Category: News

Wesley Chapel & Central Pasco Chambers Dueling Over WC Blvd.

It’s just a 3.5-mile planned stretch of road running from S.R. 56 south to County Line Rd. through the Cypress Creek Center Development of Regional Impact (DRI), which has lots of progress on one side and undeveloped land on the other, but for the Greater Wesley Chapel Chamber of Commerce (WCCC) CEO and the Central Pasco Chamber of Commerce, (CPCC) the road — an only partially built extension of what is now called (on public street signs) Wesley Chapel (WC) Blvd. — stands for a lot more than just some new pavement.

The WCCC and CEO Hope Allen believe the road — like the entire Wesley Chapel area — is a big part of central and eastern Pasco’s future. But, to CPCC Board member Sandy Graves, the road — which she feels should be called something other than WC Blvd. — should serve as a tribute to the area’s past.

The two sides are now awaiting a Pasco Board of County Commissioners (BCC) decision that ultimately will decide if the road’s name should be changed or not.

Graves, a longtime Land O’Lakes resident, is on the side arguing to have the still-under-construction southern extension (southbound from S.R. 56) of what is already called Wesley Chapel Blvd. (Note-it also is the only roadway we’ve seen labeled “C.R. {or County Road} 54 South”), renamed “Circle O Ranch Parkway” to more accurately reflect the area through which the remaining three miles of the WC Blvd. extension will run. There already is a portion of that extension that is open to traffic, but it is only a half-mile long and currently mainly provides an alternative entrance to the existing Tampa Premium Outlets (TPO).

To that end, Graves and other Land O’Lakes and Lutz residents asked the county to change the name of Wesley Chapel Blvd. and, on Jan. 19, the BCC voted to continue the item to a future date (that had not yet been set at our press time), to allow for consideration of alternative names to Circle O Ranch Pkwy.

Allen says she didn’t know anything about the BCC meeting until she got a Google alert two days after the story was posted on the Tampa Tribune website TBO.com. She says she was surprised that she hadn’t heard about the meeting before it happened and that the name change could have been voted on that day.

Even developer Bob Sierra said he also was surprised, although he told the Tampa Tribune he did find the time to rush to the meeting.

Graves said there was nothing sneaky about the meeting – a public notice was posted in the printed editions of the Tribune and she claims the Land O’Lakes-Lutz plans had been in the news, although she did not elaborate as to what news media may have aired or written a story about the meeting.

Besides, she claimed, it was more notice than her community got in 2004 when Wesley Chapel Blvd. sprouted along S.R. 54 “in the middle of the night,” according to Graves.

Back then, Graves and people in the Land O’Lakes-Lutz community thought the road was going to be named Worthington Gardens Blvd., but it ended up as Wesley Chapel Blvd.

“I don’t know how that happened,’’ Graves says. “We were all very shocked. The county needs to do the right thing this time.”

This isn’t the first time Graves has tangled with a Wesley Chapel sign. In 2013, the Florida Department of Transportation put up a green “Wesley Chapel” placemaker (photo on this page) sign a few hundred feet west of where Wesley Chapel Blvd. begins that was clearly on land in Lutz’s 33559 U.S. Postal Service zip code. Graves fought for eight months until the sign was eventually removed.

Both sides will get their chance to make their arguments for and against the WC Blvd. name. At our press time, Pasco BCC chair/Dist. 3 Comm. Kathryn Starkey was to have met with both sides.

Meanwhile, Allen says that the dispute over the roadway, from her perspective, should be less about geographic borders and more about the thriving and ever-expanding number of businesses that are located on and near it.

“Our Board of Directors believes that we are entitled to just as much conversation with the county as the other people who have petitioned this,” Allen says. “We have businesses that have a strong interest in (all of) Wesley Chapel Blvd. remaining as it is.”

Allen says changing the name of the road could impact the businesses along that corridor by creating an intersection which would then need to include signs for S.R. 56, C.R. 54, S.R. 54, Wesley Chapel Blvd. and whatever new name is chosen for the southern extension.

“It is our (the WCCC’s) position that there not be an unnecessary change,” Allen says. “If it is a wanted change that has gone through a process, we will support that. But, we want to make sure the businesses in this area have the chance to voice their opinions, too.”

While TPO and businesses now under construction like Costco and Culver’s today have Lutz zip codes, Allen says those businesses were sold as “being in Wesley Chapel” and being on or near Wesley Chapel Blvd. helps them market themselves as such. In fact, she says, most of the marketing and advertising materials of nearby businesses use the name Wesley Chapel Blvd.

“Wesley Chapel has a brand, and a name that is appealing to business,’’ Allen says.

Graves says Land O’Lakes and Lutz have a brand as well. “It’s about identity, it’s about branding for us, too,’’ Graves says. “It’s about our history and our reality. This is about the county that did something for one area at the expense of another.”

The disagreement over Wesley Chapel Blvd. may have re-sparked an even bigger debate over community boundaries.

Graves also claims that Wesley Chapel’s boundaries appear to be malleable and based on incorrect census maps, and as a result continue to encroach on Land O’Lakes and Lutz.

“It’s a bigger issue,’’ Graves says. “We have a right to have a brand, too. You can’t create a map for your own agenda and expect people to say, ‘Okay, I’ll give all that up’”

As an example, much of the burgeoning development in the S.R. 56 corridor is credited as being located in Wesley Chapel even though all of the property located west of I-75 on both sides of S.R. 56 have Lutz addresses, meaning they have Lutz’s 33559 zip code.

Pasco officials have said the BCC will address the boundaries prior to considering a name change for Wesley Chapel Blvd. Meetings will be scheduled with the Land O’Lakes and Wesley Chapel communities and coordinated with the county’s Planning & Development Department in the hopes of bringing forward a boundary recommendation to the Board in March or April. Allen says the WCCC also would like to see the boundaries of Wesley Chapel more clearly defined.

Comm. Starkey is hosting a Town Hall meeting on Thur, Feb. 18, 6:30 p.m., at Holy Trinity Lutheran Church (20735 Leonard Rd., Lutz). It would be great to have some Wesley Chapel folks in attendance for that open-to-the-public event.

Interstate 75 at Overpass Road has reopened

All lanes at Overpass Road and southbound Interstate 75 (south of S.R. 5.2. at the 282 milepost) have been reopened this morning after a truck clipped the overpass Monday night and caused it and all northbound lanes to be closed last night.

According to the Florida Highway Patrol, Aubrey Reed, 60, of Brownwood, Texas, was towing a crane in his 2014 Peterbilt truck when he struck Overpass Road in Pasco County Monday evening, shortly after 5 p.m.

The damage was described as “severe” as inspectors were called out to assess. Around 9 p.m., Overpass Road was reopened as well as the inside northbound lane of I-75. The outside lane remained closed overnight.

Reed, who was not injured, was ticketed for an over-height load in his 2014 Peterbilt Truck, according to FHP.

New Tampa Rotary To Re-Launch ‘The Taste Of New Tampa’ In 2017!

An editorial by Gary Nager

It’s official! The Greater Wesley Chapel Chamber of Commerce (WCCC) has agreed to allow the Rotary Club of New Tampa — which meets Friday mornings for breakfast at Tampa Palms Golf & Country Club and which celebrated its 20th anniversary last month — to “take over” and resurrect the Taste of New Tampa, which was last held in Primrose Park in Tampa Palms in 2014.

The WCCC took over the right to put on the Taste in Feb. 2015, when the New Tampa Chamber of Commerce agreed to be absorbed by the Wesley Chapel Chamber.

Less than a year later, with the WCCC already having divested itself of its other major event — the Wesley Chapel Fall Festival (by turning it over to an event company) — WCCC CEO Hope Allen was happy to meet with New Tampa Rotary media honcho Karen Frashier earlier this month to discuss the possibility of the Rotary Club taking over what had been (for 20 years) the premier single-day event held in (and around) New Tampa.

I am proud to say that I helped facilitate and sat in on that meeting, where the two reached an agreement in principal that Frashier brought back to current New Tampa Rotary president Lesley Zajac, president-elect Brice Wolford and the rest of the club’s Board. The vote was unanimous, but while the agreement and trademark transfer still have to be finalized — “dotting all of the ‘i’s and crossing all of the ‘t’s,” as Zajac called it — the good news is that there will again be a Taste of New Tampa.

“Our Board members were very excited to move ahead with this opportunity to revive a very popular community event for our area,” Zajac said following the vote.

OK, So…When?

Zajac’s term as New Tampa Rotary president ends on July 1 of this year, when Wolford assumes the reins of the club. Sometime between now and then, after the agreement has been finalized, Wolford says it makes sense for the Rotary to host an initial meeting — that we will promote in these pages — to find out who is interested (in addition to yours truly) in being involved in what promises to be a six-to-eight-month plan to revive the event sometime in March (and no later than early April) 2017, at a site also to be determined.

That means the planning stage won’t start in earnest until Wolford takes over the presidency and the long-time New Tampa Rotarian says he’s excited to add a new spring-time event to pair with the club’s annual “Wiregrass Wobble Turkey Trot 5K,” the major annual fall event the club has hosted the last three years.

The Taste also will replace the New Tampa Rotary PigFest, which the New Tampa “Breakfast” Club ran for eight years, with the last one being held in 2012, as the Rotary Club’s major springtime event.

“We really appreciate the trust the Wesley Chapel Chamber has shown in us by allowing us to be the organization that revives the Taste,” Wolford said. “We see it as a tremendous complement to our fund-raising efforts for this community.”

I already promised the Rotary Board that I would be happy to once again help with attracting restaurants — which was my primary function for most of the 20 previous Tastes, although I also was the event chair or co-chair several times and a two-term president of the now-defunct New Tampa Community Council, which created the event in 1994. The Council ultimately became the New Tampa Chamber, which then put on the last few Tastes.

The bottom line? Considering the amazing work the New Tampa Rotary Club has done in not only the New Tampa community but also regionally and even internationally, I know the event I used to call “my baby” is once again destined for greatness.

Suncoast Arts on tap this weekend at Wiregrass mall

By Celeste McLaughlin

On Saturday and Sunday, the “main drag” through the Shops at Wiregrass – Paseo Drive – will again be filled with all kinds of art for the 11th annual Suncoast Arts Festival (SAF).

Created and produced by Fine Arts of the Suncoast, the Festival typically attracts about 100,000 people (photo from last year, right) over the two days of the event. About 125 fine artists and craftsmen will have their art on display, including sculpture, jewelry, painting, drawing and even sidewalk chalk art.

“Artists travel here from all over the country,” says Jennifer Douglas, who owns Jennifer Lee Events, which is managing this year’s festival. “They’re coming to participate in our juried competition, which will award $10,000 in prizes.”

Kids can participate in the free hands-on art garden, with activities and take-home crafts throughout the weekend, and can complete a scavenger hunt to earn prizes. There also will be an art “makerspace,” a creative place for older kids. According to Douglas, the makerspace environment helps kids, “understand the symbiotic relationship between art and technology, and shows them how art translates into many areas of our lives.”

This year’s “Chalk Walk” will be the first to feature only professional street artists. In the past, the Chalk Walk has been an amateur competition, but this year, it’s a commissioned exhibit, sponsored by Tampa Bay Businesses for Culture & the Arts.

Other highlights of this year’s SAF include a glass-etching experience and an emerging artists exhibit, where artwork by Pasco County high school students will be on display.

Entertainment will be provided all weekend long at the main stage across from Macy’s, with headliners De Lei’ed Parrots and The Black Honkeys.

Proceeds from the Festival are donated to Pasco County schools through the Fine Arts of the Suncoast’s grant program. Any teacher in a Pasco County school (public, private, or charter) can apply for these grants for any fine or performing arts discipline, including dance and music, to supplement art programs in the school, giving students special experiences beyond their school’s typical curriculum. Recipients of the 2016 grants will be announced at the festival on Sunday.

For more information, visit SuncoastArtsFest.com.

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Kumquats Return To Dade City!

Downtown Dade City’s always-fun 19th-annual Kumquat Festival will be held on Saturday, January 30, 9 a.m.-5 p.m.

“It’s real, authentic, old Florida featuring a unique and funky little fruit,” says John Moors, executive director of the Greater Dade City Chamber of Commerce, which puts on the event.

Kumquats are small citrus fruits grown near Dade City. Moors says this year’s crop is plentiful and is being harvested now, in advance of the Festival.

With more than 425 vendors and 40 sponsors, historic downtown Dade City will be transformed to include arts and crafts, a car and truck show, live local entertainment, a farmer’s market and all kinds of kumquat pies and products.

“Our vendors offer a wide variety of interesting, eclectic, and homemade items,” says Moors. “And, of course, all of our shops and restaurants will be open.”

About 40,000 people attended last year (photo), and Moors expects that this year’s Festival will attract a similar crowd. He says Dade City’s downtown has new restaurants, including a Mediterranean/Greek restaurant and a cigar lounge, which complement the great southern food people have come to expect in the quaint old town.

And, those who attend the Festival will see another sign of downtown revitalization, with the opening of a new City Hall and police headquarters this month.

Admission and parking are free, and free transportation also is provided from multiple satellite lots. New this year, Moors says vendors will offer their kumquat pies for sale in the parking lots, so guests can purchase theirs right before they head home and not have to carry their pies around during the event.

For more info, see the ad on this page or visit DadeCityChamber.org.

Once bitten, but not shy, boy back at school after snake encounter

Sabrina Mize was watching her 8-year-old son Dylan jumping on a trampoline in a friend’s backyard in Quail Hollow before he jumped off to chase a ball barefoot through the grass.

A few seconds later, he was running towards her.

“Mom, I got bit by a snake,’’ he told her.

Sabrina didn’t believe it at first.

“Did he just say what I thought he said?,’’ she thought.

Sure enough, upon further inspection, Dylan’s left ankle had two small, but very defined, puncture marks.

While Dylan had snake venom in his veins, Sabrina must have had ice water running through hers.

After getting some ice for his foot, she went hunting for the snake, hoping to identify it and praying it wasn’t poisonous. About a foot-and-a-half long, she found it where her son had likely stepped on it, prompting the bite. She inched closer, within ten feet or so, and snapped a quick picture of the red-and-orange-colored snake on her cell phone before returning to her son.

All the while, she stayed calm, cool and collected.

“Because my son was calm, I was calm,’’ Sabrina says. “He was upset when I went to go find the snake, but that was really it.”

Sabrina sent the picture to a friend, asking if she knew what kind of a snake it was. That’s when Facebook sprung into action.

Shortly after her friend took the photo and posted it on the more-than- 8,000-member-strong Wesley Chapel Community Facebook page, local animal specialist Chris Wirt (we featured him in our issue dated October 24, 2015) received a message on his cellphone. He had been tagged in the Facebook post.

There is a friendly, running joke on the Facebook page about snakes and Wirt, the former Wesley Chapel resident who owns A All Animal Control of Tampa Bay. It seems like at least once a week, someone in the Wesley Chapel Community is tagging him and hoping he can identity some creature that has camped out on someone’s porch or driveway to help determine the level of danger to the home’s inhabitants and pets.

And, it doesn’t just happen on the Wesley Chapel Community page. Wirt estimates that he receives five requests a day calling on his expertise with all kinds of critters from across the Bay area.

In this case, Wirt knew the snakebite was nothing to trifle with — he replied that Dylan had been bitten by a cottonmouth, a highly venomous type of water moccasin.

Sabrina already was at Florida Hospital Wesley Chapel (FHWC) when she received the news, about an hour after Dylan had been bit. Dylan was then transported to Florida Hospital Tampa because it has inpatient pediatric beds (FHWC does not). There, he was treated with anti-venin to combat the dangerous bite.

Sometimes, anti-venin isn’t necessary, even when the victim is bitten by a venomous snake. According to the Tampa Poison Center website, 25 percent of snakebites are “dry bites,” where no venom is introduced to the body.

In Dylan’s case, the swelling had worsened, and had moved up his leg and was now creeping up the back of his calf. Sabrina said the bottom half of his leg “blew up so much you couldn’t touch the skin; it was so tight and so hard.”

Dylan received a treatment of antivenin at 8 p.m. His body reacted well to it, so he received two more treatments over the next twelve hours.

Sometimes, like in the case of Hope Allen, the Greater Wesley Chapel Chamber of Commerce president, more drastic measures are required. In 2014, Allen was bitten by a pygmy rattlesnake — which Wirt says is the most common snake he comes across in Wesley Chapel — and required 18 vials of anti-venin and a five-day stay at FHWC, including two in the Intensive Care Unit.

“(Dylan) might have only gotten a little tiny bite of the venom,’’ Wirt said. “But if you don’t pay attention to what’s going on and keep running around or whatever, it could start eating away at the muscle or nerve…and it could absolutely be fatal. The 5-to-6 deaths we see every year, though, are usually because the people bit are someplace where they can’t get medical care.”

After two days in the hospital, Tampa Poison Control cleared the Veterans Elementary second-grader for a Wednesday release. The hospital kept him an additional night, just to be safe.

Sabrina said Dylan, who returned to school last week and is now off crutches, was probably more upset about the extra night in the hospital than he was about getting bitten by the cottonmouth.

On Thursday, Dylan was cleared by his doctors and left the hospital in a wheelchair.

The next day, he was back at the same friend’s house, whose yard had been cleared and treated for free by Wirt. Dylan spent most of New Year’s Eve sitting in a chair with his leg elevated, holding a stick wrapped in the skin of the snake that bit him, compliments of a neighbor who had killed it.

Wirt is currently offering his snake service for $175 (it normally costs $250), which includes clearing the yard of any snake dens or nests and treating the perimeter of the yard and the house. He can be reached at tampa@aallanimalcontrol, or visit AAllAnimalControl.com/tampa.