As the city's development coordinator, Ron Rotella helped expand Tampa's boundaries clear to the Pasco County line.
By MICHAEL VAN SICKLER
Published April 6, 2003
NEW TAMPA - Ron Rotella wasn't exactly a novice when former Mayor Dick Greco hired him in 1995 to be his development coordinator.
He had been a development official for six Tampa mayors in the 1960s and 1970s.
But the city had new boundaries this time around. More than half its growth was taking place in subdivisions to the north that had been cow pastures when Rotella last worked for the city.
"People at City Hall didn't even know where New Tampa was," said Jim Davison of Hunter's Green. "We didn't exist."
Greco and Rotella were to change that. Over the next eight years they made New Tampa the staging area of a manifest destiny that stretched the city's boundaries clear to Pasco County. With Rotella making deals with developers, more than 4,000 acres of New Tampa frontier were annexed into the city between 1995 and 2003. It was up to Rotella to negotiate how these acres were developed.
"He was the dealmaker," Davison said. "Just about anything that moved in New Tampa for the last eight years, Ron Rotella had his fingers in it."
But that was then, and Tampa has a new mayor, Pam Iorio. Today Rotella is preparing to return to his former job as executive director of the West Shore Alliance.
"I told her I was leaving March 31," Rotella said. "I said eight years is enough and I'm out of here. But she convinced me to stay on for another month."
During that time, he said he will brief Iorio and her team about transportation projects in New Tampa such as the east-west road and the expansion of Cross Creek and Bruce B. Downs boulevards.
Some in New Tampa, including developers, wonder how Iorio will fill the void. Iorio hasn't indicated who will replace Rotella, but it's no secret that she doesn't share the same pro-growth and developer-friendly views championed by Greco and Rotella.
"With Greco, the city was motivated to grow, to expand the tax base," said Mike Lawson, division president for land for Lennar Homes Inc. "There's not that much land left to be annexed. So we're all waiting to see what her agenda will be. I think she's going to be great, but there won't be a Ron Rotella there. He'll be difficult to replace."
Lawson and other developers said Rotella's experience as a developer and softspoken demeanor made him an effective negotiator.
"His greatest strength was getting property owners and city staff to compromise on delicate points," said Lawson, who represented Heritage Isles when the city annexed it in 1998. "He understood our perspective on things, and that's something you don't normally see from government officials."
Rotella was the right man at the right time when Tampa needed to grow, said Scott Paine of Heritage Isles, a University of Tampa associate professor of government and communication who represented New Tampa as a City Council member from 1991 to 1999. But often his eagerness to close the deal favored developers, Paine said.
"Ron was always pro-development, and I'm not," Paine said. "Some of the negotiations with Heritage Isles could have gone differently and better for the city as a whole if we had been a little more insistent and a little less facilitative."
For example, he said, Heritage Isles' developers, at an impasse with Hillsborough County, were in a weak bargaining position when the city moved to annex the land. Therefore, Paine said, the city could have insisted that they set aside enough land for a school and provide a layout that did not require as much driving.
That didn't happen, Paine said, and as a result the development is spilling more traffic onto busy Bruce B. Downs and Cross Creek boulevards.
"If someone else had done the negotiations, there might have been more developer concessions," Paine said.
Nor will Rotella receive farewell hugs from certain county officials who sparred with the city in the past few years over the annexations of Heritage Isles and K-Bar Ranch.
"It was very clear what Ron Rotella's mission was, and that was (to) make sure developers had an open door to the mayor," said County Commissioner Pat Frank.
"But whether the city's growth was a positive is something the people will have to decide. These high-priced homes pay for themselves now, but are the people willing to maintain the area over time?"
City Council member Shawn Harrison said the county lost the developments because it couldn't compete with Rotella's expertise.
But he said Rotella did more for New Tampa than just expand it. Rotella also helped get money for New Tampa road projects, Harrison said, and was instrumental in snaring 40 acres for the $5-million New Tampa Community Park, which opened this weekend.
Jack Davis, the chief information and technology officer for the Hillsborough County School District, said Rotella clinched the deals that carved out land for Liberty Middle School, Freedom High School and the new park.
"Ron was absolutely critical in getting us this land," Davis said. "Without Ron, none of this would be here."
