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Pasco-Hernando State College Porter Campus

North Tampa Bay Chamber awards bestowed

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The North Tampa Bay Chamber presented its 2020 Celebrating Excellence Awards, honoring local companies and individuals that have benefited the community, and have demonstrated commitment and resilience during the past year.

Because of the global COVID-19 pandemic, the chamber reimagined its annual awards ceremony — bestowing the honors on companies exemplifying the chamber’s core values of integrity, inclusivity, collaboration and innovation, according to a chamber news release.

The chamber also recognized individuals who have gone above and beyond to serve the community, presenting them with Community Hero awards. And, it recognized an individual who embodies all of the chamber’s core values, through the organization’s chairman’s award.

The awards ceremony was held virtually, on Nov. 12. A number of organizations hosted watch parties in different locations, while some chamber members watched from the comfort of their own homes.

Recipients of this year’s honors are:

Excellence in Integrity Award: The Laker/Lutz News. This award honors an organization that demonstrated commitment and resilience during the past year has benefited the community and region.

Excellence in Collaboration Award: Sarah Vande Berg Tennis and Wellness Center. This award honors an organization that has sought to build bridges and partner with individuals and groups that has strengthened the community and region during the past year.

Excellence in Inclusivity Award: Pasco-Hernando State College — Porter Campus. This award honors an organization that has demonstrated, through its organizational culture or in service to the community, leadership in diversity and inclusion practice during the past year.

Excellence in Innovation Award: Pinot’s Palette. This award honors an organization that demonstrated unique ingenuity during the past year has benefited the community and region.

Community Heroes: Ghada and Lufti Judallah; Troy Stevenson; and, Dr. Paula O’Neil. Through their efforts, these individuals exemplified their concern and a compassionate response to the pandemic.

Chairman’s Award: Roberto Saez. This award honors the myriad ways that Roberto Saez has contributed to creating a better community. He has given generously to charitable causes, has supported scholarships and has shared his talents, without charge, on chamber projects.

Published November 18, 2020

Wesley Chapel road study looks for traffic solutions

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Pasco County is moving forward with efforts to find consensus on easing traffic congestion in Wesley Chapel and building road connections between Pasco and Hillsborough counties.

About 100 people attended a public meeting to discuss the draft of the Wesley Chapel Road Connection Study.
(Kathy Steele)

Consensus appears elusive, however, on the proposed linkage between Mansfield Boulevard, in Pasco County and Kinnan Street in Hillsborough County.

Pasco residents don’t want more traffic whizzing down a boulevard that already is gridlocked at peak hours.

But Hillsborough residents want a more direct route to shops, restaurants, churches and jobs just across the county line.

About 100 people attended a public meeting on May 22 at Pasco-Hernando State College Porter Campus to discuss a 450-page draft of the Wesley Chapel Road Connection Study.

Pasco County Commissioner Mike Moore and consultants with AECOM presented an executive summary of the study’s findings.

The study looks at the pros and cons of four alternatives for road connections, without making a recommendation. A no-build option also is included.

“We don’t have any bias in this study,” said Ali Atefi, a transportation engineer with the Pasco County Metropolitan Planning Organization. “We looked at it objectively.”

The choices are no-build; linking Mansfield Boulevard with Kinnan Street; linking Mansfield and Kinnan, as well as extending Meadow Pointe Boulevard to Hillsborough County; and the final option calls for linking Mansfield and Kinnan, extending Meadow Pointe Boulevard and extending Wyndfields, also to Hillsborough County.

Moore said he favors the Meadow Pointe extension, which would link to a future road in K-Bar Ranch.

A count of residents’ preferences from a 2017 public meeting showed that road project had strong support.

“I’ve got to be concerned about my residents here in Pasco County,” Moore said.

Tampa City Councilman Luis Viera, who attended the May 22 meeting, said all three connections are necessary. His constituents in New Tampa especially want Mansfield and Kinnan connected.

“I understand it’s not a black and white issue,” Viera said. “It’s gray. But, that is a real potential game changer. Hillsborough County is a stakeholder in this.”

Hillsborough County commissioners in 2017 approved $250,000 toward linking the two roads.

There could be one point of agreement on Mansfield and Kinnan, which currently dead-end at the county line — roughly 30 feet to 40 feet apart.

A gate could be installed that would provide access to emergency vehicles only. The cost would be about $7,000 for each county.

But, the Mansfield and Kinnan connection remains a hard sell for many Pasco residents.

“Adding traffic is what I’m worried about now,” said Ray Kobasko.

The Meadow Pointe extension makes more sense, he said. “It’s been planned all along, All the people who bought over there were told that,” he said.

Mike Hanna also opposes a Mansfield-Kinnan link.

“Connections have to be made but not all three of these,” he said. “A lot of people drive Mansfield every day and have accidents now. I’d not be in favor of more traffic coming up there.”

Residents can comment on the study through June 15. A final study will be released in August or September.

A citizens’ survey also is planned in coming months, giving residents a chance to weigh in on potential projects. The MPO is scheduled to make its recommendation in October.

Pasco County commissioners will have the final say on which, if any, of the alternatives are selected for construction.

Published June 6, 2018

 

 

 

Beach House to offer assisted living in Wesley Chapel

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Beach House Wiregrass Ranch is some distance from the seashore. But, the senior-living community in style and design will evoke the “good memories of the times families spend together,” according to Allan Brown Jr., co-owner of Prevarian Senior Living.

Brown and Pasco County Commissioner Mike Moore were among about a dozen people who attended the groundbreaking for Beach House on Nov. 1.

Beach House Wiregrass Ranch is a senior living community that will have about 100 residents in assisted living apartments for memory care suites. (Courtesy of Prevarian Senior Living)
Beach House Wiregrass Ranch is a senior living community that will have about 100 residents in assisted living apartments for memory care suites.
(Courtesy of Prevarian Senior Living)

The two-story, approximately 93,000-square-foot facility is expected to open in December 2017. It will be the third Beach House to open in Florida. Others are in Jacksonville and Naples.

“As the population grows in Wesley Chapel and Pasco County, there is a huge need for this assisted living facility,” said Moore, who previously owned a home health care business. “We don’t want to have to drive to Tampa and Hillsborough County to see our loved ones.”

Indeed, Wesley Chapel’s growth is a major reason company owners opted to build on a large parcel fronting State Road 56, at Hueland Pond Boulevard at Wiregrass Ranch.

The area is “amenity rich. It’s very family oriented with a lot of services like restaurants and shops,” said Brown.

Beach House is a short distance east of The Shops at Wiregrass, and the Pasco-Hernando State College Porter Campus.

Allan Brown Jr. (center in sunglasses), co-owner of Prevarian Senior Living, shovels dirt at the groundbreaking for Beach House Wiregrass Ranch, a senior living community that will open in 2017. Pasco County Commissioner Mike Moore (next to Brown) and Hope Allen (in red), executive director of The Greater Wesley Chapel Chamber of Commerce, also shovel dirt. (Kathy Steele/Staff Photo)
Allan Brown Jr. (center in sunglasses), co-owner of Prevarian Senior Living, shovels dirt at the groundbreaking for Beach House Wiregrass Ranch, a senior living community that will open in 2017. Pasco County Commissioner Mike Moore (next to Brown) and Hope Allen (in red), executive director of The Greater Wesley Chapel Chamber of Commerce, also shovel dirt.
(Kathy Steele/Staff Photo)

Restaurants, the Tampa Premium Outlets and the anticipated Florida Hospital Center Ice hockey complex also are nearby.

Beach House is an up-to-date living environment that supports senior living, but shouldn’t be confused with a nursing home, Brown said.

“We support health care needs, but we’re not a health care provider,” he added.

For health care, Florida Hospital Wesley Chapel is a nearby resource.

The senior community will have 67 alcove-style, one-bedroom or two-bedroom apartments for assisted living, and 33 suites for memory care residents with Alzheimer’s or dementia.

Residents will have a restaurant-style dining room, as well as a private dining room for family events. There also will be an activities room, salon and spa, a theater, and outdoor living areas.

Beach House Wiregrass Ranch also will have an Extended Congregate Care (ECC) license to allow long-term residency for aging residents, who can access additional health care as needed.

Published November 9, 2016

Porters give blood, sweat, tears to Wiregrass Ranch development

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Not too long ago, Tampa mayor Bob Buckhorn called Pasco County a bedroom community, doing nothing more than supplement the economic engine of his county, Hillsborough.

Whether Buckhorn’s observation of Pasco is accurate or not now is not what J.D. Porter is focused on. Instead, he wants to make sure that’s not the Pasco County of tomorrow.

J.D. Porter, right, joins his late father, Don, in groundbreaking ceremonies that helped create what would become the Wiregrass Ranch development area in Pasco County. The Porter family has owned much of the land for decades. (File Photo)
J.D. Porter, right, joins his late father, Don, in groundbreaking ceremonies that helped create what would become the Wiregrass Ranch development area in Pasco County. The Porter family has owned much of the land for decades. (File Photo)

“Bedroom communities are not the future,” Porter recently told members of the Pasco Alliance for Community Associations.

Porter represents his family in the expansive Wiregrass Ranch project that is converting thousands of acres of grazing and agricultural land into sustainable residential neighborhoods and corporate parks in the greater Wesley Chapel area.

The land is part of more than 14,000 acres the Porter family picked up in 1941 at $1.73 an acre when their previous land holdings in Zephyrhills were grabbed to create what would become the municipal airport there.

Porter’s uncle would be the first to flip his land, doubling his money in just four years in what would later become Meadow Pointe. But J.D.’s grandfather James and father Don would hold on for decades.

“We could’ve easily sold out to a bunch of different developers, but none of them represented the legacy that my dad and my grandfather really embraced,” J.D. Porter said. “They wanted to do all the things they didn’t have growing up. That is why you see a college and a hospital, something other communities don’t have after 35 years. Here, you see them in before there is even a rooftop at Wiregrass.”

Florida Hospital Wesley Chapel far exceeded any of the initial expectations, and already is running at capacity, Porter said.

Pasco-Hernando State College’s Porter Campus at Wiregrass Ranch opened in 2013 already saw its enrollment jump more than 22 percent in its second year.

The Shops at Wiregrass, which opened in 2008 at the corner of State Road 56 and Bruce B. Downs Boulevard, makes more money per square foot — about $15 more — than Tampa’s International Mall, Porter said.

Property nearby along the east side of State Road 56 is planned for more of a mixed use, including the possibility of constructing apartments up to five stories tall.

“It would be for young professionals working at the hospital, at the college, or even with Raymond James, they might be able to catch some of those buyers,” Porter said. Rents there could run as high as $1.25 a square foot — or $1,375 for a 1,100-square-foot unit — well above some of the typical prices of about $1 per square foot.

Porter doesn’t want to just start and stop with young professionals, however. Instead, he envisions having a community that serves all walks of life, from birth to retirement. That’s why that particular area also includes plans for a 300-unit active adult community that could save families having to drive to places like Zephyrhills or the University of South Florida area to see older relatives.

Pasco has not had tremendous luck in attracting big-name employers to the county, but Raymond James Financial is still at the table, Porter said. The St. Petersburg-based financial company announced in 2011 plans to build two 100,000-square-foot buildings that could bring 750 jobs to the area by 2024. The county and state even kicked in $15 million in tax incentives to help make it happen.

Raymond James, however, missed its 2012 target date to start construction. Making matters worse, the company says it will likely delay that project up to five years simply because they’re not ready to expand.

“We think it’s a great site over time,” Raymond James’ chief executive Paul Reilly said during an October symposium. “But right now, we don’t need the space, and when we need the space, we’ll look at expansion there, or see what happens to our other facilities.”

But it’s just not the economy holding that project up, Porter said. It’s the federal government.

“We have all the permits from Pasco County, and all the permits from Swiftmud,” Porter said, referring to the Southwest Florida Water Management District. “What we’ve been waiting for over the past 16 months is the Army Corps of Engineers. There are a lot of things I’d rather do than deal with these people. It is disgusting.”

Although there are a lot of hands in the Wiregrass Ranch pot when it comes to development, Porter refuses to take a backseat.

“So much blood, sweat and tears go into this,” he said. “But you only get one shot to do it right.”

Published December 3, 2014

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