The Ever-Changing Landscape In The Chap; Plus, My Take On ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’

For those of you who remember (as I do) when Wesley Chapel’s “hotel scene” was Saddlebrook Resort and no others, and the restaurant scene included only Denny’s (which actually was located inside a motel), Waffle House and Brewmasters, it’s easy to get caught up in the hype that is “The Chap” these days.

Yes, almost all of the new restaurants that have been opening on Bruce B. Downs (BBD) and S.R.s 56 & 54 are chains, but many of them are at least chains I had never tried before — including MOD Pizza, Walk-On’s Bistreaux & Bar and even our under-construction Earth Fare grocery store — and the hotel scene continues to add not just more hotel rooms but some really nice, upscale, tourist-friendly places to not only stay, but also enjoy some really great food.

The North Tampa Bay Chamber “Celebrating Excellence in Business” awards gala at the new Hyatt Place Hotel & Sierra Conference Center was the first time I sampled the hotel’s catering fare and it was pretty good. I enjoyed the crusted fried chicken on the bone, grits and collared greens, as well as both the salad with raspberry vinaigrette dressing and the muffin-cup-sized mousse for dessert, which was available in both chocolate and strawberry.

Even better, however (at least in one editor’s opinion), is the Garden Grille & Bar at the new Hilton Garden Inn (located across both S.R. 56 and I-75 from the Hyatt Place), which celebrated its official Grand Opening on Oct. 7, with everything from housemade egg rolls and fried wontons to a beef tenderloin carving station and most impressive of all, a pasta station featuring four delicious offerings — one with ground sausage and spinach, another a putanesca style, one a unique primavera and the last was fettuccine with white clam sauce. The clams (thankfully, I’ve never had my shellfish allergy to them, at least not yet) and the sausage pastas were my favorites, but all four were served al dente and they were all excellent. Really.

That gives me even more hope for the next major hotel with a restaurant on the horizon — the Marriott-branded Residence Inn that hopefully will soon begin construction off S.R. 56 in Wiregrass Ranch, adjacent to the new RADD Sports indoor sports complex (see page 1). The Residence Inn will not only have a full-service restaurant, but also Wesley Chapel’s first rooftop bar. The hotel is being developed by the same Mainsail Lodging & Development folks who developed not only the Epicurean Hotel in South Tampa, but also recently renovated the beautiful-again and historic Fenway Hotel in Dunedin, which now features the Hew Chophouse that Jannah and I will be sampling sometime soon.

In other words, the dining scene in Wesley Chapel is going to continue to evolve and will give those of us who live and/or work here a lot more reasons not to leave The Chap.

Have You Seen ‘Bohemian Rhapsody?’

I was living on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in the 1980s when I first really saw with my own eyes how many men and women there are sharing this planet with us who were attracted to people of the same sex.

I’m not going to lie, I was shocked when I first saw two men kissing on the street, as well as some of the flamboyant “costumes” and makeup some of them wore. I even assumed that lifestyle was actually a creepy “choice” they made.

Even more shocking to me around that same time was when I found out I had not only friends, but also members of my family, who were gay. Worst of all for me (and many other heteros) was that also was when the AIDS epidemic first took hold in the U.S., primarily in the homosexual male population. So, it was easy for some people to hate on those we blamed for turning the “Free Love” generation of the late-’60s and early ’70s into the “must use condoms” generation of the ’80s in one fell swoop.

My sister Bonnie was working as an intensive care Registered Nurse at Lenox Hill Hospital in Manhattan from 1982-85, when the first AIDS patients, largely in New York, San Francisco and other major cities, began dying from it. It was a scary time and it was easy to blame the gays, even though they also were fully responsible for re-energizing previously blighted neighborhoods like the West Village and others.

But, the thing that really turned my attitude towards homosexuals around was the rock music of that era. If geniuses (please don’t even try to argue that fact) like David Bowie, Mick Jagger and Elton John (I was never a fan of the latter) were reputedly at least bisexual, I was willing to stop judging those who loved the same music I did who also happened to be gay or bi.

So, when it was first announced that the late Freddy Mercury of the rock group Queen had AIDS, I was as heartbroken as I was when L.A. Lakers star Magic Johnson (who is still alive today) announced that he was HIV-positive.

As chronicled in the Oscar-worthy new movie “Bohemian Rhapsody,” Freddy (portrayed by Rami Malek, right) was another musical genius who at first tried to pass himself off as hetero.

But, Mr. Mercury truly was more than just another gay rock star. His music forced millions of heteros who were literally dancing in the aisles at Queen concerts to accept that just because someone was gay, it didn’t mean they didn’t have talents and abilities that could transcend the hatred so many automatically felt towards them, if those folks didn’t think their sexuality alone made them bad people.

I hope those who are still certain that everyone who is LGBTQ is “diseased” and “all going to hell” will see the movie, sing along to Queen’s hits with Malek and at least try to understand that someone would have to have other serious mental problems to choose that life.

Three New Hotels Add Heat To Wesley Chapel’s Business Climate

The six-story, 125-room Hilton Garden Inn on Silver Maple Pkwy. will open this summer. 

For years, Pasco County has grappled with attracting tourists and giving them a place to stay.

Florida Hospital Center Ice (FHCI) and a planned RADD Sports Wiregrass Ranch Sports Complex, as well as the Tampa Premium Outlets (TPO), the Shops at Wiregrass mall, the massive “connected city” project and dozens of local restaurants will help take care of attracting visitors.

In a few months, a long-standing problem of finding beds for all of those visitors’ heads will be solved as well.

During the months of June and July, Wesley Chapel expects to see three new hotels open along the burgeoning S.R. 56 corridor, joining the Holiday Inn & Suites that opened last year next to FHCI (and the Hampton Inn & Suites, which has been open for many years).

“The two industries (tourism and hospitality) go hand in hand,” says Hope Allen, the CEO of the North Tampa Bay (formerly Greater Wesley Chapel) Chamber of Commerce. “It’s almost like you can’t have one without the other.”

Barring any weather delays, a six-story, 125-room Hilton Garden Inn on Silver Maple Pkwy., across S.R. 56 from FHCI, is scheduled to open in June, a 92-room Fairfield Inn & Suites is expected to open in June or July a few miles to the east (in the Wiregrass Ranch development), and the six-story, 132-room Hyatt Place Hotel & Convention Center will open in July at the Cypress Creek Town Center across from TPO.

The newest hotels have all been planned since late 2015.

The Hyatt Place Hotel & Convention Center

Impact Properties is building the Hyatt Place, and recently hosted a “topping off” event to show off its progress. Impact just began building the $24-million hotel last summer. The Hyatt Place will share the north side of S.R. 56 with a host of new restaurants and retailers (see story on page 6).

The conference center addition fills another area need, says District 2 Pasco County commissioner Mike Moore. “This is going to be a great development all around,” Moore said during the Hyatt Place event. “When you talk about a convention center, that has been something that has been a big need in Pasco County, especially on the east side. You won’t have a problem keeping it full.”

Impact president Dilip Kanji said he has had his eyes on the Cypress Creek location for years, patiently waiting for the right moment.

“I’ve been looking at Wesley Chapel since 2012,” Kanji says, citing the Cypress Creek Town Center’s permitting woes dating back to 2007. “If you remember, (our interest) goes back to the days when the mall was going to go there, the problems with the wetlands and the Army Corps of Engineers, all that stuff, so we just kept looking. But, Wesley Chapel has arrived, Pasco County has arrived, everyone wants to be here. We had an idea for what we wanted to do; we were just waiting for the right time.”

Kanji said his company also eyed the Shops at Wiregrass mall and Florida Hospital Wesley Chapel areas in Wiregrass, as well as the area near FHCI (where the Holiday Inn Express is today).

“There’s been the potential (for a hotel) in the area, but the place we always wanted to be was on that (the west) side of the interstate,” he said.

A Little History…

Impact Properties was founded in 1981, two years after Kanji, a biochemist at the time, visited San Francisco and stayed at a family-run hotel that he fell in love with. He decided, without the benefit of any business schooling or real estate courses, to enter the business.

Impact Properties president Dilip Kanji

“I never stepped in a lab again, and never looked back,” said Kanji, who works closely with brother and VP Nash Kanji, whom he describes as a construction “whiz.” They started with a small motel in Gainesville that Kanji says his attorney at the time joked was known as a “no-tell motel.” Since then, Impact Properties has grown into an award-winning development company, owning and managing more than 25 hotels, and was awarded the key to the City of Tampa by then-Mayor Dick Greco for developing the Hilton Garden Inn in Ybor City, the first hotel to be built in the historic district in more than 100 years.

Impact Properties currently owns a hotel in Gainesville, two in Jacksonville and two in Tampa, including The Westin on Westshore Blvd.

The company also is developing a hotel in Treasure Island, FL, in addition to the Wesley Chapel location, which Kanji says is one of the most coveted areas around.

Speaking Of Hot…

Kanji says people have asked him if he’s building his next hotel in downtown Tampa or St. Petersburg, and when he tells them no, they ask why, because those are the hot areas.

“I don’t even go where it’s already hot,” Kanji says. “We identify an emerging area, growth areas that are going to be hot. And, we get there first.”

He says that was his plan when he built a hotel in Brandon years ago, the first he says to do so on the old I-75 bypass. “The interchange wasn’t even working,” he says. “We identified where Brandon was going — it was the bedroom community of Tampa — and we identified that area as hot. We got there first. There were growing pains. We did not hit our numbers the first year or two. But, we said we will control the market.”

In the case of Wesley Chapel, however, Impact Properties will be entering a market that is already considered hot, and growing crowded quickly — landowner Bob Sierra said at the “topping” event that if the Hyatt Place is successful, Kanji has an option to build a second in the Cypress Creek Town center.

In addition to the three hotels set to open this summer, the RADD Sports Wiregrass Ranch Sports Complex – which could open in spring of 2019 — will have a 120-room Marriott-branded Residence Inn on site, and the Brightwork Crossing development north of S.R. 54/56 and west of C.R. 54/Wesley Chapel Blvd. has stated plans in 2016 to build an unnamed hotel with up to 150 rooms on that site.

Also, plans were filed with the county in August for a proposed, also-unnamed  160,000-sq.-ft. hotel to be located behind the Walgreens at the S.R. 54 and Bruce B. Downs Blvd. intersection.

A report in 2016 by consultants analyzing the potential for a sports complex in Wesley Chapel pointed out the lack of hotel rooms in the area. And, while it still made a sizable economic impact (estimated at $3-million a year), it has been believed that one of the main beneficiaries of the DICK’s National Lacrosse Championships held at Wesley Chapel District Park the last several years were nearby Hillsborough County hotels, such as those in New Tampa, which took in 60-75 percent of the tournament’s teams and visitors.

While saturation may become an issue, the new hotels are anticipated to help the county’s tourism efforts and fill tax coffers. The county approved doubling its tourist tax, or bed tax, from 2 to 4 percent last year.

“What you’re seeing in Pasco County is quality,” Moore said. “There is a lot of time and effort put into these projects. We’ll be getting rooms filled, heads in beds…and we appreciate the help. It helps us grow, and helps us bring in additional profits to the county.”