TAMPA - Brandon's 25,000-square-foot county service center will be on Pauls Drive after all, but not on land shared with the Greater Brandon Chamber of Commerce.
County commissioners Tuesday agreed to spend $1.4-million for two adjacent parcels totaling 4.3 acres. The land, most of it owned by a corporation of doctors called Sidhom & Saeed Inc., will house the regional service center that is scheduled to open by 2006.
It also will provide land for most of the stormwater ponds needed along Pauls, the street that will become the tree-lined gateway into Brandon's 300-acre Main Street project.
The 5-0 vote, with commissioners Ronda Storms and Jim Norman absent, capped several months of tense uncertainty regarding the service center's future and the chamber's relationship with Storms, who represents Brandon.
The chamber wanted to develop with the county a 5-acre site farther south along Pauls. It would have housed new chamber headquarters and the service center. But Storms raised questions about whether chamber members owning land along Pauls might unfairly benefit from the deal. Storms said before Tuesday's meeting that she supports the 4.3-acre site.
Nearly $600,000 of the land purchase will come from the $4.2-million service center budget. The remainder will come from $5.2-million set aside to revamp Pauls.
