Pasco County has been here before. Can county leaders close the deal this time?
After past failures at luring an athletic complex to the Wesley Chapel area, the county is set to begin negotiations with RADDSPORTS after the Sarasota company was chosen to lead the way to a new indoor sports complex in the Wiregrass Ranch Development of Regional Impact (DRI).
RADDSPORTS was one of four companies to submit bids to build and operate the proposed complex, and was one of two finalists, along with Sports Facilities Management of Clearwater, to appear and give a presentation before a special selection committee on Sept. 30.
RADDSPORTS beat out Sports Facilities Management, and its Request for Proposal (RFP) was on the consent agenda at the Board of County Commissioners (BCC) meeting on Oct. 11, where it was accepted.
Pasco County staffers have begun the negotiating process with RADDSPORTS and the Porter family, which has donated 120 acres of the land for the Wiregrass Ranch indoor sports complex project.
“It’s exciting to see this move forward,’’ said Pasco commissioner Mike Moore of District 2, which includes the Wiregrass Ranch area. “I think this will be a great project.”
If a deal cannot be finalized with RADDSPORTS, the county could turn back to Sports Facilities Management.
RADDSPORTS is led by Richard Blalock, who was formerly a popular parks and recreation director credited for turning Newberry, FL into a sports tourism hotbed.
RADDSPORTS is partnering with Mainsail Development Group, Inc., which develops resorts and hotels. RADDSPORTS is proposing a $14-million, approximately 100,000-sq.-ft. indoor sports facility with eight basketball courts, plus a 100+ room hotel, an open-air amphitheater with event lawn, sports turf fields for soccer and other sports, trails and playgrounds.
The cost of the hotel would be $15 million, but the deal Pasco County has with the Porter family prohibits a hotel on the site and will need to be negotiated. A 92-room Fairfield Inn & Suites is being built on land sold by the Porters just south of the proposed facility off S.R. 56.
The outdoor amphitheater shell will accommodate 500 to 1,500 attendees for a variety of events such as concerts, festivals and theater performances. RADDSPORTS’ plan projects 36 events per each year’s nine-month season.
A second phase of the project will include baseball, soccer and other outdoor sports fields.
The company also proposed 700kw solar panels for the roof of the facility, which it says will produce 1,075 MwH of power annually, enough to offset current energy prices by $140,000 each year.
Sadly, the county has been here before. There have been three failed attempts since 2001 to build some sort of athletic complex, with proposed tennis, baseball and outdoor complexes somewhere in Wesley Chapel all falling short when none of the deals could be completed.
“I’m optimistic this time,’’ says tourism director Ed Caum, the program manager of Visit Pasco. “I was here for the last two and watched them go by the wayside, but I think there are more players at the table this time. And, we have great support from the (Wesley Chapel) Chamber of Commerce, which is really, really, really helpful.”
The last project to fail was a proposed baseball complex in the same area of Wiregrass Ranch in 2014, when a group led by former Major League Baseball star Gary Sheffield failed to secure financing for the project.
Since then, the county hired Johnson Consulting, which steered the conversation to an indoor facility that could serve not only Wesley Chapel, but would be a draw throughout the entire state, particularly central Florida.
“Here’s the beauty of an indoor facility,” Caum says. “The bottom line is hoteliers in the area have asked the sports commission and tourism folks to find a way to get people into rooms in July, August and September when it’s too hot to do outdoor sports. Indoors, there’s no rain, no lightning, no heat stroke. The stars have aligned. I think it’s the perfect fit for central Florida. All of central Florida is going to benefit from a facility like that.”
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