Readers Speak: Kinnan-Mansfield

Kinnan-Mansfield Debate Will Continue Into 2018

I have lived in Meadow Pointe II since 2000 and my subdivision straddles Mansfield Blvd. and County Line Road right behind Meadow Pointe II Clubhouse and I beg to differ with your analysis of our opposition to connecting Kinnan St. to Mansfield Blvd. What you find is B. S. really are the problems of connecting the two roads. Traffic studies  (and there have been numerous ones over the years that have shown and proved it would cause traffic bottlenecks at the three intersections and thru the school zones as well as safety issues at the schools. I believe what is a waste of money is another traffic study when Mansfield and County Line Roads are in such bad shape! Money should be spent repaving roads period. Meadow Pointe Blvd. has the expandability to be four-laned and there are no schools until after intersection SR 56. and not that far from Kinnan street.

I find reading your paper that you basically take Hillsborough’s side and provide no voice for the people who have to live with this harassment every two to three years. Pasco County Commissioners should put an end to this idea once and for all.

Ray Kobasko

Meadow Pointe ll

Long Leaf (at MP) Resident

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Mr. Nager:

Reference is made to your editorial concerning the objections to the connecting of Kinnan St. to Mansfield Blvd.

Firstly I am not a resident of Meadow Pointe II but of Meadow Pointe III and I object to the connection you so much desire. Using your same description of why MP II objects to the connection your claim that the traffic will only increase during the evenings and on weekends is, as you said before, BS. As soon as the connection is made, and trust me as soon as enough financial arrangements are made to the benefit of those in power, the connection will be made, those residing in the so called “New Tampa Area” will start using Mansfield to 56 as their home to work to home route therefore increasing, the already overloaded route, with additional traffic, to think otherwise is at least identical to the use of smoke and mirrors.

The dream that residents from Cross Creek/Live Oak would travel down Mansfield and then would turn left (eastward) on Beardsley can only be described as the unreachable dream once you have reached that point why would you desire to take a longer route, such an action is not to be expected from the American humanoid unless forced by physical barriers.

Furthermore those who reside adjacent to Beardsley lived for many years with the expectancy that once the constructions, due to the lengthening of 56, would cease peace and quiet would reign in Beardsley where many master bedrooms are less than 10 feet from the roadway and now you and those of Cross Creek want to return the noise and excessive speed, speed limit in Beardsley is posted at 35 MPH, a speed limit that will not be observed since Pasco County’s Sherriff will have many other problems to tend to.

But your routing from Kinnan to Mansfield north and an easterly turning from Mansfield thru Beardsley will take you to Meadow Pointe Blvd, which has the space and was planned to eventually become a four lane route, why them planners cannot reroute Kinnan to connect with Meadow Pointe Blvd. is beyond my understanding.

If Pasco County is offering that alternative get the engineers back to the drawing board and have them reroute the traffic from the Cross Creek/Live Oak area to connect with Meadow Pointe Blvd, it seems to me as a logical, economical and fastest solution and beneficial to all parties concerned.

Sincerely,

Rafael Rivera

MP III resident.

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Gary —

The idiots who oppose the connection live in the same area that don’t want to share their clubhouse with the other communities, (Meadow Pointe II). I’m tired of these folks trying to hold the rest of us hostage because they are stuck up and don’t want progress.  I have been living in Meadow Pointe I way before any of those houses were even built, but they want to slow progress. They do not own the whole area! Not to mention those schools have different start times and is no different than any other morning traffic.  As far as the two lane/ four lane non issue, they can merge the 4 lanes into 2 with those permanent barriers that you see on roads. More connections mean more access to businesses on both sides of the line. I’m pretty sure CVS and the Mall wouldn’t be opposed to that road opening. It only makes sense! It’s time! MPII can’t hold us hostage any longer!

Thanks, Warren

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Mr. Gary Nager,

You are wrong in getting involved with something that does not involved you.  You can’t even get the Streets involved correct.  Kennan is the four lane road that will dump excessive traffic into a development were the narrow two lane cannot be widen due the already villages along Mansfield.  You don’t seem to understand that there are three schools plus a college already established on Mansfield.  I live in the village of Lettingwell which has a very limited visibility to traffic approaching from the left as we try to exit.  We have already had a serious accident at this intersection.  When school traffic is using Mansfield in the morning, it is almost impossible to make a left turn to go to County Line Road.  I do not believe you are getting any positive feedback for residents of Meadow Point 2.

As a concerned resident of Lettingwell, I am a 100% Disable American Veteran who is very concerned about your unauthorized involvement in this situation.

Dick Arens

dickarens@verizon.net

Editor’s note-I do so love a spirited debate, but the fact is that when the idea of connecting Kinnan (not Kennan) to Mansfield was first discussed probably 15 years ago, it was Hillsborough County officials who opposed it…and I was not only there, I told those folks they were wrong back then, too.

I have seen many (but not all) of the traffic studies for this area, but I’ve never seen anything in those studies, at least not to date, to support not connecting roadways that have always been planned to do so.

I probably take the concerns of Mr. Arens, a disabled U.S. vet, to heart the most of any of these commentaries, but as someone who has given his personal health to protect all of our liberties, I’m surprised to hear him talk about my “unauthorized involvement” in this situation. As a free American and as the only member of the local media who has lived and/or worked in and reported the news of New Tampa and Wesley Chapel for 24 years (as of next month),  I stand by my words and hope that Mr. Arens and everyone else who disagrees with me still stands behind my right to voice my opinion, as I stand behind their right to be “heard” disagreeing with me…in these pages.  — Gary Nager

Wesley Chapel 2017 Year In Review: Roads

Kinnan Mansfield
The gap at Kinnan and Mansfield.

Roads Busier, But Help Is Coming

Name a road in Wesley Chapel, and you can probably also name a problem with it.

S.R. 54 isn’t wide enough.

S.R. 56 has I-75, making for one of the area’s worst junctions.

And Bruce B. Downs Blvd….well, don’t get us started on BBD.

And those are just the big roads. All across Wesley Chapel, the quick speed of development left a lot area residents complaining about crowding roads that are already, well, crowded.

The good news in 2017, however, was that help seemed to be on the way, as most of the hotspots — and by hot we mean causing tempers to flare — are being addressed by the county, although all of these projects will require some patience.

In 2017, wheels started turning for S.R. 56, which is practically getting a complete makeover.

On the west end, it was announced that the brutal S.R. 56 and I-75 intersection, which turns simple chores — like going to the Tampa Premium Outlets or even just coming home from work and trying to get through the northbound off ramp — into seemingly endless expeditions, should begin work this year on a $24.1-million Diverging Diamond Interchange project that will, presumably, fix some of the junction’s major problems.

The news of a 2018 groundbreaking was welcomed, considering how much better it was than the original 2024 and 2020 start dates.

At the east end of S.R. 56, work kicked off on extending the road all the way to from Meadow Pointe Blvd. to U.S. Hwy. 301/S.R. 41 and into Zephyrhills, expected to be a boon for area businesses. Originally planned to be two lanes, the $65-million project will now be four lanes.

On S.R. 54, Wesley Chapel Blvd. was widened to the south and, to the east, work started in November on widening S.R. 54 from Curley Rd. to U.S. 301.

The BBD widening project has an end in sight…we hope.

As for BBD, we don’t want to give you any spoilers, but for our “Best Of New Tampa & Wesley Chapel” issue coming out next month, we asked for your opinion on the worst intersection in our distribution areas (New Tampa and Wesley Chapel), and 11 BBD intersections from Tampa Palms all the way through Wesley Chapel were cited.

Yes, 11.

And a number of smaller roads —Old Pasco Rd., Meadow Pointe Blvd., Curley Rd. — also can be thorns in the side of drivers, but the one that drew the most attention was the potential connection of Pasco County’s Mansfield Blvd. to Hillsborough County’s Kinnan St.

There were three major developments in 2017: Pasco County commissioned a study of the connection (along with two other possible connections to New Tampa) in April, a public meeting was held in May at Pasco-Hernando State College (PHSC)’s Porter Campus at Wiregrass Ranch to solicit responses, and the Hillsborough Board of County Commissioners pledged $250,000 in September to help make the connection happen.

Will it?

Not without a big fight. 

Wesley Chapel 2017 Year in review: Top business

Center Ice Transforms Wesley Chapel

There are many businesses that excite, fill a need in and make an impact on a community.  Very few, however, could be called “transformational.”

In 2017, Florida Hospital Center Ice was truly transformational.

“I think that’s the right word,’’ said Hope Allen, the CEO of the Greater Wesley Chapel Chamber of Commerce. “It has made such an important impact on our community. It has really changed the landscape.”

After officially opening on January 25, FHCI’s impact was felt immediately. The first night attracted 300 skaters, the weekend drew more than 600, and nearly 400 signed up for Learn To Skate classes.

That was just the beginning. From hockey tournaments and leagues to figure skating to corporate outings, the $28-million, 150,500-sq.-ft. FHCI made nearly every weekend in 2017 a big one.

By the end of the year, roughly a million visitors had passed through the doors of FHCI, located just northeast of the S.R. 56 and I-75 interchange.

“Definitely the demographics are good, the population is ripe for what we do,” says Gordie Zimmerman, managing partner of FHCI developer ZMitch, LLC. “The community is just totally excited about the facility. We have been blown away by the response and turnout. It’s been great.”

FHCI is the largest ice skating and hockey facility south of New York. Zimmerman estimates that more than 1,500 local kids have enrolled in various hockey and ice skating programs at FHCI, including a youth travel hockey program that was expected to start with four or five teams, but instead has nine.

There is curling on Saturday nights, and FHCI’s adult hockey league has 46 teams, and grows every 12 weeks when the next new season begins. In July, a roller hockey tournament attracted 120 teams, and is already scheduled for a return. There have been figure skating competitions and exhibitions as well, and FHCI hosted the Statewide Amateur Hockey of Florida (SAHOF) high school championships, where Wiregrass Ranch High, coached by Zimmerman, finished as the runner-up.

But FHCI, which is expected to deliver an economic impact of roughly $20 million a year, is more than just an ice rink, “which is kind of our slogan,” Zimmerman says.

To that end, it hosted events like the Taste of New Tampa & Wesley Chapel (which returns March 25), “American Idol” auditions and dozens and dozens of corporate events and things like holiday parties in 2017.

“It has become a facility for many in terms of sports and corporate, and the two blend very nicely together,’’ Zimmerman says, adding that 71 corporate outings and meetings are already on the books for 2018.

Zimmerman says that to pick his 2017 highlight is a difficult task.

“There have been a bunch of them,” he says. “Every weekend, there was something happening.”

But, while FHCI has already scored a number of coups leading to national exposure, the biggest “get” for the new facility was landing the U.S. Women’s Olympic Hockey team.

Since September, the team has trained at FHCI in preparation for the 2018 Winter Games next month in Pyeongchang County, South Korea. Wesley Chapel is mentioned prominently in practically every article written about the team, and their presence has helped ignite an interest in developing women’s hockey in Florida.

The U.S. beat Canada 4-1 at FHCI in a Four Nations Cup exhibition in November, and tickets sold out.

Wesley Chapel 2017 Year In Review: News

(l.-r.) Meadow Pointe III residents Javier Casillas, Ernie Rodriguez, Gary Suris and Nick Casillas begin cutting up the second of three trees they removed on Beardsley Dr. following Hurricane Irma. (Photo courtesy of Inelia Semonick).

TOP STORIES OF 2017: Hurricane Irma, The Curtis Reeves Trial & ‘American Idol’ Made Headlines!

From development to new businesses to the Curtis Reeves trial garnering national interest, there was no shortage of news in Wesley Chapel in 2017.

However, Category 5 Hurricane Irma stole the show.

News of her impending arrival set off a frenzy unlike any other Wesley Chapel has experienced in recent memory. A week before she even touched ground in Florida, water and plywood (to board up windows) became the area’s hottest commodities, flying off the shelves of local stores.

Many, quite literally, fled, clogging roads with evacuees heading for higher ground or, as the storm got closer, local shelters. Gasoline was sparse from Miami to Atlanta, GA.

In Pasco County, 24,000 residents spent the night in one of 26 shelters.

“We were scared. Everyone was scared,’’ Meadow Pointe III’s Inelia Semonick told us afterwards. When the storm cut a path up the middle of Florida and bore down on Wesley Chapel, she, and many others, took to their closets.

Cristy Norland and her family suffered serious flooding of their Quail Hollow home. (Photo: Cristy Norland)

Fortunately for Wesley Chapel and the rest of Tampa Bay, Irma didn’t deliver a knockout punch, just a gentle slap upside the head. Or, in the case of those who lost power in Pasco County — 217,382 out of 261,000 total addresses, or 83 percent — more like two slaps upside the head.

At Cat 5 strength, Irma devastated parts of south Florida, but hit the Tampa Bay area as a Category 2 hurricane, still enough to uproot smaller trees and scatter large branches. There was flooding in parts of Wesley Chapel, and many pool cages and fences did not survive unscathed. Clean-up, however, took weeks.

Among the other news making national headlines happened in Pasco County court, where, nearly four years after Curtis Reeves Jr. shot Chad Oulson, 43, to death in the Cobb Grove 16 movie theater, Pasco judge Susan Barthle ruled that Reeves could not use the “stand your ground” defense.

Reeves had hoped to use the argument that he was defending himself when he shot Oulson in January 2014. He is appealing Barthle’s ruling.

Pool photo: OCTAVIO JONES | Times
Curtis Reeves Jr. takes the stand to testify during his “stand your ground” hearing at the Robert D. Sumner Judicial Center in Dade City, Florida, on Tuesday, February 28, 2017. 

In happier news in 2017, the area attracted two significant sports stories, which you can read about on page 32 in our current issue — the women’s tennis Federation Cup at Saddlebrook and the U.S. Olympic women’s hockey team, which prepared for the 2018 Winter Games in Wesley Chapel.

Speaking of that gold-medal favorite women’s hockey team, their home ice since September has been Florida Hospital Center Ice (FHCI), which opened its doors in January (see page 11).

FHCI also has opened the way for a number of notable events to be held, including the Taste of New Tampa & Wesley Chapel.

The long-running Taste — which will be held for the 22nd time this year on Sunday, March 25, noon-4 p.m. — attracted nearly 2,000 people who got to sample the wares of nearly 50 local food and beverage vendors, and raised $11,000  for the charities supported by the event’s organizer, the Rotary Club of New Tampa and its partner, the Greater Wesley Chapel Chamber of Commerce.

“American Idol,” which is making a comeback and will air on ABC-TV  this year, held tryouts at FHCI in August, attracting 400 hopefuls. While no one has been officially reported as making it past the following stage, which was held in Orlando, some locals did make it at least that far.

And, on pages 11 and 38, check out 2017’s explosion of local businesses in Wesley Chapel, as restaurants like Noble Crust, Irish 31 and Ford’s Garage opened, to name a few, as well as at least a dozen other new businesses, including two more luxury auto dealerships (Audi and Lexus), as the area continued to be one of the hottest in all of Florida for growth and expansion.

Wesley Chapel 2017 Year in Review: Development

Residents who live near the Quail Hollow Golf & Country Club golf course packed the Dade City Courthouse hoping to keep a developer from replacing the golf course with 400 homes.

Connected City, Sports Complex & Quail Hollow Kept The BCC Busy In 2017

We could probably dedicate all 48 pages of our upcoming Wesley Chapel issue to its rapid growth in 2017. It was just that crazy busy.

In fact, one could argue it was the busiest year on record in Wesley Chapel, with massive projects either gaining approval, moving ground or sprouting up in almost every corner of the area.

Let’s focus here, however, on what was approved in 2017 and coming down the road, and save what actually opened its doors for our story on 2017’s best new businesses.

The biggest project, the 7,800-acre “connected city,” was approved by the Board of County Commissioners (BCC) in February by a 5-0 vote, which is expected to help create something no other city in America has — a built-from-the-ground-up gigabit community.

District 2 Pasco commissioner Mike Moore, who represents much of Wesley Chapel, said after the vote, “We actually made history today.”

After nearly two years of studies and planning, the BCC’s green light has already triggered major development in the connected city sector, which includes the area running north from Overpass Rd. in Wesley Chapel to S.R. 52 in San Antonio, and west from I-75 to Curley Rd.

Metro Development owns roughly 35 percent of the land, and has already begun, well…connecting. Metro’s Epperson development has its first residents (as we reported last issue) and the first-ever Crystal Lagoon is already filled (see page 8).

Still to come — another Crystal Lagoon in the nearby Mirada development, more homes, schools and business, alternative transportation along integrated roadways and, potentially, jobs as developers and planners have touted the connected city as a futuristic economic engine.

While Wesley Chapel is jumping into the high-tech community pool headfirst, it also is looking to take a piece of the $15-billion a year pie that is youth sports.

A large sports complex with adjoining hotel was also approved by the BCC in the spring by a 5-0 vote, which later agreed to double the county’s Tourist Development Tax (TDT), or bed tax, in order to help finance it.

The $44-million project will be built on part of a 224-acre parcel located northeast of the Shops of Wiregrass in the Wiregrass Ranch Development of  Regional Impact (DRI). The parcel is owned by the county and has had a history of failed efforts to build something sports-related on it.

While the project is currently only in the planning stages, RADD Sports, which will develop it, says it is shooting for a spring 2019 opening.

In conjunction with Mainsail Development, the sports complex will have one of the first full-service Marriott-branded Residence Inns, a 120-room hotel that will be L-shaped to create a courtyard at the entrance to the sports complex — which also will have an amphitheater for concerts, a trail system, seven soccer fields and a 98,000-sq.ft. indoor facility expected to attract the top youth sports tournaments and athletes from around the country, with thousands of visitors expected to make an economic impact on the area.

And, residents who live near Quail Hollow Country Club lost a long fight with the course’s owners and developers, who received approval in June to replace the golf course with homes.

Andres Carollo and his Pasco Office Park LLC received a zoning change, by a 3-2 vote, which allows him to build 400 single-family homes, 30,000-sq.-ft. of office and retail space and a 10,000-sq.-ft. daycare center on the former golf course property.

Hundreds of Quail Hollow residents attended a handful of BCC and other meetings to make their voices heard, and successfully delayed approval of the project for months.

All around Wesley Chapel, new businesses started construction. A slew of restaurants — including a much-awaited Bahama Breeze on S.R. 56 — and boutique or green grocery stores are planned to begin building on or near S.R.s 54 and 56 in 2018.

Will 2018 be as busy? Wiregrass Ranch’s J.D. Porter recently hinted at some more major developments coming this year, so our guess would be:

Buckle up!