes a major concern.

Last year, Collier County commissioners considered placing a year-long ban on some businesses, like storage facilities, along a 7-mile stretch of U.S. 41 to encourage, “more desirable land uses, such as restaurants, hotels and stores,” according to the Naples Daily News.

“We don’t have any rules like that,” says Ernie Monaco, acting planning and development director for Pasco County. “If there was no need for them, believe me, they wouldn’t be building them.”

Besides, there is currently nothing the county can do to stop developers from building them.

“At the end of the day, people are investors and want to make money,” Monaco says. “We don’t own the land.”

Monaco says the self-storage expansion is, however, yet another indicator of Wesley Chapel’s growth.
The more houses and apartments that are built, and as more businesses move here — Raymond James Financial, for example, is expected to add more than 700 jobs to the area — more people will be moving in.

And, with new homes getting smaller and smaller, they will need a place to store their things. Plus, many baby boomers are downsizing. Over-55 adult communities are in the works in Wesley Chapel, and older residents relocating to the area from the Midwest and Northeast will need to find replacements for their attics and basements.

Storage solutions aren’t just for families who have outgrown their homes or apartment-dwelling downsizers — or even people who are trapped in the consumerist cycle of ordering things they don’t need from Amazon and other easy-to-buy-from websites — but small businesses as well.

Allen and Monaco’s greater concerns center on the storage units taking up valuable space in prime areas they feel could be better used for commercial or industrial projects that create more jobs.

To meet demand, storage facilities have evolved from rows of garage-like units in discreet locations to accommodating and comfortable buildings offering free Wifi in more convenient and high-profile locations.

Monaco says more and more developers of self-storage facilities “want the visibility.”

The two CubeSmarts have roadside locations on the area’s busiest roads, and the Storage Center In Wesley Chapel, while more tucked out of sight, is directly behind a popular and heavily-trafficked Wawa.

However, these aren’t your Daddy’s self-storage places, either.

The recently opened CubeSmart on S.R. 54 looks like a large office building, and the Storage Center In Wesley Chapel could almost be mistaken for a small hotel.

When New Tampa was still in its development phase, like Wesley Chapel is today, it was almost impossible to get approval to build a self-storage facility.

“Years ago, Bruce B. Downs was the hardest spot you could find to put a storage unit,” Rairigh says. “They were ugly and no one wanted them.”

Rairigh Construction built the second self-storage unit ever located in New Tampa, and then sold it to Metro Self Storage in 2003. The first facility was built on Doña Michelle Dr. before also being sold to Metro Storage.

Another CubeSmart, the fourth-largest self-storage company in the U.S., is under construction in New Tampa behind Christian Brothers Automotive on BBD.

Rairigh thinks New Tampa and Wesley Chapel, when the self-storage units currently under construction or planned are all built, is approaching saturation. But, the interest in building more hasn’t waned.

He says that over the last three years, he’s had a steady stream of investors and developers knocking on his door looking for sites. Price, he says, is not an object for potential suitors.

“The model has changed,” he says. “You used to need a lot of land to build them, but now you have climate control buildings that are more vertical. They take up less space because they can be built on smaller parcels of land. And, the builders are putting some money into them. They have nice facades, they look like they belong.

“Honestly, some look better than some of the office buildings.”

Excel Music Helps New Tampa Students Hone Their Musical Skills

Since 2006, Excel Music in the Cory Lake Isles Professional Center on Cross Creek Blvd. has been teaching students of all ages to sing and play a wide variety of instruments with some of the area’s top teachers. As your kids getting out of school for the summer, it may be the perfect time to bring them to Excel Music to try new musical endeavors.

John and Sheri Thrasher are the husband-and-wife team who own the school.

“We’ve helped thousands of students of all ages reach their musical goals while enjoying the journey,” says John. “We like to say Excel is both the place you start and the place you stay.”

Excel Music has 20 teachers on staff and all are either university trained (many with Master of Music degrees) or they have at least 10 years of study and performing experience. The faculty teaches voice and nearly every traditional musical instrument, including piano, guitar, drums, violin and so many more.

“There’s a lot of excellent science out there that shows the benefit of a broad education that includes arts and music,” John says, adding that Excel provides a variety of opportunities for people of all ages to experience and connect with music.

Beyond Just Lessons
Excel Music offers the New Tampa Choir, a singing group for kids ages 5-12, and no experience is necessary to participate. It’s currently on hiatus for the summer, but will start back in September.

“It’s a learning experience, and it’s fun,” John says. “We want to give students a venue to sing songs they know, and some they don’t. In addition to traditional choir music, we do Broadway songs, Disney songs and more. We are always looking for more opportunities for this group to perform.”

Excel’s choir is for those who aren’t interested in solo performance, although the choir will offer opportunities for small group instruction.
John explains, “This is not a huge choir where no one even knows each other’s name.” He adds that the choir will provide a way for New Tampa kids to meet new people and get involved in the music school.

The school also will start up its Excel Rock Band again this fall, but students can apply to participate at any time.

“We’ve done a rock band a couple of times over the years, and its success depends upon the right mix of students,” John explains. “We make sure to group students by age, skill level and instrumentation.”

Excel Music offers a preschool music class for ages 18 months to four years, enjoyed by both kids and parents. The class lasts 45 minutes, once a week, for 10-12 weeks.

“It’s a great way to engage with both the parent and the child,” John explains. “The smiles on the faces of the parents are often as big as the ones on their children.”
John adds that the classes help parents learn ways to engage musically with their preschoolers at home. “This is a participatory class in which we teach parents how to bring music into their kids’ lives,” he says, “especially if they’re not musicians.”

The school’s students have the opportunity to take part in recitals twice a year, but John says these performances are always optional and low-pressure. “Recitals are part of what we do,” John says. “But, we aren’t a performance-driven studio.”

Adult Training, Too
While many of Excel Music’s students are kids, the opportunity to learn to sing or play an instrument is certainly not limited.
“A lot of adults come in for lessons, too,” says John. “We get retired people who say they’ve wanted to play their whole lives, and now they’re finally going to do it.” He says one of his favorite stories was about teaching an 86-year-old man how to play the trumpet.

Pete Laches is quite a bit younger than that, but he also is one of the school’s adult students. Pete says he has been taking guitar lessons at Excel since his daughters were in middle school. One is now in college and one just graduated from college.

“They started taking lessons right after we moved here, so they were in third or fourth grade,” he explains. “Rachel played the cello and piano, and Elizabeth played viola and guitar.”

He says that while his daughters no longer play their instruments, the investment he made in their lessons was well worth it.
“It’s a well-run place,” Pete says. “The instructors are good, and it seems to be a pretty stable staff. I like that they can teach every instrument, so your kid never feels stuck if they try something and hate it.”

Pete adds that, as an Arbor Greene resident, the location can’t be beat. It’s “right around the corner” — a huge convenience when his girls were taking lessons, and now for him. “I’m trapped in an office 40 hours a week, so playing guitar is an outlet for me,” Pete says. “It was a bucket list item and it’s a mental challenge, using a part of my brain that I usually don’t.”

About The Owners
John explains that he and Sheri originally opened Excel Music with the dream of providing the opportunity for young people to be trained for the kinds of careers and lives they once experienced themselves.

“We both had long careers in music, and were professional musicians who were able to make a living performing,” John says, adding that he was the drummer for country singer Mickey Gilley for many years, giving him the opportunity to perform on TV, at the White House and for people all over the world.

In the 1990s, John and Sheri had success together with a band of their own in Japan called Tz, where he says they sold tens of thousands of CDs. They also found themselves immersed in a culture that revered teachers, which led them to start thinking about passing on the knowledge and experience they had gained to the next generation.

“We met tremendous people, saw great places, and made a living,” John says. “We started thinking, ‘What if some of the kids who come through our school can experience what we’ve experienced?’”

They landed in New Tampa, where they had relatives, and have been building their school ever since. With nine years now under their belts, some of John and Sheri’s long-term students are now growing up and moving on.

“We’re seeing many students who have come through our school go on to college, and some are majoring in music,” John says. “This dream we had is starting to come true.”

John explains, however, that he and Sheri recognize that the vast majority of their students will not go on to have professional music careers.
“Our teachers are good enough for that type of student, but most of our students will go on to have another career such as a doctor or lawyer or something else,” he explains. “We hope that when they go to a concert or experience music, they will appreciate it on a different level, because they truly understand the challenge of playing music, and the dedication and skill of the performers presenting the music to them.”

For the past four years, Excel Music has been a business partner at Hunter’s Green, Clark, and Pride elementary schools. Students who attend those schools can enroll at Excel Music with no registration fee, which is a value of up to $45.

Excel Music is located at 10353 Cross Creek Blvd., Suite I. It is open Monday- Thursday, 2 p.m.-9 p.m., 2 p.m.-7 p.m. on Friday, and 10 a.m.-3 p.m. on Saturday. It is closed on Sunday. Call (813) 991-1177 for more info or to schedule lessons.

Annual Bike Ride Helps ‘Small, But Mighty’ Noon Rotary Club Raise $3,000!

“Small, but Mighty.” I’m almost positive my friend and former Rotary Club of New Tampa Noon president Valerie Casey first coined that phrase about the Rotary Club to which both Val and I belong.

Our club, which meets every Wednesday at noon for lunch at Mulligans Irish Pub at the Pebble Creek Golf Club, has never had as many as 30 members and currently has around 20, but somehow, thanks to the often-tremendous efforts by our small “family” of club members, we’re still able to accomplish a lot.
Although we also have partnered with other Rotary Clubs — including the New Tampa “Breakfast” Rotary (which meets at Tampa Palms Golf & Country Club for breakfast on Fridays at 7 a.m.; see story on the facing page) — the fund raisers and projects our club is able to put on with just a little effort have been pretty incredible.

Case in Point: Our annual “Cycling for Vets” Bike Ride through Flatwoods Park, which has raised thousands for U.S. Military veterans organizations and our local first responders (police, fire and emergency folks).

This year, with a committee of three — local dentists Dr. Steven Dau and Dr. Greg Stepanski and commercial real estate agent Scott Hileman — doing most of the leg work and just a few other club volunteers, this year’s ride on April 13 (I missed it for another kind of ride; see page 3) attracted a record (for us) number of 80 registered riders (some of those definitely found out about the ride from the Taste of New Tampa & Wesley Chapel less than a month earlier). The 2018 ride raised $3,000, with portions of that amount to benefit the Fisher House residence for families who have family members who are active duty and military veterans being treated at the Tampa Veterans Administration Hospital on Bruce B. Downs (BBD) Blvd. and for Support the Troops, a Wesley Chapel-based nonprofit that mails out hundreds of “care packages” every week to active military stationed overseas.

Dr. Dau, who basically celebrated the birth of his first child with his wife Monika a couple of months before he started planning this event, was quick to share the credit on May 9, when our club donated $1,000 of those proceeds to Fisher House Tampa director Paula Welenc (above left, with Dr. Dau, right, and Noon Rotary president Belvai “Vinnie” Kudva).

Our committee did a great job,” said Dr. Dau. “As always, it was a true team effort.”

The club also thanks the event’s sponsors — Dau Orthodontics-Dr. Steven Dau; Children’s Dentistry-Dr. Greg Stepanski; Gentle Care Dentistry-Dr. Tom Frankfurth; AllState Insurance-Gary Lefebvre; State Farm Insurance-Joyce Coleman; Suncoast, Tax & Accounting-Angie Garrett; Kiran Indian Grocery, AAA-Novelette Johnson; Stifel Financial-Mike Wallace; Goal Commercial-Scott Hileman; The Bantner Firm-Adam Bantner; Minerva Indian Restaurant, Thai Lanna & Sushi, Little Greek New Tampa, Peabody’s Billiards & Games, Tabla Indian Restaurant ,The Gift Box Boutique, Oliver’s Cycle Sports, Neighborhood News & WCNT-tv.

New Tampa Brewfest?
Fresh off that outstanding bike ride, the New Tampa Noon Rotary Club will host its first-ever “New Tampa Brewfest” on Saturday, November 10, 4 p.m.-8 p.m. (the time may be subject to change) at the Venetian Events Center at St. Mark the Evangelist Catholic Church on Cross Creek Blvd.
The Brewfest will be another great event featuring craft beers, a variety of food trucks and entertainment. Look for details in these pages and future episodes of WCNT-tv.