Tag: New Tampa

Feel At Home At Kiran Indian Grocery Store On Cross Creek Blvd.

With more than 8,000 items in a store of only 1,200 sq. ft., you might be surprised at the variety of products available at Kiran Indian Grocery. You’ll find everything from beauty products to Masala spice mixes and delicious chocolate, juices and cookies.

EVEN IF you’re not originally from the sub-continent of India, even if you’ve never really loved Indian food, I know you’ll find something you like or want or need if you visit the Kiran Indian Grocery, located on Cross Creek Blvd. in the Cross Creek Center plaza, next to Saffron Indian Cuisine.

The one thing I know for sure is that you won’t find better people than the owners, Kiran and Sudeer (photo on this page; I won’t even try to spell their last name correctly).

Although Kiran is the one who is almost always at the store, she gives credit to Sudeer, a software engineer who handles the books for the popular, albeit tiny (1,200-sq.-ft.) grocery for being “my support system, my partner.”

Theirs is a story of true love so unique that Sudeer wrote a novel (his first) about their life together called No Big Deal. If you think the Indian people are boring because they’re usually so polite and proper, read this book. Sudeer approaches their often difficult life together with the same genuine sweetness and sense of humor he and his wife always show in person.

What About The Store?

Kiran opened her first store in the Pebble Creek Collection in 2003. She moved it to E. Fowler Ave. in 2010, but found a new location where more of her original New Tampa customers could more easily visit on Cross Creek Blvd. in 2014.

“Really, all of my customers who still live here have followed me wherever I have opened,” says Kiran. “I love my customers and always remember the products they purchase, even if it’s been years since I’ve seen them.”

In other words, if you previously were a customer at either of Kiran’s previous two locations, don’t be surprised if she remembers you by what you bought at her store. She is an absolute expert at knowing what products to stock for her customers, which is no small feat, as the people in every state in India don’t just have different cuisines, they actually speak entirely different languages from each other. That means that Kiran has to learn enough of these other languages to stock as many of the products as possible that people from every part of the world’s second most populous country (as well as from Pakistan and Middle eastern countries, too; she even has an assortment of Halal meats) will purchase.

“I feel a little like a doctor,” Kiran says. “I have had to learn enough of these other languages to know how to stock many of the same items made by different companies because my customers won’t buy the same products from different parts of India than the ones they grew up with.”

In other words, if you’re looking for Masala spice mixes, teas and even rice, Kiran crams about 8,000 items into her little store, including multiple brand names and options from virtually every part of India to satisfy her customers.

I’m not knowledgeable enough about India or the different cuisines favored by each area to know anything about what to buy at Kiran Indian Grocery. The good news is that Kiran does. Every time I visited the store to research this story, she gave me different items to sample, from fresh cilantro, Indian radishes and cucumbers to some of the most delicious chocolate and cookies you’ll find anywhere (more on all of that sweet stuff below).

I consider myself to be relatively adventurous when it comes to trying different foods, but I’ve never been partial to any kind of curry or chutney, which of course, are among the staples of many Indian cuisines. To date, I have enjoyed the frozen veggie and chicken-and-veggie samosas Kiran has given me to sample, and her fresh fruits and vegetables (some of which are organic) are always outstanding.

I have brought back coconut milk, mango juices and items like the peanut chikki bars (sort of like peanut brittle), spicy cashews, pickles and surprisingly salty dried banana chips for everyone in the office to sample and I have enjoyed the unique lower-glycemic-index basmati rice Kiran suggested for those who have or are trying to avoid getting diabetes.

But, there’s no doubt that my favorite items at Kiran Indian Grocery are the Indian and British versions of such standards as Kit-Kat and Cadbury bars, which definitely taste better than their American counterparts, as well as chocolate wafer cookies and sandwich cookies known as “bourbon cremes,” which look like rectangular Oreos but taste a hundred times better. Yes, if you have a sophisticated sweet tooth, Kiran Indian Grocery is the place for you.

Kiran also stocks a variety of beauty products that Indian people use at the front of the store.

Speaking Of Sweet Things…

Before I ever stepped into her current store, I already had started getting to know Kiran because she is a member of the same Rotary Club of New Tampa Noon that I belong to as well.

But, while I try to help our Rotary Club by promoting its events, Kiran actually lives the Rotary International motto of “Service Above Self” every day.

Kiran’s high school teacher is a member of a Rotary Club in India that has been trying to help children from her area of India who have a particular skin condition they get from often unsanitary conditions at their school. Kiran has gotten our Rotary Club to buy plates, tablecloths, napkins and glasses for the school as an international service project and is using her own money build benches for the children, so they don’t have to sit on the floor at school.

“I tell my customers that they helped pay for those benches,” Kiran says with her always-sweet-smile. “I couldn’t do it without them spending money here.”

She also provides ongoing financial support for the Humane Society of Tampa, to make sure the animals kept at the shelter are properly bathed and have their shots. “I tell them to just charge my credit card when they need something,” she says. “I just love animals.”

Kiran Indian Grocery (10042 Cross Creek Blvd.) is open 10 a.m.-8 p.m. every day (until 9 p.m. on Fri.-Sat.). For info, call (813) 994-6202 or see the ad on pg. 42.

New Start & End Times Coming, But Not Until Next Fall

Note: This story has been updated since it was printed in our April 21 issue hitting mailboxes today and tomorrow. Superintendent Jeff Eakins made an announcement after we went to press that he will propose to the School Board that changes in the bell schedule be postponed to the 2018-19 school year.

Superintendent Jeff Eakins emailed parents April 17 saying that he will now recommend the proposed bell schedule be implemented in 2018-19, not next fall.

Hillsborough County Public Schools has released a proposal that changes the times school will start and end, which will affect start and end times for all elementary, middle and high school students in New Tampa. While originally the plan called for changes to be made this fall, for the 2017-18 school year, school superintendent Jeff Eakins sent an email to parents on April 17 saying that he will now recommend these changes be implemented for the following school year, 2018-19.

“Currently, many students are consistently late to school because there’s not enough time for our buses to pick up and drop off students,” explains Eakins in a video emailed to parents and staff in late March. “This means our children are losing valuable instructional time. When students are late to class, it affects the learning environment for all children.”

The bell schedule originally proposed for 2017-18 adds instructional time at the elementary level in most schools, with one exception in New Tampa. Turner Bartels K-8 students would lose 5 minutes of a day that already is longer than most elementary schools. For middle schools, students would lose 20 minutes, and high schools lose 32. Middle and high school students will keep their seven-period day, but may see the elimination of homeroom, a shorter time for lunch, and class periods that may be reduced by a minute or two.

Eakins says additional benefits of changing school bell times are that the new times may allow for more time for music, art and physical education at the elementary level, and that “… all students will benefit, due to an increase in quality planning time for teachers.”

Eakins wrote in his email to parents that he still feels the proposed plan is still the best option for meeting the school district’s goals. However, the proposal drew a large amount of public outcry, not only because of the time changes but also how the proposal was created. The plan, released on April 4 and available online at SDHC.k12.fl.us/doc/1855/administration/resources/belltimes/, proposes the following changes:

School	Current Bell Schedule	Proposed Bell Schedule for 2017-18
High (Freedom & Wharton)	7:33 a.m. – 3 p.m.	7:15 a.m. – 2:10 p.m.
Middle (Benito & Liberty)	9 a.m. – 4:15 p.m.	9:30 a.m. – 4:25 p.m.
Elementary (Chiles, Clark, Heritage, Hunter’s Green, Pride & Tampa Palms)	8 a.m. – 2:15 p.m.	8:35 a.m. – 3:05 p.m.
Turner Bartels K-8	8:45 a.m. – 3:35 p.m.	8:30 a.m. – 3:15 p.m.

The Board is still expected to consider the proposed recommendation — which may include revisions based on comments from the community — at a specially called meeting on Tuesday, April 25, 3:30 p.m.

To share your thoughts on the proposed changes, email bellschedule@sdhc.k12.fl.us.

bell schedule New Tampa

New school zones irks some, pleases others

When Pankaj Jha moved to the Tampa Bay area, he was living in a condo in Tampa Palms while searching for the perfect school for his young children. He looked at homes in both K-Bar Ranch and Cory Lake Isles, and ultimately chose the neighborhood that would send his young children to Pride Elementary.

“We paid more to buy a house in Cory Lake Isles so my children would go to Pride,” Jha says. But, when it was time to move, his son — then in the 2nd grade — didn’t want to leave his current school. “It took me a year of driving him to school every day in Tampa Palms to convince him to go to Pride.” Last fall, his son — now in the third grade — and Jha’s daughter, who started kindergarten, both began the school year at Pride.

But now, if a proposal by Hillsborough County Schools is approved by the School Board and implemented, his children will be moved to Hunter’s Green Elementary for the 2018-19 school year.

“The biggest headache I have now is that it took time for them to adjust to going to Pride, and now I have to tell my kids they have to go to another school,” he says. “They don’t want to go to another school.”

He says not only do they have friends and feel comfortable at Pride, but they’ve built relationships with teachers. More than anything, he wants his children to go to Pride. He bought his house in Cory Lake Isles (CLI) specifically because he thought they would go there.

Jha was one of more than 300 people who packed the Benito Middle School cafeteria on March 30, when the school district staff presented its proposal for rezoning four New Tampa schools in the fall of 2018. While changes will happen at Clark, Heritage, Hunter’s Green and Pride, the loudest voices at the meeting came from residents of Cory Lake Isles and Arbor Greene (AG), where 563 stuSeedents are being reassigned from Pride to Hunter’s Green.

The proposal keeps a majority of students currently assigned to Pride together, with all residents of both CLI and AG now being assigned to Hunter’s Green. This makes room for residents of K-Bar Ranch — currently 154 elementary students — to be assigned to Pride. Right now, those students travel past Pride to get to their assigned school, Heritage. (Note-The actual number of students moving may be different because some students choose a school other than the one to which they are assigned).

It also opens up space at Pride for the residents of more than 1,500 new homes that are expected to be built in K-Bar Ranch in the coming years.

The proposed re-shuffling ends busing of students from the neighborhoods near the University of South Florida to both Hunter’s Green (HGE) and Clark and reassigns them to schools closer to their residences. From Hunter’s Green, 304 students will move to Shaw (just off of E. Fowler Ave. on N. 15th St.), and from Clark, 248 students will move to Witter (south of Fowler Ave. on N. 22nd St.). Additionally, 187 students who are residents of the Morgan Creek apartments, located just north of the Bruce B. Downs (BBD) Blvd. exit off I-75, will now be assigned to Clark.

Jennifer Ledford, parent of a second grader at Clark, attended the meeting to voice her support for the rezoning. She says this is the change she’s been looking for since before her son started kindergarten. “I moved to this area so my child could go to a neighborhood school with neighbors,” she says. “When you lose the geographic proximity to a school, you lose the investment in the community. I think the new plan is fabulous.”

But, not all parents agree.

“My grievance is that this reshuffling doesn’t address the elephant in the room, which is that Hunter’s Green is underperforming,” says Steven Hancz, a CLI resident whose seven-year-old twins are in first grade at Pride. “The school ranking has been dropping like a hot potato,” he says.

School grades for last year, which are based on test scores, rank Pride and Clark as “A” schools, Heritage as a “B,” and HGE as a “C.” While Hunter’s Green received an “A” grade for many years, it has been ranked a “C” the past two years. Pride has consistently been an “A” school.

School officials say the test scores of the students currently at HGE who live in New Tampa show that they are performing at an “A” level. They expect that the school grade will be an “A” once its attendance boundaries include students only from surrounding neighborhoods.

Elementary school grades for this school year (2016-17) will be released by the Florida Department of Education (FDoE) in July.

Lorraine Duffy Suarez, Hillsborough County Public Schools’ general manager for growth management, says the change is necessary. “We monitor growth, and we know how much growth is coming, and we have to accommodate it,” she says. “Pride was built on land that we bought from K-Bar Ranch. The school was sited there because we knew that development was coming. Now is the time.”

She says moving so many students should give the affected students a measure of reassurance. “The whole neighborhood is moving,” she explains. “You’re going to a different school, but you’re taking 562 of your friends with you.”

Not all Pride parents are angry. Some, such as Kellie Mulligan, an Arbor Greene resident whose three children have all attended Pride since kindergarten, are accepting it. Her youngest will be in fifth grade when the changes take effect. “I’m hoping she will be grandfathered in, but if her whole class and all her friends move, then I’m okay with that, too,” Mulligan says. “Honestly, I think the zoning makes sense.”

While many parents are at least accepting the change, they still have concerns they want addressed. Sigrun Ragnarsdottir is an Arbor Greene resident whose children attend Pride. As soon as she heard of the rezoning, she began researching all possible courses of action to stop it from happening, but hit dead ends. Now, she says she is embracing the change, but says she is still looking for answers.

“In the long run, I believe Hunter’s Green has a lot to offer the students,” she says, citing programs her kids don’t currently have, such as Hunter’s Green’s “Kindness Club” and garden plots with irrigation and soil available to teachers. “The question I’m still asking is, ‘What about busing?’”

With the school district ending so-called “courtesy busing” for middle and high school students this fall, elementary schools are expected to lose courtesy busing the following year, when this rezoning will take place (see story on next page). Anyone who lives less than two miles from the school will no longer be provided with a bus to school. Many Arbor Greene residents have a bus to Pride, but because Hunter’s Green is less than two miles for many of them, it is expected that there will be no bus to that school.

Ragnarsdottir also fears traffic will snarl coming out of Arbor Greene with residents waiting to turn left onto Cross Creek Blvd., then be backed up again as parents turn left onto Highland Oaks Blvd. to get to HGE. Other parents at the meeting expressed similar concerns, saying it will make traffic worse for everyone driving along the already busy Cross Creek Blvd. in the morning, and unsafe for those children who are walking or biking, as more are likely to do because of the end of courtesy busing.

“The school district says this will save money, but how much is a child’s life worth?,” Ragnarsdottir asks. “How much have they budgeted for lawsuits?”

All this adds up to a lot of changes for New Tampa parents, who are being hit with this school rezoning, the loss of middle and high school courtesy busing, plus the expected loss of elementary busing next year, and one more thing – new start and end times for all New Tampa schools (see story, next page).

Decision Day: May 16

Plans outlining the proposed new boundaries were released on the school district’s website on Mar. 21 and are available at http://www.sdhc.k12.fl.us/doc/251/growth-management/resources/boundary/.

Comments from parents and the community were accepted at the meeting on March 30. If you did not attend and would still like to comment, send an email to boundaries@sdhc.k12.fl.us.

Changes may be made based on the many comments received before a final recommendation is made by school superintendent Jeff Eakins to the seven-member School Board. The Board is expected to consider the proposed recommendation — including any revisions made as a result of comments from the community — at its meeting on Tuesday, May 16.

Duffy Suarez says she understands the plan means a lot of changes, and that parents leaving Pride are the ones expressing the most frustration with the proposal. “We’re changing a lot of students, and I understand that,” she says. “They have a lot of pride in their Pride, but Pride can’t hold all the students who are going to come there.”

New Tampa rezoning

Election Season Ends — A Look At How New Tampa Voted

Florida’s State House District 63, which has typically swung to the Democrats in years a presidential election has been held, didn’t swing this time.

Republican incumbent and Hunter’s Green resident Shawn Harrison edged out Lisa Montelione on Nov. 8 to hang on to his seat in an hotly-contested race.

Harrison captured 50.9 percent of the 73,731 votes cast, picking up 37,547 votes to Montelione’s total of 36,168.

It is the third time Harrison has won the House District 63 seat, which represents parts of New Tampa, Lutz, Carrollwood and the University of South Florida area.

He won it in 2010, lost it to Democrat Mark Danish in 2012, and then regained the seat in 2014, when he took it back from Rep. Danish.

Harrison, who beat Montelione by 1,363 votes, held a big 7,195-4,130 advantage on the ballots cast in Lutz. He also can thank his neighbors in Hunter’s Green, who helped offset New Tampa’s preference for Montelione by voting 1,511 times for Harrison, compared to just 954 for the former councilwoman.

The loss was stinging for Montelione, considering she was running in a Democrat-leaning district, the wide advantage Hillary Clinton held over president-elect Donald Trump in Hillsborough County (58-38 percent), as well as Democrat Patrick Murphy’s local success at the ballot box against Republican incumbent Marco Rubio.

Another Republican, emergency room doctor Jim Davison, also fared well, finishing first in a six-person race to replace Montelione, who resigned her position on the Tampa City Council in District 7 to the run for Harrison’s seat. He did not, however, get more than 50 percent of the vote, leading to a runoff.

Luis Viera, who was second, turned the tables by narrowly defeating Davison 2,588 votes to 2,523 Tuesday in that runoff.

In a battle of Hunter’s Green residents, the 38-year-old lawyer’s 65-vote margin of victory sends him downtown.

New Tampa Picked Hillary

Of the 13 precincts in New Tampa’s 33647 zip code, Clinton, the former Secretary of State and First Lady, ran the table, winning every one, many by surprisingly decisive margins.

Hillary In New Tampa’s 13 precincts, Clinton grabbed 58 percent of the 32,843 votes cast for U.S. President, compared with 38 percent for Trump. Early voters and those who mailed in ballots accounted for 14,400 of Clinton’s votes, compared to only 8,989 for Trump. Clinton also held a 700-vote edge amongst Nov. 8 voters.

That wasn’t enough to help Clinton blunt Trump’s surprising win, however. Despite a nearly 1.5-million popular vote advantage nationwide (62,829,832-61,488,190 as of our deadline), the New York real estate developer and former reality-TV star pulled off what was supposed to be an unlikely trifecta by sweeping Florida, Pennsylvania and Ohio to pick up enough electoral college votes for a 290-232 edge, with Michigan still counting votes until after our press time for this issue, but with Trump expected to grab Michigan’s 16 electoral college votes.

Clinton’s 20-point advantage in New Tampa was buoyed by big voting advantages in some of the precincts.

In precincts 362 and 363, where 6,934 presidential ballots were cast at the Cypress Point Community Church on Morris Bridge Rd., she won 60-36 percent. Of the 6,072 voters in Precinct 367 casting their ballots at St. Mark The Evangelist Catholic Church, it was Clinton over Trump, 59-38 percent. And at Lake Forest’s clubhouse, in precincts 583 and 584, Clinton held a 65-30 percent advantage among the 2,295 voters.

The New Tampa Regional Library hosted voting for two precincts that voted very differently. In Precinct 673, which encompasses the area north of Cross Creek Blvd. to the east and west of Kinnan St., 2,647 votes were cast, with 60 percent going for Clinton and 35 percent for Trump.

Meanwhile, in Precinct 361, which is mostly Hunter’s Green, Clinton was still the choice, but only by a 49-48 edge, or 26 votes (with 2,541 cast). It was the closest vote with the exception of Precinct 355, which votes at the New Tampa Family YMCA in Tampa Palms, which went for Clinton 142 votes-140.

Voter turnout in Hillsborough County was 71.56 percent compared with just 56.8 percent nationwide. However, turnout was down from both the 2012 (73 percent) and 2008 (73.5) presidential elections.

In New Tampa, voter turnout was 73.7 percent, with Precincts 361 and 358 (Compton Park in Tampa Palms) having better than 78 percent participation.

Many voters, according to various media reports, also may have just been plain disgusted by both candidates — or perhaps an election season filled with negative political ads, name-calling and scandals — and didn’t bother to cast a vote for either candidate, despite going through the trouble of finding a polling station, standing in line and filling out a ballot.

In Hillsborough County, there were 1,388 undervotes, or ballots cast where the voter elected not to make a choice for president, more than twice the 616 undervotes in 2012. The number of undervotes in many other places also was more than twice what it was in 2012. In Michigan alone, for example, more than 87,000 undervotes were tabulated.

In the U.S. Senate race between Rubio and Murphy, it was the incumbent winning comfortably overall with 4,822,182 votes, or 52 percent. Murphy received 44.3 percent, or 4,105,251 votes. In New Tampa, though, Murphy was the choice by 54-45 percent.

In other races, Lynn Gray captured the District 7 Hillsborough County School Board seat by defeating Cathy James 50.1-49.8 percent, or a mere 1,233 votes out of almost 475,000 cast.

CDD Results

A number of Community Development District (CDD) supervisor races were held as well, and winners were Paul Meier (Easton Park CDD, Seat 2), Joe Farrell (Grand Hampton CDD, Seat 4), Stephen Stark (Heritage Isles CDD Seat 1), Frank Morales (K-Bar Ranch CDD, Seat 3), Jessica Vaughn (Tampa Palms CDD, Seat 5), Brad van Rooyen (Tampa Palms Open Space & Transportation {OST} CDD, Seat 4) & Maria Lepage (Tampa Palms OST CDD, Seat 5).

election results New Tampa

Porter/Raymond James Financial Finally Given Permit To Begin Construction

Following almost five years of discussions and anticipation — mixed in with a nice-sized helping of doubt — the long-talked-about Raymond James Financial campus is one huge step closer to becoming a reality at the corner of S.R. 56 and Mansfield Blvd.

Wiregrass Ranch developer JD Porter finally received the news two weeks ago that he has been waiting more than two years for, as the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has proffered an environmental permit for the 65 acres of property just east of the Shops at Wiregrass mall.

“We were all thrilled, everyone in the family,’’ said Porter, the owner and operator of Wiregrass Ranch Inc. “We worked very, very closely with the Army engineers, and it is nice to finally reach a resolution.”

Porter joked in April at a Wesley Chapel Chamber of Commerce (WCCC) Economic Development meeting that he was tired of hearing about the delays involving Raymond James, but insisted (as he has many times in the past) that the facility was still imminent. He predicted then he would have the Army Corps permit in a few weeks, and though it took just a little bit longer he is now ready to proceed.

“Right now, we have all the permits in hand to proceed forward,’’ Porter said.

The St. Petersburg-based financial services company has been working for several years on the process with the Porter family and, in early 2011, agreed to purchase the land at an undisclosed price, provided the permitting could be completed.

The deal was approved by the Pasco County Board of County Commissioners (BOCC) later that year. In exchange for $15-million in incentives and tax breaks, the county would reap the benefits of what would eventually be planned as six four-story buildings totaling roughly 1-million-sq.-ft., and housing 750 employees by 2024, which will inject millions into the county tax rolls.

Although the Raymond James campus was originally scheduled to begin building in 2012, with the first 100 employees arriving by 2014, the project stalled.

In 2014, a few months after another financial firm, T. Rowe Price, jettisoned its plans to build on 72 acres near the Suncoast Pkwy., Raymond James postponed its project. But, the financial services giant did say it still had plans for the property.

Now, there is renewed optimism that Raymond James will make the impact promised years ago.

“I’m glad that’s over and done with,’’ said District 2 commissioner Mike Moore. “The economic impact will be huge for Pasco County as a whole. There will be nothing bigger in the county.”

Moore said Raymond James will become the largest non-governmental employer in Pasco. “And, anytime you bring in a large employer like that, things start to happen around it,’’ he says.

Bill Cronin, the new president and CEO of the Pasco Economic Development Council (EDC), said when he started in January, one of his first meetings was with Raymond James, citing the importance of getting the company here.

“The investment by Raymond James will be one that, when other companies look to grow here, they will see that someone else has blazed that trail for them,’’ Cronin said. “It will make my job a little easier, to show people there are others that have made this positive decision.”

He added, “Success begets success.”

The next step for Porter will be to re-negotiate the development agreement and adjust some of the original timelines with the BOCC, which will likely take place in the next month or so.

“That triggers the closing,’’ Porter said.

Porter thinks the addition of the financial facility is a major piece of what he hopes the Wiregrass Ranch area will become, as it should drive up home sales and makes the area more attractive to other businesses.

“I think whether we’re talking Raymond James, or the mall or Florida Hospital Wesley Chapel, the state college, you are looking at the kinds of things that define cities and define regions,’’ Porter says. “We’re lucky to land four of them in a short time, when some communities don’t have this after 30 or 40 years.”

development greater wesley chapel chamber of commerce JD Porter Mike Moore new restaurants New Tampa Wesley Chapel Wiregrass Ranch