The Greater Wesley Chapel Chamber of Commerce (WCCC) is looking for the best of Wesley Chapel and New Tampa.
The WCCC has begun accepting nominations for the its annual “Excellence In Business” awards banquet, which will be held on Thursday, November 10, at a site still to be determined, at least at our press time.
Nominations for the area’s best small and large businesses and business leaders will continue through Friday, September 16, and can be entered via the WCCC’s website at WesleyChapelChamber.com or by calling the WCCC offices at 994-8534 for more information.
Businesses nominated will then go through an application process, with applications due by Friday, October 7, with finalists in several categories announced at the banquet. The winners are chosen by a panel of their peers.
“This is the culmination of our year, where we get to celebrate the business accomplishments of our members,’’ says Hope Allen, the CEO of the WCCC. “It’s a great honor and very prestigious just to be nominated.”
Winners are chosen based upon their demonstrated commitment to the advancement of the Wesley Chapel business community and various other factors.
There are Excellence In Business categories for best Small Business (0-49 employees), best Large Business (50+ employees), Business Leader of the Year (for founders, owners, CEOs and presidents), New Business of the Year and Volunteer of the Year.
Last year’s “Excellence in Business” winners were Samantha Taylor and her Pure Health & Fitness Studios (Small Business), Wesley Chapel Nissan (Large Business), Troy Stevenson of Wesley Chapel Nissan (Volunteer of the Year) and John Jr. & David Williams of Wesley Chapel Toyota (Business Leaders of the Year).
Pokemon GO is taking over The Shops at Wiregrass mall, new restaurants are nearing completion of S.R. 56, we stop by and talk with PROtential Sports and Gary shares some of his favorite places to get a good meal in the Seminole Heights area.
Check out the Premiere Episode of WCNT-tv Now at WCNeighborhoodNews.com!
If you somehow haven’t already seen the first-ever episode of WCNT-tv, I suggest visiting our website — WCNeighborhoodNews.com — right now, even before you read this article. The photos on this page and on page 3 are from the incredible Premiere Party we hosted at our Neighborhood News offices on S.R. 54 in Wesley Chapel on June 23 for the first-ever webcast dedicated to the residents and businesses in the New Tampa/Wesley Chapel area and there’s no doubt the premiere episode of our bi-weekly webcast has already captured the attention — and the imagination — of a pretty impressive list of major business owners and representatives who were on hand at the Premiere Party.
Among the people already talking about WCNT-tv — which has its own Youtube channel, but also can be accessed from the front page of our website, our Facebook page and/or by clicking on the “WCNT-tv” tab on the front page of WesleyChapelChamber.com — included our Premiere Party attendees Gordie Zimmerman of ZMitch, LLC, the developers of Florida Hospital Center Ice, our first video news feature; Tampa Premium Outlets GM Stacey Nance; marketing director Tracy Clouser of Florida Hospital Wesley Chapel, which is
Left to right: FHWC’s Tracy Clouser, Susanna Martinez, Gary Nager, Vicki Hutto (VIP Pest Control), Craig Miller & Dirson & Ana De Mesquita of OTB Café.
the studio sponsor of WCNT-tv’s news segment; WCCC CEO Hope Allen and membership coordinator Jennifer Reightler; Pasco County commissioner Mike Moore; New Tampa’s State Rep. Shawn Harrison; Peter Gambacorta of the Private Chef of Tampa, which provided some of the food for the event (as did Little’s Italy’s Family Restaurant);and Troy Stevenson of Wesley Chapel Nissan and his Acme On the Go Movies (which provided the amazing 17’x9’ screen) technician Harry Wilkins, as well as many WCCC business owners & New Tampa & Wesley Chapel Rotary Club members.
Also special thanks to our first chamber-featured business sponsor, VIP Pest Control, and restaurant sponsor, OTB Café.
Special thanks also goes out to John Fisher of The Polar Pod, which provided 50º comfort on a hot and humid night for all of our attendees, to my WCNT-tv co-anchor Susanna Martinez; Mike McDonald, who provided the entertainment; WCCC Featured Business host Jill Reilly (who also is my Neighborhood News billing manager), my WCNT-tv sales & production assistant Lauren McDonald, as well as asst. editor John Cotey (who took these great pictures at the event) and my entire staff at Neighborhood News, which have allowed me the freedom to pursue a dream; cameraman Brad Hall and especially, my partner and WCNT-tv executive producer Craig Miller of Full Throttle Intermedia.
Look for new episodes of WCNT-tv every two weeks and more to come!
Pasco County planner Matt Armstrong hopes to settle the debate over Wesley Chapel borders.
Following presentations last month by both the Greater Wesley Chapel (WCCC) and Central Pasco (CPCC) Chambers of Commerce, the Pasco County Board of County Commissioners (BCC) could be set Wesley Chapel borders with Lutz/Land O’Lakes that ultimately should finally settle a long-simmering dispute at the BCC’s monthly meeting on Tuesday, April 26.
The commissioners are expected to vote on a recommendation from Pasco planners on definitive borders between the two Census Designated Places (Wesley Chapel and Land O’Lakes/Lutz together are both CDPs) during the meeting at the West Pasco Government Center Board Room in New Port Richey.
Until then, county planners and administrators are poring over a stack of documents from each side — and even getting some help from the folks at Google maps —interpreting where those borders should be.
“We are looking to establish a city boundary by legislative action,’’ said Matt Armstrong, the county’s executive planner. “None of these areas that are Census Designated Places have that. That’s some of the reason people have struggled with this.”
After separate meetings with the two groups last month, Armstrong said representatives from both areas will meet with each other in the next few weeks, with the county’s planning department serving as the moderator.
“Ultimately, we will be bringing a report to the Board of County Commissioners with a recommendation on what we think the boundaries will be,’’ Armstrong says. “The Board can hear public comment, and then we will be asking them to establish the borders.”
When broken down, the primary dispute seems to be over the slice of land between Wesley Chapel Blvd. and I-75 in the Cypress Creek Town Center Development of Regional Impact (DRI), which has been exacerbated recently by the steady business development in the area.
Armstrong said he was at one recent border meeting where a representative from one of the new businesses on the east side of Wesley Chapel Blvd. said they were happy to “be here in Lutz.”
But, take a look at the web page for Culver’s, which calls its restaurant on E. Bearss Ave. in Tampa “Culver’s of Tampa,” its restaurant in Largo “Culver’s of Largo,” and its restaurant in Port Richey “Culver’s of Port Richey.” At its brand new location on S.R. 56 west of the Tampa Premium Outlets mall, however (which physically is located on Sun Vista Dr. in Lutz), it is called “Culver’s of Wesley Chapel.”
And it isn’t alone. While all of the area being debated by the WCCC and CPCC has either Land O’Lakes or Lutz addresses and zip codes, many businesses in the area identify themselves as being in Wesley Chapel.
“It’s just a mess,’’ Armstrong says.
Where Are The Wesley Chapel borders?
While the current debate is about borders, it originally began, as we detailed in our last issue, as a disagreement over the renaming of the Wesley Chapel Blvd. extension where the extension now crosses southbound over S.R. 56 and continues toward County Line Rd.
The southern portion of the extension, said CPCC member Sandy Graves at the time, needed to represent Lutz-Land O’Lakes, the area through which it cuts. A petition requesting that the name of the southern portion of the extension be changed to Circle O Ranch was presented to the BCC on Jan. 19. But, Wesley Chapel Chamber of Commerce CEO Hope Allen protested, saying it needed to remain Wesley Chapel Blvd., as all of the businesses in the area already call it that and have for years.
Instead of making a decision, the BCC decided to explore the issue further. The Board members decided that defining the borders between Lutz-Land O’Lakes and Wesley Chapel needed to be settled first.
That set off a fact-finding mission by each side, in an effort to buttress their respective arguments. Representatives of Lutz-Land O’Lakes believe their border extends west to I-75. The Wesley Chapel side thinks its western border extends to Wesley Chapel Blvd. So, essentially, the area between Wesley Chapel Blvd. and I-75 is at the heart of the dispute.
The Wesley Chapel Chamber met with Armstrong and his staff Feb. 19, two weeks after he met with the CPCC.
“I think the meeting went fine,’’ said Allen. “I think we got our point across and delivered the message we went to deliver.”
Allen said her group presented a 70-page document backing their claims, as well as a 2005 Vision Report that the WCCC says was approved by Pasco commissioners.
The CPCC countered that its 2003 Vision Report was adopted first, and brought noted USF political science professor Susan McManus to its meeting with Armstrong to help make their case. McManus has co-written books on the history of Lutz and Land O’Lakes.
Armstrong jokes that he is becoming an expert on the histories of the two places, thanks to all of the material that has been presented to him to help settle the dispute, including volumes of McManus’ work, a trove of newspaper articles and even local historian Madonna Jervis Wise’s book on the history of Wesley Chapel (see pg. 1). The book, entitled Images of America: Wesley Chapel, says that Wesley Chapel was founded in the 1840s, and is shown on a 1879 survey map of Pasco County, before Land O’Lakes was established in 1949.
However, the dispute is not over what town existed first. And, even in carefully-researched historical records, there are no definitive boundaries laid out because neither area was ever incorporated, or essentially created as its own city with its own governmental structure.
But, the respective “hearts” of both areas — U.S. 41 in Land O’Lakes and the area around Boyette Rd. and S.R. 54 in Wesley Chapel — are unmistakable, says Armstrong.
“The history points to early beginnings, and we know where the hearts of those communities are,’’ Armstrong said. “But, the boundary in between gets a little fuzzy.”
Pasco County currently only has six incorporated areas — the cities of Zephyrhills, Dade City, San Antonio, Port Richey and New Port Richey, and the incorporated town of Saint Leo.
The rest of the county is comprised of unincorporated Census Designated Places, like Wesley Chapel, Land O’Lakes/Lutz, Trinity and Hudson, to name a few. And, Armstrong says that 450,000 of the 490,000 people living in Pasco reside in those currently unincorporated areas.
Armstrong admits that so many areas without defined borders can create the kind of confusion we are seeing in Wesley Chapel and Lutz/Land O’Lakes, where postal zip codes have changed and there is a myriad of other “boundaries,” which can be confusing.
“Part of the frustration for the citizens who lives in any one of these places is, ‘What the heck, the zip code says this, the Census Designated Place says something else, my kids are going to school based on other boundaries and my voting precinct is somewhere else,’’’ Armstrong says. “It’s been like this for years, and now, it’s coming to a head.”
That’s actually a good thing, he says, because it is being done in the open and publicly. Much of the Lutz-Land O’Lakes anger stems from the belief that past decisions made by the BCC cut the area out of the process to accommodate Wesley Chapel’s growth and ongoing “branding.”
Wesley Chapel Blvd. is an example, according to Graves. It sprouted as a road name for the portion of S.R. 54 from S.R. 56 to Lexington Oaks when the Lutz-Land O’Lakes contingent thought it was going to be Worthington Gardens Blvd., a decision she said “happened overnight.”
The former “Wesley Chapel” placemaker sign was another example cited by Graves. It was put up a few hundred feet west of where Wesley Chapel Blvd. begins, clearly in Lutz’s 33559 zip code. Armstrong said the sign’s arrival “lit a match” in Pasco, and Graves led the fight to have the sign removed — which it was.
“The whole process hasn’t been completely transparent,’’ Armstrong says. “But, this time, it is.”
Both sides have been passionate about their arguments. The claim that the area, its residents and businesses would be much better served if the area was clearly defined as theirs. And, both claim history is on their side.
History, though, may give way to common sense.
“We will collect all of the history from both groups and look at some of the rational (potential) boundaries between the two things,’’ Armstrong says. “There may be a natural feature that divides the two, or a major road. But, it needs to make sense today, and that may be separate from history.”
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!”
The Greater Wesley Chapel Chamber of Commerce (WCCC) is looking for the best of Wesley Chapel and New Tampa.
Check out the Premiere Episode of WCNT-tv Now at WCNeighborhoodNews.com!
