So, first, the BIG news. After two years in a row of winning the Rotary Club of Wesley Chapel Adult Spelling Bee, yours truly reverted to his usual choking-in-spelling-bees ways, as the Neighborhood News Horrific Spellers finished in a tie for about 10th (of 23 teams) on Apr. 8, when “Kount Drakyoula” himself (see photo below, courtesy of OurTownFla.com, of one of the 20+ words we spelled correctly) misspelled the word “onomatopoeia” (I spelled it “onamotopoeia”… missed it by thatmuch). The two sad facts were that:
1) I believe our team was the only one to spell all 20 words correctly during the first two rounds of this year’s bee (held again at the Tampa Bay Golf & Country Club in San Antonio), when you can “bribe” your way back into the competition by paying $10 (we got to trade in our prepurchased bribes, which you can not use in the third round) for non-winning raffle tickets) — thanks again to another couple of great assists on medical words from my teammate, event co-chair Karina Azank, M.D..
2) I actually practiced that word only a couple of hours before the event and really thought I remembered it correctly. Old age?
It was still a great event to benefit the Pasco Education Foundation and the Rotary Club of Wesley Chapel Noon Fund (our club’s nonprofit foundation)…and hey, even the Golden State Warriors didn’t win them all this year.
And The ‘Magic’ Continues…
The photo was the happiest I was the day after the Spelling Bee, as the organizers of the 13th annual Sharkbite Challenge off Honeymoon Island in Dunedin called off the “official” race on Apr. 9 due to high winds (20-30 knots) and seas (3-4-ft. waves).
I did return to the Dunedin Causeway the next day, when the winds were down to 10-15 knots and the waves down to 2-3-ft., but I never quite finished the 4-mile race, at least not without swimming the kayak about a half-mile to shore after a wave knocked me out of it. It’s a long, crazy story (to which my fellow WC Rotarians can attest), but I’m still planning to do another race soon…just not without the proper kayak. Most of the 100+ competitors at the race I didn’t finish were in sleek 14-18-ft. composite racing kayaks that look like Olympic sculls. I was in a borrowed, 9-ft. plastic kayak that I now realize I was probably lucky to be able to swim to shore.
Lucky? Heck yeah. After all, no one else at the race did a marine biathlon that day, right?
OK, Here’s Some Actual News…
Until Apr. 7, the single “biggest” post we ever had on our “Neighborhood News” Facebook page was viewed about 28,000 times, with about 4,000 click-throughs to read the actual story on our website.
But, Apr. 7 was the day we posted the map on page 12 of this issue, which shows what’s both officially coming and rumored to be coming to the area around the Tampa Premium Outlets mall off S.R. 56.
The map was on page 1 of our Wesley Chapel issue the following day, but it already had created a record stir (for us, of course) when it received 63,000+ views on our Facebook page — more than doubling our previous best — and an even more staggering 51,000+ click-throughs to our NTNeighborhoodNews.com website! That’s more than 12 times the number of people who had clicked through to our site in any single day!
The second map — of the area near our office on S.R. 54 near I-75 and Bruce B. Downs Blvd. in Wesley Chapel — was no slouch, either, although it “only” garnered 18,200+ page views and a few thousand click-throughs to our site.
What’s WCNT-TV?…
It’s the fun and informative web-based “TV” magazine show all about Wesley Chapel (WC) and New Tampa (NT) that’s launching soon. I can’t tell you much about it just yet, other than it’s a joint venture between yours truly and Full Throttle Intermedia (FTIntermedia.com), in association with the Greater Wesley Chapel Chamber of Commerce.
Anand Vihar is already transitioning in preparation for construction in Meadow Pointe, which will include a 17,000-sq.-ft. clubhouse
When good friends and Tampa Bay-area doctors Krishna Nallamshetty M.D., and Seenu Sanka, M.D., envisioned a place their parents could live their later years in, they imagined a calm and peaceful setting. People in a 55-plus community with shared interests, an active and vibrant community with trails to walk.
Fitness rooms to exercise in, places where they could worship and meditate and partake in the vegetarian lifestyle they have enjoyed their entire lives.
Beginning in June, that’s exactly what the two physicians plan to build in Wesley Chapel’s Meadow Pointe community.
Anand Vihar, which means “Blissful Living” (according to its website), promises to be the premier 55-plus community in Tampa Bay. It will be one of the only 55-plus adult communities in Wesley Chapel.
It will be built on a 50-acre site on Mansfield Blvd., less than 100 yards north of where the road currently dead ends (as we reported about again last issue) and is surrounded by large conservation and ponds.
55-Plus Community Coming Together
Drs. Nallamshetty and Sanka, who searched for the right place for two years before enlisting the help of another friend, Santosh Govindaraju, the CEO of Convergent Capital Partners (CCP), hope to break ground on Anand Vihar this summer.
Eric Isenbergh, the CEO of Oxford Homes, has joined the team as the property’s builder.
“I think it’s a phenomenal area to be in,’’ said Govindaraju, whose company focuses on development and repositioning of commercial real estate. He said CCP has put more than half a billion dollars into redeveloping places like Carrollwood Golf Club (previously Emerald Green Golf & Country Club) and a number of hotels and commercial properties. This is the company’s first foray into Wesley Chapel.
Govindaraju said he was able to secure a great price for the property. The deed, he says, will show the partners paid $25,000 for the land itself, but because the previous owners chose not to pay taxes on it — the recession stalled a previous project on the property — the new owners had to pay off liens on 87 lots, at a cost of $11,000 per lot.
According to Govindaraju, multiple banks owned parts of the parcel, but none had any interest in developing it and allowed it go delinquent.
“It was a very fragmented ownership,’’ he said. “We diligently put it back together.”
The roads, parking areas, utilities and detention ponds were all constructed in 2006, after the previous owners had received approval for 330 townhomes and condos.
Three of the buildings in the southeast portion of the project were constructed, with 24 apartments that currently have residents and eight townhomes that don’t, but any further development came to a halt.
The existing buildings and roads will remain, with a new one planned near Anand Vihar’s soon-to-be-built, 17,000-sq-ft clubhouse. CCP plans to invest $5 million into the 55-plus community, building 280 units and incorporating more green space.
“We are very excited,’’ Govindaraju said. “There’s so many great things happening in this area. We want to contribute to the success at Meadow Pointe by creating more upscale opportunities, and increase the value of them by investing more in these properties.”
Although the project appears to be targeting the existing Indian community in our area, Govindaraju says it’s more about a lifestyle than people of any particular origin.
“We will be targeting more of a healthy living lifestyle,’’ Govindaraju says, noting that the Anand Vihar clubhouse will have an exclusively vegetarian kitchen (non-vegetarian meals will be catered on a weekly basis), a yoga room, a multi-faith prayer and meditation room and a theater room to watch the latest Bollywood (and other) movies.
“We will also have a full-time activities director, and I think that will also set us apart,’’ Govindaraju says.
Anand Vihar already has 30 reservations, he added.
For more information, visit AnandViharTampa.com, or call 534-4127.
Joey Richman (left) and Mike Miller have become friends. Miller agreed to donate a kidney to Richman, who suffers from Alport’s Syndrome.
Can a hashtag help find a kidney donor and save someone’s life?
Count Wesley Chapel mom Dana Richman as a believer, after a Facebook and Twitter campaign she started in January helped find her son Joey, a 22-year-old pre-med student at the University of South Florida, a living kidney donor.
Tampa’s Mike Miller, a Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) fighter known by friends as “Muffin Man,” saw a #AKidneyForJoey post on Facebook, and has stepped forward.
The surgery and selfless sacrifice, which will effectively end Miller’s MMA career, is scheduled for Wednesday.
Battling Kidney Failure
Joey suffers from Alport’s Syndrome, a genetic condition that Dana says was passed down from her side of the family, which has suffered a number of deaths from the condition. Alport’s Syndrome causes hearing loss and renal failure. Joey first suffered hearing loss in the fourth grade, but doctors could do little to help, Dana says, until he went into renal failure, which has taken root in the past year.
Joey is fortunate. According to the National Kidney Foundation, more than 100,000 people are awaiting kidney transplants. More than 3,000 new patients are added to the kidney waiting list each month, and 13 people die each day while awaiting a life-saving kidney transplant.
Joey, who lost 30 pounds in the last year, currently administers dialysis to himself every 4-6 hours, for a total of 10 hours daily. Dana says there are 75 boxes of solution in her home. It has made her son weak and tired, barely able to climb a flight of stairs. He is taking his college classes online because getting around campus is too difficult.
Dana has watched Joey deteriorate over the past year, and can’t work herself because she has been taking him to almost daily doctor appointments. She looks forward to April 20 and the months to follow. She says Joey will be isolated after surgery for 3-6 months, but hopes to be well enough to return to classes at USF in August.
“He will feel amazing, probably back to how he felt in elementary school,’’ Dana says. “He’ll be able to do everything other people his age can do. I have goosebumps already just thinking about it.”
Response Overwhelms Mother
Dana said she was stunned by the outpouring of support for her son’s plight. She says Miller is “the most humble, respectful young man you’ll ever meet.’’ She is also quick to thank the dozens of folks who called Tampa General Hospital (TGH) to volunteer for testing when the story broke.
She said TGH received up to 40 calls a day, and many are still volunteering to be Joey’s back-up if the transplant fails for any reason. A host of others, she added, asked to be matched up with others needing transplants. “Amazing,’’ she says. “That makes me happy.”
For Dana — a single mother of three boys including Wiregrass Ranch High graduate Jason, 19, and current WRH senior Jake, 17 — the amount of community support has been a blessing. The one-time military family has moved up and down the east coast, settling in Wesley Chapel three years ago from Pasadena, MD. Even then, she wasn’t sure what the future held.
“I’ll tell you what, Wesley Chapel is an amazing place,’’ Dana says. “Tampa is too, but Wesley Chapel, we couldn’t imagine any place better. It really feels like home, like we finally have a place to put our roots.”
To donate to the Richman family, visit GoFundMe.com/AKidneyForJoey. To help Mike Miller in his recovery, visit GoFundMe.com/6aunghtw. To become a kidney donor, contact Jenni Binns of Tampa General Hospital at 844-5669 or email her at jbinns@tgh.org.
Engineers are looking at previous plans to close the gap at Kinnan and Mansfield.
A new study to determine the feasibility of connecting Kinnan St. in New Tampa and Mansfield Blvd. in Meadow Pointe could be on the horizon, after both Pasco and Hillsborough counties met recently in hopes of settling the long-simmering disagreement between the sides.
Pasco County District 2 commissioner Mike Moore and Hillsborough County District 7 City Council member Lisa Montelione, accompanied by lawyers, city administrators and engineers from each side, met in Dade City on March 9, as negotiations to connect their two counties heated up.
The result: a decision to send the engineers back to work, looking at old plans from 2007-12 to determine if any are applicable today in light of the new developments in the area.
“Our staff, the engineers who do the technical stuff, are going to look at prior studies to see if we need to do a new study,’’ said Moore. “Things have obviously changed in that area, with more homes, schools and daycares.”
Kinnan St., which is on the Hillsborough side, and Mansfield Blvd., which is on the Pasco side, are separated by a 100-foot patch of grass (photo) that is more a dumping ground than the commuter convenience it should be, argue some.
The last traffic study in the area was done roughly two years ago, says Montelione, by ICON Engineering, Inc., as part of the process for M/I Homes during the re-negotiation of the development agreement for K-Bar Ranch.
She said similar studies go back to 1996, and that both staffs plan on taking inventory of those to determine the next step forward.
Kinnan St. was paved north to the Pasco County line in 2007 by the developer of Live Oak Preserve, but never completed. Barricades mark the end of Mansfield and block the road heading south, while steel poles with red diamond-shaped signs on them prevent any traffic further north on Kinnan St.
Last publicly discussed in 2012, when the two sides failed to come to an agreement, Montelione raised the issue again of connecting the roads in January, writing a letter to Moore. The two officials first met later that month to discuss it, before agreeing on the latest meeting with government staff, namely the engineers. “We’ll see what was discussed in the past,’’ Moore said. “There’s no guarantee either way. But, I think what we all agree on is we need an end result.”
If both sides decide a new study needs to be done, Moore and Montelione said public meetings will be held so that residents and business owners of both sides of the debate can be heard.
Montelione attended the meeting with Tampa city attorney Julia Mandell.
Mandell, who was the senior assistant attorney for the City of Tampa during the last round of negotiations with Pasco County in 2013, is now the City Attorney, having been appointed in March as only the second female City Attorney ever by Tampa Mayor Bob Buckhorn.
Susan Johnson, the subdivision/DRI coordinator for the City of Tampa, and Melanie Calloway, the senior transportation planning engineer, also attended the meeting.
Pasco was represented by county administrator Michelle Baker, assistant county attorney David Goldstein and Ali Atefi, Pasco’s transportation engineer.
The meeting also included discussions on other possible extensions to help alleviate traffic issues affecting both counties, like one linking Beardsley Dr. in Meadow Pointe southeast east to Morris Bridge Rd. in K-Bar Ranch, Moore said.
Pasco County planner Matt Armstrong hopes to settle the debate over Wesley Chapel borders.
Following presentations last month by both the Greater Wesley Chapel (WCCC) and Central Pasco (CPCC) Chambers of Commerce, the Pasco County Board of County Commissioners (BCC) could be set Wesley Chapel borders with Lutz/Land O’Lakes that ultimately should finally settle a long-simmering dispute at the BCC’s monthly meeting on Tuesday, April 26.
The commissioners are expected to vote on a recommendation from Pasco planners on definitive borders between the two Census Designated Places (Wesley Chapel and Land O’Lakes/Lutz together are both CDPs) during the meeting at the West Pasco Government Center Board Room in New Port Richey.
Until then, county planners and administrators are poring over a stack of documents from each side — and even getting some help from the folks at Google maps —interpreting where those borders should be.
“We are looking to establish a city boundary by legislative action,’’ said Matt Armstrong, the county’s executive planner. “None of these areas that are Census Designated Places have that. That’s some of the reason people have struggled with this.”
After separate meetings with the two groups last month, Armstrong said representatives from both areas will meet with each other in the next few weeks, with the county’s planning department serving as the moderator.
“Ultimately, we will be bringing a report to the Board of County Commissioners with a recommendation on what we think the boundaries will be,’’ Armstrong says. “The Board can hear public comment, and then we will be asking them to establish the borders.”
When broken down, the primary dispute seems to be over the slice of land between Wesley Chapel Blvd. and I-75 in the Cypress Creek Town Center Development of Regional Impact (DRI), which has been exacerbated recently by the steady business development in the area.
Armstrong said he was at one recent border meeting where a representative from one of the new businesses on the east side of Wesley Chapel Blvd. said they were happy to “be here in Lutz.”
But, take a look at the web page for Culver’s, which calls its restaurant on E. Bearss Ave. in Tampa “Culver’s of Tampa,” its restaurant in Largo “Culver’s of Largo,” and its restaurant in Port Richey “Culver’s of Port Richey.” At its brand new location on S.R. 56 west of the Tampa Premium Outlets mall, however (which physically is located on Sun Vista Dr. in Lutz), it is called “Culver’s of Wesley Chapel.”
And it isn’t alone. While all of the area being debated by the WCCC and CPCC has either Land O’Lakes or Lutz addresses and zip codes, many businesses in the area identify themselves as being in Wesley Chapel.
“It’s just a mess,’’ Armstrong says.
Where Are The Wesley Chapel borders?
While the current debate is about borders, it originally began, as we detailed in our last issue, as a disagreement over the renaming of the Wesley Chapel Blvd. extension where the extension now crosses southbound over S.R. 56 and continues toward County Line Rd.
The southern portion of the extension, said CPCC member Sandy Graves at the time, needed to represent Lutz-Land O’Lakes, the area through which it cuts. A petition requesting that the name of the southern portion of the extension be changed to Circle O Ranch was presented to the BCC on Jan. 19. But, Wesley Chapel Chamber of Commerce CEO Hope Allen protested, saying it needed to remain Wesley Chapel Blvd., as all of the businesses in the area already call it that and have for years.
Instead of making a decision, the BCC decided to explore the issue further. The Board members decided that defining the borders between Lutz-Land O’Lakes and Wesley Chapel needed to be settled first.
That set off a fact-finding mission by each side, in an effort to buttress their respective arguments. Representatives of Lutz-Land O’Lakes believe their border extends west to I-75. The Wesley Chapel side thinks its western border extends to Wesley Chapel Blvd. So, essentially, the area between Wesley Chapel Blvd. and I-75 is at the heart of the dispute.
The Wesley Chapel Chamber met with Armstrong and his staff Feb. 19, two weeks after he met with the CPCC.
“I think the meeting went fine,’’ said Allen. “I think we got our point across and delivered the message we went to deliver.”
Allen said her group presented a 70-page document backing their claims, as well as a 2005 Vision Report that the WCCC says was approved by Pasco commissioners.
The CPCC countered that its 2003 Vision Report was adopted first, and brought noted USF political science professor Susan McManus to its meeting with Armstrong to help make their case. McManus has co-written books on the history of Lutz and Land O’Lakes.
Armstrong jokes that he is becoming an expert on the histories of the two places, thanks to all of the material that has been presented to him to help settle the dispute, including volumes of McManus’ work, a trove of newspaper articles and even local historian Madonna Jervis Wise’s book on the history of Wesley Chapel (see pg. 1). The book, entitled Images of America: Wesley Chapel, says that Wesley Chapel was founded in the 1840s, and is shown on a 1879 survey map of Pasco County, before Land O’Lakes was established in 1949.
However, the dispute is not over what town existed first. And, even in carefully-researched historical records, there are no definitive boundaries laid out because neither area was ever incorporated, or essentially created as its own city with its own governmental structure.
But, the respective “hearts” of both areas — U.S. 41 in Land O’Lakes and the area around Boyette Rd. and S.R. 54 in Wesley Chapel — are unmistakable, says Armstrong.
“The history points to early beginnings, and we know where the hearts of those communities are,’’ Armstrong said. “But, the boundary in between gets a little fuzzy.”
Pasco County currently only has six incorporated areas — the cities of Zephyrhills, Dade City, San Antonio, Port Richey and New Port Richey, and the incorporated town of Saint Leo.
The rest of the county is comprised of unincorporated Census Designated Places, like Wesley Chapel, Land O’Lakes/Lutz, Trinity and Hudson, to name a few. And, Armstrong says that 450,000 of the 490,000 people living in Pasco reside in those currently unincorporated areas.
Armstrong admits that so many areas without defined borders can create the kind of confusion we are seeing in Wesley Chapel and Lutz/Land O’Lakes, where postal zip codes have changed and there is a myriad of other “boundaries,” which can be confusing.
“Part of the frustration for the citizens who lives in any one of these places is, ‘What the heck, the zip code says this, the Census Designated Place says something else, my kids are going to school based on other boundaries and my voting precinct is somewhere else,’’’ Armstrong says. “It’s been like this for years, and now, it’s coming to a head.”
That’s actually a good thing, he says, because it is being done in the open and publicly. Much of the Lutz-Land O’Lakes anger stems from the belief that past decisions made by the BCC cut the area out of the process to accommodate Wesley Chapel’s growth and ongoing “branding.”
Wesley Chapel Blvd. is an example, according to Graves. It sprouted as a road name for the portion of S.R. 54 from S.R. 56 to Lexington Oaks when the Lutz-Land O’Lakes contingent thought it was going to be Worthington Gardens Blvd., a decision she said “happened overnight.”
The former “Wesley Chapel” placemaker sign was another example cited by Graves. It was put up a few hundred feet west of where Wesley Chapel Blvd. begins, clearly in Lutz’s 33559 zip code. Armstrong said the sign’s arrival “lit a match” in Pasco, and Graves led the fight to have the sign removed — which it was.
“The whole process hasn’t been completely transparent,’’ Armstrong says. “But, this time, it is.”
Both sides have been passionate about their arguments. The claim that the area, its residents and businesses would be much better served if the area was clearly defined as theirs. And, both claim history is on their side.
History, though, may give way to common sense.
“We will collect all of the history from both groups and look at some of the rational (potential) boundaries between the two things,’’ Armstrong says. “There may be a natural feature that divides the two, or a major road. But, it needs to make sense today, and that may be separate from history.”
So, first, the BIG news. After two years in a row of winning the Rotary Club of Wesley Chapel Adult Spelling Bee, yours truly reverted to his usual choking-in-spelling-bees ways, as the Neighborhood News Horrific Spellers finished in a tie for about 10th (of 23 teams) on Apr. 8, when “Kount Drakyoula” himself (see photo below, courtesy of OurTownFla.com, of one of the 20+ words we spelled correctly) misspelled the word “onomatopoeia” (I spelled it “onamotopoeia”… missed it by thatmuch). The two sad facts were that:
The photo was the happiest I was the day after the Spelling Bee, as the organizers of the 13th annual Sharkbite Challenge off Honeymoon Island in Dunedin called off the “official” race on Apr. 9 due to high winds (20-30 knots) and seas (3-4-ft. waves).
“It was a very fragmented ownership,’’ he said. “We diligently put it back together.”
