Shops at Wiregrass Mall Offers Diversity With Latest Offerings

Vom Fass casks.
Vom Fass casks. Shops at Wiregrass Mall .
Vom Fass casks, coming soon to the Shops at Wiregrass Mall.

The Shops at Wiregrass mall in Wesley Chapel will welcome a handful of new stores in the coming months, and while Wiregrass officials aren’t looking to compete with bigger malls like Westfield Brandon, the latest batch of new choices for area shoppers gives the local mall a unique mix that general manager Greg Lenners thinks will continue to make it a prime destination.

Currently seeking an alcohol permit for tastings, Vom Fass is slated to open sometime this spring. Construction already has begun on the store, which will be near Macy’s and the mall’s Center Court.

Vom Fass, which takes it’s name from the German phrase “from the cask”, will offer premium culinary oils, traditional balsamic oils and vinegars, vinegar specialties, and exclusive fruit balsamic vinegars, as well as rare spirits and liqueurs and a boutique selection of wines. Many of the store’s products are cask-aged and stored in cask pyramids.

“What’s made us great for the community is the diverse mix of retailers we’ve always carried here,’’ Lenners said. “It’s kind of a unique blend of stores. We thought Vom Fass would be a perfect fit. No one in the area that has that kind of store.”

This will be the seventh Von Fass store in Florida; the closest ones are located in Sarasota and St. Petersburg.

Candy, 3D And More On Tap For Shops at Wiregrass Mall

Rocket Fizz Soda Pop & Candy Shop also is coming this spring, to Suite #115, near JC Penney.

Founded in 2007 in California, Rocket Fizz has become the largest and fastest-growing soda and candy shop brand in the country, according to its website. The 74 stores nationwide all offer a massive selection of candy, soda, retro and gag gifts, concert and movie posters and tin signs.

“A pretty cool concept, in my opinion,’’ Lenners said. “It’s got a 1950s, specialty convenience store feel to it.”

3D Musketeers Printing, offering custon color-printed three-dimensional figurines, is expected to open by the end of the month.

And as we were the first to report back in January, this fall will see the Wesley Chapel debut of Irish 31. The popular restaurant is referred to as “The People’s Pub” by their customers and dubbed “Irish-plus-gourmet” by Neighborhood News publisher and foodie Gary Nager.

Irish31 in Hyde Park. Shops at Wiregrass Mall.
Irish31 in Hyde Park. Construction has begun on a location at the Shops at Wiregrass Mall.

Irish 31 is being built next to Panera Bread. Lenners said he thinks the mall has already hit a home run with its food offerings, and Irish 31 only strengthens that opinion.

Visionworks, which has roughly 700 optical retail stores in 40 states, is expected to open this fall as well. Construction has begun on the building, which will be across from Moe’s Southwest Grill on the S.R. 56 side of the mall.

Another tenant will share that property (though Lenners was unable to announce it at our press time because the lease hasn’t been signed).

A few stores that have recently opened include Lola Perfume, located in Suite #160 (next to Hollister), and Soleciety Sneaker Boutique,which sells collectible athletic shoes from around the globe, in Suite #170 (next to Zales), and has only been open a few weeks.

For more information about the Shops at Wiregrass, visit TheShopsAtWiregrass.com.

Would Incorporating Wesley Chapel As A City Be Of Interest To You?

Russ Miller. Wesley Chapel Incorporation
Russ Miller

When Ernie Monaco, the director of planning for Pasco County, tossed out the idea — during a meeting to discuss borders — to representatives from the Greater Wesley Chapel Chamber of Commerce (WCCC) last month that they might want to revisit the idea of incorporation, he got the attention of Russ Miller.

“I was surprised to hear that from a county employee,’’ said Miller, often credited with creating the WCCC, although he says he was one of six co-founders, “just the loudest.”

The mention of incorporation took Miller, who was at the meeting to discuss Wesley Chapel’s boundaries, on a trip down memory lane.

In 2003, Miller and fellow WCCC member Jim Williams led a charge to incorporate Wesley Chapel, hoping to turn the quickly-growing Census Designated Place (CDP) into a full-fledged city, with its own government and its own rules, particularly in the areas of land use and zoning.

The incorporated municipality (which can be referred to as a city, town or village) of Wesley Chapel would have extended eight miles east and west from Cypress Creek Rd. to Morris Bridge Rd., and eight miles north and south from County Line Rd. to Elam Rd. (which is roughly three miles north of S.R. 54).

The proposed municipality would have included all of the developments in Wesley Chapel at the time — Lexington Oaks, Meadow Pointe, Northwood, Quail Hollow, New River Township, Saddlebrook and Seven Oaks.

Miller, who lived in Wesley Chapel from 1981-2009 before moving to Palatka, hired a firm to help with a feasibility study.

The effort, which at the time would have taken 11 percent of Pasco County’s land area and included 28,000 residents and 10,000 homes, didn’t get very far and ultimately failed.

Miller said the developers and local daily newspapers were against it, and time was short to get a referendum approved ahead of the 2004 elections.

Also, the idea of another layer of property taxes (to fund a potential city government) did not appeal to some residents, especially since Pasco was already requesting a 1-cent increase in the county sales tax to be on the 2004 ballot.

Even the WCCC effectively came out against incorporation.

“We were just a group of lay people who saw a benefit in incorporating Wesley Chapel,’’ Miller said. “But, we didn’t have the money to fight the developers and the people in the community who were against it, and we got negative press. I have people still say to me, ‘Why did you stop?’ Now, they’re sorry.”

Miller says he just recently threw out all of the paperwork from that failed attempt. However, he still thinks incorporation is the way to go, and doing so would surely settle the long-standing border dispute with Lutz-Land O’Lakes.

“It’s never bad to control your own destiny,’’ Miller says. “Residents get a total say on how the community’s future will look. Now, where is the power? The county government. And where are they located? West Pasco controls it.”

Could a Wesley Chapel incorporation effort succeed today?

In Pasco, 450,000 of the county’s 490,000 residents live in unincorporated areas, meaning decisions about their land, police and schools are made by the county government.

Pasco County only has six municipalities: the cities of New Port Richey, Port Richey, San Antonio, Dade City, Zephyrhills and the town of Saint Leo.

In the 2010 census, Wesley Chapel’s population was listed at 44,092, a number that has grown and at the time was already nearly three times greater than the next largest city (New Port Richey, 14,934) and more populous than all of the other cities and towns put together.

“Had we succeeded, Wesley Chapel (today) would be the biggest and most powerful city in the entire county,’’ Miller laments.

While the WCCC came out against the incorporation efforts in 2003, none of those members are among the more than 500 the Chamber claims today.

“We don’t have an official stance,’’ says WCCC CEO Hope Allen, but she said it may be revisited by the Chamber’s current Board of Directors.

Pulling off incorporation won’t necessarily be any easier today. It takes money and lawyers, a feasibility study that can take up to two years to complete and will need the support of the local State legislative delegation, who would then bring it to the full state legislature, which could then approve it through a special act and put it on a referendum on the ballot.

“I saw an awful lot of interest from the chamber leaders two weeks ago,’’ Miller says about the Feb. 19 meeting. “If they were serious, and wanted to spend the money to promote it, I’d give it a 50-50 chance. But, it’s got to be sold to the residents. And, you need a cast iron stomach and the financial wherewithal to fight the battles.

He adds, “I absolutely would like to live long enough to see the day when Wesley Chapel is incorporated!”

Hotels, another movie theater on the way for Wesley Chapel area

hyatt-place copy
A Hyatt Place-Wesley Chapel, like the one pictured above at the Tampa International Airport, is coming soon to the area.

Where there is room to grow, there appears to be rooms growing, as the areas around the Tampa Premium Outlets, the Shops of Wiregrass mall, Florida’s soon-to-be-largest ice skating facility, a potential indoor sports facility and a host of other new retail projects is helping spur the growth of hotels and much-needed hotel rooms along S.R. 56 in the Wesley Chapel area.

“We have five hotels moving through the permitting process,’’ Ed Caum, Pasco’s tourism manager says.

Impact Properties is the latest looking to grab some of the expected hospitality dollars, with plans to build a six-story, 130-room Hyatt Place-Wesley Chapel in the Cypress Creek Town Center Development of Regional Impact (DRI) on the west corner of S.R. 56 and Wesley Chapel Blvd., located at the east end of Sierra Center Rd.

According to its website, Impact’s properties include the 255-room Westin Tampa Bay on the Courtney Campbell Causeway and the Castillo Real Resort in St. Augustine, FL, as well as the Cypress Ridge Professional Center on Cypress Ridge Blvd. in Wesley Chapel.

The only hotel currently serving the S.R. 56 corridor is the Hampton Inn & Suites Tampa-Wesley Chapel off S.R. 56 (next to the under-construction Florida Hospital Center Ice {FHCI} facility), which has 94 guest rooms.

Overall, the county’s hotel occupancy rate is around 70 percent, said Caum.

“If we’re at 75 percent capacity, new development will happen,’’ he said. “That’s why we’re seeing the development.”

Caum said the average daily rate of a hotel room in Pasco County in December was $82.79, an increase from last year’s average of $78.29. In 2015, Pasco County reached a new “Bed Tax” high, collecting $968,263 between October 1, 2014 and September 31, 2015.

Here are the hotels on the way on and near S.R. 56:

• Brightwork Real Estate is planning to build a 100-room hotel at the northwest corner of S.R. 54 and Wesley Chapel Blvd. in Land O’Lakes, across from the Tampa Premium Outlets.

• A Holiday Inn Express & Suites will be built just east of I-75, west and south of the Florida Hospital Center Ice (FHCI) that is planned to open later this year. The Holiday Inn will have 80 rooms.

• A Hilton Garden Inn has been proposed for S.R. 56 and Silver Maple Pkwy. in the Wiregrass Ranch DRI, west of Bruce B. Downs (BBD) Blvd. The Hilton will be six stories tall and will have 125 rooms.

• A 92-room Fairfield Inn & Suites is expected to complement the potential indoor sports complex in the Wiregrass Ranch DRI, which we’ve reported about several times over the last year or so.

Caum said the Urban Land Institute, a 501(c) (3) nonprofit research and education organization that focuses on land use and real estate development, issued a report two years ago saying that Pasco would experience an annual growth in hotel rooms of about 75 a year through 2020. “And, we are bearing that out,’’ Caum says.

The reason for the growth is due in part, Caum says, to the county’s waiving of transportation fees for builders, saving them up to $100,000. “The incentive is definitely working,’’ he says.

Movie Theater To Be Part Of Wiregrass Mall Expansion

The Grove in Wesley Chapel has a movie theater, as does New Tampa.

Now, in between those two established theaters, a new multiplex is expected to be part of the next phase of development at the Shops of Wiregrass mall.

A 1,035-seat cinema is being planned by Cleveland-based developer Forest City Enterprises as part of a residential and commercial project to be located just east of the existing mall. Forest City is currently seeking permitting for the movie theater project, which does not yet have a name.

The 39,000-sq.-ft. theater will be on the west side of the new development along S.R. 56, which will also include 249 upscale apartments, four restaurants ranging in size from 4,200 sq. ft. to 12,000 sq. ft, a specialty grocery store (one of four coming to our area we told you about in our last issue), as well as other yet-unnamed retail stores.

Here We Go Again — Politicians To Debate Kinnan St./Mansfield Blvd. Link

kinnanThe infamous and befuddling barricades (photo) blocking Mansfield Blvd. in Meadow Pointe from Kinnan St. in the K-Bar Ranch/Live Oak Preserve area of New Tampa continue to stand as the area’s most notorious roadblock. But, whereas the barricades themselves have had zero movement in years, that can no longer be said of talks to remove them.

Pasco County District 2 commissioner Mike Moore and Hillsborough County District 7 City Council member Lisa Montelione sat down for a conversation last month and the two have agreed to re-open discussions to resolve the long-standing Kinnan-Mansfield impasse.

“Lisa and I met and had a great conversation,’’ Moore said. “We agreed to sit down with both of our sides either the first or second week in March. Obviously, there’s a lot of work to get through, but we both agree we want to do what is best for the region and the citizens.”

Montelione placed tackling the Kinnan/Mansfield dilemma — which, if resolved, would give Wesley Chapel and New Tampa drivers an alternative north/south route to Bruce B. Downs (BBD) Blvd. (and the two-lane Morris Bridge Rd.) — on her list of things to do in 2016. She sent a letter, dated Jan. 21, to the Pasco County Board of County Commissioners (BCC) in the hopes of sparking a new debate.

Moore, however, already had agreed to meet with Montelione before the letter even arrived. He said his first priority has been seeing that the S.R. 56 extension was approved, but once that was settled, he was going to set his sights on Kinnan/Mansfield.

“There are a lot of people for (the Kinnan-Mansfield connection),’’ he said, “but a lot of people have concerns.”

Moore said he will be accompanied at the meeting by Pasco County administrator Michelle Baker, assistant county attorney David Goldstein and Ali Atefi, Pasco’s transportation engineer.

A Scary Situation…

In her letter to the Pasco BCC, Montelione laid out the human side of the City of Tampa’s case for removing the barricades. She wrote that in early November of 2015, K-Bar Ranch (located off Morris Bridge Rd. in New Tampa, just south of the Pasco line) resident Otto Schloeter was cooking lunch for his family when a pan caught fire and severely burned his arm.

The 9-1-1 call from a cell phone ended up going to a tower in Wesley Chapel. The Pasco County 9-1-1 Dispatch Center transferred the call to Hillsborough County Fire Dispatch, which then alerted the wrong Hillsborough County station — nearly 20 miles away — in Thonotasassa, when there are two Tampa Fire Rescue stations (Nos. 21 & especially 22, which is only a mile or so from Morris Bridge Rd.) on Cross Creek Blvd. that are both only a few minutes away from K-Bar.

Hillsborough County’s fire truck eventually made it to Schloeter’s, and called in a Tampa Fire Rescue ambulance.

Due to the confusion, it took nearly two hours to get an actual ambulance to Chloeter and get him from his home in New Tampa to the emergency room at Tampa General Hospital.

While Montelione suggests that more updated emergency responder technology be implemented near the border of New Tampa (which has both unincorporated Hillsborough and City of Tampa communities) and Wesley Chapel, she also says that the pathways that should be connecting counties and cities should be open and as easily accessible as possible.

If Kinnan St. and Mansfield Blvd. had been connected, Montelione wrote, Pasco County Emergency Service Station 26 in Meadow Pointe would have been recognized as the closest station:

“With the mutual aid agreement between our governments, I believe it is fair to say that the completion of this road could have prevented Mr. Schloeter from waiting 45 minutes for emergency responders.”

A similar argument was put forward in 2012 by John Thrasher, the CEO of Excel Music (located in the Cory Lake Isles Professional Center on Cross Creek Blvd.). Thrasher organized and submitted a petition with 61 signatures representing roughly 40 businesses on both sides on the county line, to the City of Tampa attorney’s office urging for the completion of the Kinnan/Mansfield connection.

“This is not only about commerce and convenience, but in an area of wildfires, sinkholes, floods and hurricanes, it is a matter of public safety to provide citizens with as many routes as possible in and out of an area,” Thrasher wrote.

The issue of connecting Kinnan St. to Mansfield Blvd has been mired in dispute since the 2,000-ft.-long roadway was paved north to the county line in 2007 by the developer of Live Oak Preserve in New Tampa.

In November of 2012, Goldstein reached out to the City of Tampa attorney’s office about Kinnan/Mansfield and laid out of a list of Pasco’s requirements — which included a commitment from the City and/or K-Bar to pay for traffic-calming improvements at the intersection of Mansfield Blvd. and Beardsley Dr. (which runs along the southern border of Meadow Pointe), as well as at Mansfield Blvd. and Wrencrest Dr. to the north, with a funding commitment by Pasco capped at no more than $500,000.

Those requirements were rejected by Julia Mandell, senior assistant attorney for the City of Tampa, in February of 2013.

Thrasher’s petition a month later also failed to bring about any action.

One of Pasco’s requirements from 2012, however, could be part of any new 2016 negotiations. Pasco asked for four lanes of right of way, or land on which to construct the “Beardsley Extension,” which would link Beardsley Dr. east to Morris Bridge Rd. and take some of the traffic pressure off Mansfield Blvd.

Montelione did not comment on the specifics of the Beardsley Dr. request from 2012, but is open to the extension if the two sides can agree to terms. She did say that it seems unlikely that a Kinnan/Mansfield agreement can be negotiated without the Beardsley Extension being a part of the deal.

Moore says that after years of failed attempts, though, he has hopes for success in 2016.

“I feel good about it,’’ he says.

Saying ‘Good Bye’ (Sort Of) To Former PHSC Provost Dr. Stanley Giannet

By Gary Nager

Dr Stanley GiannetAlthough we chatted several times since we first met a little less than two years ago, the picture on this page of Dr. Stanley Giannet, Ph.D., the now-former Provost of the Porter Campus at Wiregrass Ranch of Pasco Hernando State College (PHSC), is how I remember him best — with a microphone in his hand, captivating anyone from his 3,000 or so students at the Porter Campus to emceeing the 2014 Wesley Chapel Rotary Spelling Bee, as he actually was in the photo.

Thankfully, “Dr. Stan” (as I like to call him) isn’t gone forever or really gone at all — he simply got another job with PHSC. In January, Dr. Giannet assumed the role of Vice President of Academic Affairs & Faculty Development/College Provost for all of PHSC.

In that new, “global” role, he says, “I am now overseeing curriculum and every element relevant to the academic programs at PHSC. “All of our campus provosts now report to and interface with me.”

The good-bye part has to do with the fact Dr. Stan is now based at PHSC’s West Campus in New Port Richey.

“But, I’ll have districtwide responsibilities, so I’m still involved in the academic programs and running all of the activities for all five PHSC campuses.”

Even so, he admits, “The Porter Campus and the Wesley Chapel community are very dear and important to me. We’ve done phenomenal things together and I’m proud to say that I know Dr. (Bonnie) Clark (see previous page) — whom I’ve worked with before (at PHSC’s North Campus in Brooksville) — will make sure that the Porter Campus continues to thrive.”

He notes that Dr. Clark’s ascension to VP of Distance Education for all PHSC online programs now gives the school, “A true online division. I really look forward to working with her in her new role. It’s a wonderful opportunity for all of PHSC to grow.”

Although it’s hard to not give Dr. Giannet a lot of the credit for the success of the Porter Campus, the former Honorary Mayor of Wesley Chapel and “Business Leader of the Year” for the Greater Wesley Chapel Chamber of Commerce says that. “The team I’ve been fortunate to assemble is what has made {the campus} such a successful place. The team makes this beautiful campus — which is an architectural marvel — come to life. I will miss the team and, of course, the students.”

He adds that he wants to express, “my deepest gratitude to the Wesley Chapel community for the warm reception they’ve provided me and for the level of dynamism of this community.”

The always-sharply-dressed and eloquent Dr. Giannet says that, the growth of the local business community will benefit not only the Wesley Chapel area itself but also the Porter Campus. “And, we know we will continue to grow and work hard to continue serving the needs of the business community in Wesley Chapel,” he says.

Hitting Some Highlights

Although he says he knew the Porter Campus — which graduated its first four-year degree student last semester — would be a success, Dr. Giannet was proud to have been part of the nearly doubling of the student population in two short years.

“The Porter Campus had 3,000 students as of the last (Fall of 2015) semester,” he says. “We were happy to open with 1,800 students when we opened for the Spring 2014 semester.”

Dr. Stan also says that PHSC’s Porter Campus still has two more phases of potential future expansion planned and room for that growth adjacent to the existing building. He notes that as he leaves the Wesley Chapel-based campus, “We have classes with very few gaps and very few spaces for more students, although the campus is not maxed out…at least not yet.”