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Saddlebrook is lone facility bidder
By JAMES THORNER, Times Staff Writer WESLEY CHAPEL -- If Pasco County decides to build a multimillion-dollar tennis stadium, its doubles partner seems certain to be Saddlebrook Resort. Saddlebrook, the Wesley Chapel enclave best known as the training ground of female tennis stars such as Jennifer Capriati, was the only company to submit a proposal to build and manage a $5.7-million tennis stadium. The county's deadline for receiving proposals -- it sent requests last month to 131 companies -- was 2 p.m. Tuesday. As the clock ticked down, only Saddlebrook's offer, eight bound copies sealed in white envelopes that arrived earlier Tuesday, topped the conference table in Pasco's Purchasing Department. Details of the proposal will stay secret until county administrators comb the document for accuracy. In its request for proposals, the county demanded "presentation-quality architectural renderings" and "realistic projections of revenues and expenditures," among other things. Saddlebrook's monopolization of the process eliminates the need to assign a committee to rank competing proposals, purchasing department director Scott Stromer said Tuesday. Plans for a 5,000- to 8,000-seat open air tennis stadium originated with Saddlebrook owner Tom Dempsey. He suggests financing the project with almost $6-million stockpiled from a 2 percent tax on hotel rooms since 1991. Dempsey dubbed the arena the "Pasco National Tennis Center" and suggested building it close to Saddlebrook. That way it could tap the resort's experience in landing professional tennis tournaments and stand in as practice courts for Dempsey's tennis academy. Whether the county's stadium solicitation is anything more than a exercise in futility remains to be seen. A majority of the five-member County Commission remains uncommitted to tennis and worried a stadium, despite Dempsey's claims to the contrary, would be a subsidy-guzzling money loser. Dempsey vowed to manage the stadium without hitting up the county for operating money. Not included in his calculations, however, were tennis tournament fees that in other cities cost taxpayers hundreds of thousands of dollars. A message left on Dempsey's answering machine Tuesday went unreturned. -- James Thorner covers growth and development in Pasco County. He can be reached in central Pasco at (813) 909-4613. His e-mail address is thorner@sptimes.com.
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From today's Pasco Times Editorial Letters |
