Gator Makes Selling A Home A Little Tougher For One Local Realtor

Although we live in an area with homes and businesses going up all around, the last few months have been a reminder to some, like Wesley Chapel resident & Realtor Nikki Spirakis, that the Wesley Chapel/New Tampa area is still flush with wildlife, leading to some interesting recent encounters.

When Wesley Chapel’s Nikki Spirakis was learning to become a Realtor, she thinks she might have missed the day they taught about dodging alligators while showing homes.

She could have used that training on March 29. Spirakis and a client were on their way to look at a home in Heritage Isles on Cross Creek Blvd. in New Tampa when they noticed an alligator approximately 6-feet long heading across the lawn and towards the front door of a house just two doors down from the one she was about to show.

“They didn’t cover that in real estate school,’’ she says.

Spirakis stopped her car to, naturally, take photos with her cell phone. The gator eventually made it to the front door and hunkered down. “It was like it was waiting for someone to open the door,’’ Spirakis says.

The gator hung out for a few minutes, then made its way back to the front of the house and moseyed towards the back of the house. While the houses on the other side of the street backed up to water, the alligator headed in the opposite direction towards nothing but dry land and more homes.

Nikki Spirakis

Spirakis, who works for Keller Williams, says she and some of the other neighbors weren’t quite sure what to do.

“We definitely discussed calling somebody, but I was like, this is Florida,’’ Spirakis said. “As it was walking off, everyone just figured we had our funny story for the day.”

Spirakis says her client, who had two young children along with her, wasn’t quite as fearless. While she hopped out of the car to take a look, she quickly hopped back in with her children.

They proceeded to the home Spirakis was showing, but the Realtor knew there would be no sale that day.

“She was wigged out,’’ Spirakis says, laughing. “She made sure the door was closed behind us when we went into the house.”

She did joke to one of her children that she would be a tasty morsel for the gator, but the trip around the home took less than five minutes.

That alligator was the first one she had ever seen in five years living in Florida, other than at Busch Gardens,’’ Spirakis says. “And, the house she was looking at backed up to water. We zoomed right through it and she was like, ‘I don’t like it. I can’t live in this neighborhood.’”

Spirakis says that none of the other Realtors she works with had ever experienced a gator squatter. Realtor Gail Beskid, who works with Spirakis, has said she is going to one day write a book about all her adventures during a decades long career as a real estate agent. While Spirakis’ recent encounter with hippie squatters  — “I could hear the music and smell the incense right away” — may not make Beskid’s book, her reptilian encounter surely will.

“Gail told me I definitely get a chapter for this one,’’ Spirakis says.

It wasn’t the first wildlife moment for Spirakis lately, either. A resident of the new Windsor at Meadow Pointe community off Meadow Pointe Blvd. at the eastern end of S.R. 56 in Wesley Chapel, Spirakis and her husband Erik Hajek recently encountered a cow that walked by their front yard after escaping from a nearby ranch off S.R. 56.

While the neighbors came out to watch the cow walk across the street, cowboys on horses showed up, eventually wrangling the animal and loading it into a trailer.

And, the day after Spirakis avoided the gator, a giant white owl perched itself on a fence about 10 feet away and watched her play tennis.

“I’m on quite a roll lately,’’ she joked.

Summer Camp Expo At FHCI Tomorrow

Event organizer Miriam Cook.

If you want your kids to have some amazing experiences this summer without having to spend frustrating hours searching the internet or making phone calls for options, Family-Friendly Tampa Bay hosts its first ever Family-Friendly Summer Camp Expo at Florida Hospital Center Ice off S.R. 56 in Wesley Chapel tomorrow — Saturday, April 8, 9 a.m.-3 p.m.

Admission is free.

More than 40 camps are signed up to participate in the Expo. Most are located in and around Wesley Chapel, says event organizer Miriam Cook, but camps from across the Tampa Bay area will be there, including the Museum of Science and Industry (MOSI), Busch Gardens, and the Glazer Children’s Museum.

Cook says diverse summer camp options will be presented, including day camps, sports, STEM (science, technology, engineering and math), special needs/autism, art, performing arts and academic camps. “Parents can meet one-on-one with numerous Tampa Bay-area camp directors and staff at the expo, talking with the people behind these programs to find the best fit for their child,” Cook says.

Cook notes that she’s especially excited about offering summer camps for kids with special needs. She says there will be an agency that provides resources for families with children who have disabilities and other special needs. While she didn’t specify camps for only special needs children, she says many of the camps attending the expo are “inclusive” and make accommodations to serve all children, regardless of ability.

“Right now, we have 1,200 families who have pre-registered to attend the event,” says Cook. “When families register for free tickets through Eventbrite.com, they are automatically entered to win a free week of camp. We will be donating several weeks of camp at the expo. We will also have other giveaways, as well.”

For example, each family that attends will receive a coupon for buy-one, get-one-free ice skating at Florida Hospital Center Ice, and the first 250 families to arrive will get a “swag bag.” There will be many activities for the kids, such as face painting, and several mascots will make an appearance, including the mascot from the Tampa Yankees, the Tampa Bay Lighting’s ThunderBug, and the Chick-fil-A cow.

It’s not necessary to pre-register, but it does enter you to win prizes. To register, go to EventBrite.com and search for “Summer Camp Expo” in Tampa (although technically in Wesley Chapel, the site notes that the Expo is in the “Greater Tampa” area). Florida Hospital Center Ice is located at 3173 Cypress Ridge Blvd. in Wesley Chapel. For more information about Family-Friendly Tampa, go to FamilyFriendlyTampaBay.com.

Aldi Headed For Cypress Creek Town Center N.

Wesley Chapel residents eager for the long-rumored Aldi grocery store to open have been keeping their eyes on the S.R. 54 area near The Grove at Wesley Chapel shopping center, where rumors had the German-based chain planned.

Turns out, they were looking in the wrong place.

Instead, it now appears Aldi is headed for the Cypress Creek Town Center North development across the road from Tampa Premium Outlets on S.R. 56.

According to forms filed recently with Pasco County, Aldi is proposing to build a 19,054-sq.-ft. store on the north side of S.R. 56, off Wesley Chapel Blvd. in Lutz (though the forms list Wesley Chapel as its address). Aldi filed a Development Permit Pre-Submittal Meeting request form March 27, as well as a conceptual site plan.

A previously filed pre-app form listed the Northeast corner of Wesley Chapel Blvd. (S.R. 54) and Gateway Blvd. near The Groves as a proposed site for a 17,825-sq.-ft. Aldi store.

A trendy favorite of shoppers, Aldi is a no-frills discount supermarket chain based in Germany, with over 8,000 stores worldwide.

Aldi is able to offer items at cheap prices (and doesn’t accept coupons) because of low overhead. Not every aisle has shelves, as some items are simply stacked in their boxes, shoppers need to bring their own bag, shopping carts will cost you a quarter (which you get back when you return it, saving employees from having to track down carts in the parking lot) and the store sells random non-grocery items as well.

Aldi is aggressively expanding across the U.S., and is currently remodeling many of its stores to give them a more modern look.

Just a little east of the proposed Aldi site and also making its way through the county permitting pipeline is Darden Restaurant chain Bahama Breeze Island Grill, which had it’s pre-app meeting on Jan. 30 and is looking to build one of its popular restaurants in Cypress Creek Town Center North, at 25663 Sierra Center Blvd.

The new restaurant would be 7,987-sq.-ft. with an outdoor seating area and 168 parking spaces.

Bahama Breeze, whose nearest locations are in Brandon and between Tampa and Clearwater off the Courtney Campbell Causeway at Rocky Point, specializes in Caribbean-inspired food and tropical drinks.

Porter Donates $2,000 For WC Rotary’s Honduras Trip

JD Porter (far right) donated $2,000 to the WC Rotary Club for its upcoming trip to Honduras.

The Wesley Chapel Rotary Club is planning its sixth trip to Honduras, and received a boost in that effort from local businessman J.D. Porter, who donated $2,000 to the Rotary at their March 29 luncheon at Quail Hollow Golf & Country Club.

The club has raised roughly $25,000 for the upcoming trip. A group of Rotarians will spend a week in a country that is not only one of the poorest and neediest in South America, but also the most dangerous, as one Rotarian pointed out at the March 29 luncheon (to nervous laughter, perhaps). Honduras has the highest murder rate in the world, with more than 90 homicides per 100,000 people.

Members of the club have taken the trip for five years in conjunction with Pure Water for the World (PWW), a 501 (c)(3) non profit organization whose mission is to improve the lives of families in poor countries through sustainable water solutions, sanitation and hygiene education.

Porter made the donation in the name of the Wiregrass Ranch Foundation, his family’s not-for-profit corporation, which was  founded in 2012.

He said the foundation is about, “the community, as we continue to see it grow. We started this, and we take no salaries, we just get out and raise money so we can have it available for local needs in the community. We’ve had a great time with it. And, we’ve raised a bunch of money.”

The Honduras trip turned out to be something near and dear to Porter’s heart.

He said his grandfather, after selling the first piece of Wiregrass Ranch property (which is now Saddlebrook), “one of the first things he did was he bought a boat.’’ Porter said he spent the next 2-3 years fishing in Central and South America,  in places like Nicaragua and Venezuela. But, his favorite place was Honduras.

While recently cleaning out some of his family’s old stuff, Porter says he discovered papers that listed items that his grandfather had continued to send shipments of to Honduras, items like toothbrushes, band-aids, gum, candy, “random stuff that a lot of us take for granted.”

“That’s why this clicked with me…not only is it special to give back to such a great group here, it’s almost like continuing a legacy,’’ Porter said. “That’s kind of special. So, I feel honored to present a check for $2,000 so you guys can get out there and do something awesome for people, making a difference in someone’s life who truly deserves it.”

For more info about Porter’s foundation, visit WiregrassRanchFoundation.org. For the WC Rotary, visit WCRotary.org.

Authors Share Writing & Publishing Tips At PHSC-Porter Campus Symposium

Local author Madonna Jervis Wise talks about her experiences researching history books and the business of self publishing at PHSC. (Photo: Courtney Boetcher)

A panel featuring English professor Joseph Ward, J.D., Pasco Hernando State College student and author Taylor Gibson and local author Madonna Jervis Wise regaled a crowd of about 50 people at PHSC’s Porter Campus at Wiregrass Ranch about the process of writing and publishing at a seminar on March 23.

Each author shared their experiences in the field while the lively audience of diverse community members posed questions for the panel. The event is part of PHSC’s ongoing Community Awareness Series that aims to increase public awareness of resources available to community members at the state college.

Gibson, a native Floridian and a current student at PHSC, has written and published The Spark: A Phantasy Novel.

Taylor told the audience that as a child, he spent hours with books and movies, and conceived his fictional characters in his head before he began writing in high school. He explained that he was diagnosed with a high-functioning autism as a young child, and endured trials during adolescence which further inspired his writing.

Taylor hopes to write a movie script about his experiences and bring it to fruition after he graduates from college. His second novel in The Spark series is currently with the editor, and he has nearly finished the third book in a series of four planned novels.

Fantasy is a popular genre for twenty and thirty-somethings, Taylor said. He added that his characters transform as fantasy becomes reality through thought. Taylor’s self-publishing company is AuthorHouse.

Ward is a founding faculty member of the PHSC Porter Campus and he sponsors the Literary Artists and Scholars Troop (LAST), a creative writing organization at the school. He has published four true crime creative non-fiction novels under a pen name.

Having graduated from law school at Florida State in Tallahassee as well, and as a member of the Florida Bar, Ward shared his unique perspective about the world of crime.

“Writing a book was on my bucket list of things to do,’’ he said. “My first book began to take shape with a discussion I had with my father about a 1980s serial killer in the State of Florida.”

The professor gave some useful, if not sobering, advice to the aspiring writers in the audience.

“Don’t expect fame or fortune,’’ he said. “It is analogous to the adolescent athlete who dreams of the NBA. In reality, writing is a satisfying endeavor and brings some supplemental income in the monthly royalty checks.”

Ward went on to publish three additional crime novels, and currently is working on two sequels. He recommended that potential authors check out the book, A Guide to Literary Agents, for the process of developing a query letter and book proposal. He also recommended WritersMarket.com.

Ward humorously shared that mystery writer Agatha Christie had five years of rejection before her first novel was published, and J.K. Rowling was told by a publishing company that she needed to take a writing class during the 12 years she sought a publisher for the Harry Potter series.

Jervis Wise, who has published Images of America: Wesley Chapel and eight other books, shared the acquisition and publishing process of working with Arcadia Publishing/History Press of Mount Pleasant, SC. She also discussed working with Create Space for self-publishing.

“You need to surround yourself with words through book clubs, workshops and professional organizations,’’ she said, while encouraging locals to attend the Florida Writers Association of Wesley Chapel, which meets the first Saturday of each month at the New Tampa Regional Library on Cross Creek Blvd.

Jervis Wise also explained that creativity is not linear for most people. “My mantra is ‘write it now, fix it later,’” she said. “Even Ernest Hemingway said, ‘The first draft of anything is garbage.’”

During the Q & A with the audience, attendees inquired about the research process for crime and history books. Ward said that he often reads court transcripts and records from government sources, while Jervis Wise described her research, including extensive interviewing and mining the archives of historical newspapers.

Taylor described the process of self-marketing for his books.

All three authors were asked if they experienced writer’s block. The three agreed that writing was an intensive yet creative process that required stimulation and inspiration. They advised taking a break from the process to regenerate the creative juices anytime a writer feels blocked.

For more information about PHSC’s Community Awareness Series, contact Natalie Epo at 527-6629  or by email at epon@phsc.com.