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Business Outlook 2006

Tennis stadium plan serves up waiting game

The Pasco National Tennis Center, touted as a potential boon to tourism in the county, is still an unrealized dream.

By GARRETT THEROLF
Published February 19, 2006

Someday, the tract of pastureland near the Saddlebrook resort might be where some of the world's most blistering tennis ground shots are made. For the moment though, the sole sign of human endeavor involving the site is a lot of bureaucratic paper pushing with little clear progress.

A little more than three years ago, Pasco County commissioners announced what they termed to be a blockbuster for the county's struggling tourism industry: a premier tennis stadium that would capitalize on nearby residents such as Jennifer Capriati and Martina Hingis to host world-class tournaments.

It could mean hundreds of new jobs, an economic windfall in the millions of dollars, an opportunity to deeply alter the county's image to the outside world. Since that optimism-filled announcement, however, a string of tedium-filled delays has caused even its supporters to wonder whether the dream will be realized.

A year since the county's development partner for the project, Tom Dempsey of the nonprofit Saddlebrook Sports Foundation, said "we're really in the final stages of the permitting," they're still in the initial permitting process.

Meanwhile, the $5.7-million that the county has pledged to the project is diminishing in value. The costs of fuel, concrete, steel and labor all are rising.

The money comes from Pasco's 2 percent tax on hotel and other short-term lodging stays, and it has been collecting for more than a decade. Some of the money has been used for the promotion of the county's festivals and other events, but no money has yet been used to build a new attraction from scratch.

The first project would be the Pasco National Tennis Center with 15 tennis courts, acres of parking and a stadium that can seat as many as 5,000.

The stadium would be south of State Road 54, less than a mile east of Bruce B. Downs Boulevard, on 24 acres.

Two regulation-sized soccer fields and a practice field would double as overflow parking during tournaments.

Dempsey promises that all of that could be constructed within 18 to 20 months once permitting has been completed, but it is the permitting process that has been stagnant for so long.

The current snag involves permits the stadium requires from the Southwest Florida Water Management District for the siting of drainage ponds and wetlands.

County Commissioner Jack Mariano, who sits on the county's Tourism Development Council, said he hopes that the permitting will be completed and that the developer will break ground this year.

In the meantime, "The bottom line is, the county expects to get a stadium with specific amenities built for a number, and we haven't gotten that yet," Commissioner Ted Schrader said recently.

[Last modified February 19, 2006, 01:09:21]