Brightwork Crossing is a mixed-use development under construction on about 32 acres close to Tampa Premium Outlets and Cypress Creek Town Center.
Up to 350 apartments, 250,000 square feet of offices, retail and self-storage, and a 150-room hotel can be built. Site plans are on file with Pasco County for a WaWa convenience store, Firestone Complete Auto Care store and Burger King.
(Kathy Steele)
The site is on the north side of State Road 54, west of Wesley Chapel Boulevard, directly behind the Shell gas station and Walgreen’s drugstore.
A handful of cows that once grazed on grass and weeds are gone. Bulldozers and cranes are leveling the ground. A single residence on the property is being torn down.
The complex will go up in the midst of one of Pasco County’s fastest growing areas, at an intersection where State Road 54, State Road 56 and Wesley Chapel Boulevard meet up. The State Road 56 interchange at Interstate 75 is immediately to the west.
Tampa Premium Outlets on the south side of State Road 56, and Cypress Creek Town Center, on the north side, are at the epicenter of new shops and restaurants. More are on the way, as are offices and hotels.
Tampa-based BW 54 56 Holdings LLC, and Alabama-based Arlington Properties Inc., are partnering on Brightwork Crossing.
Representatives for those companies weren’t available for comment.
The Pasco County Commission approved the development in 2016. The entire site is bordered by Wesley Chapel Boulevard, State Road 54, and the one-lane paved, Old Cypress Creek Road.
At hearings on the matter, traffic concerns became an issue.
The site is bisected by Old State Road 54, a popular cut-through for motorists seeking to avoid traffic jams at the intersection of Wesley Chapel Boulevard and State Road 54/56.
Old State Road 54 right of way was part of a land swap between the county, landowners and developers. It gave the county green space for its wildlife corridors network, and also room for a future park-and-ride facility for commuters.
A dead-end portion of the road to the north has been opened, and rebuilt to provide cross access, via Wesley Chapel Boulevard, into the town center. Sierra Properties, the town center’s developers, paid for the roadwork as part of its construction of a town center entrance, off Wesley Chapel.
The county plans to eventually widen Wesley Chapel to a six-lane divided road. And, a diverging diamond interchange is expected to replace the existing interchange at I-75 to ease traffic congestion. Construction is expected to begin in 2018 on the interchange.
Published August 2, 2017
