A decade of development: more people, longer waits, more stress
By MARLENE SOKOL, Times Staff Writer
Published March 3, 2006
I remember a great dress shop called Mario's, a Middle Eastern restaurant called Tamimi's and a wonderful children's bookstore called Young Editions.
Your high school was Gaither, Chamberlain or Leto. If you lived in New Tampa, you bought your food at Winn-Dixie and everything else at University Mall.
Kids did homework at the Northwest Regional Library and passed their summers at Camp Keystone or Hiawatha.
If you were young and on the make, you danced the night away at Stingers.
Flash back to 1996.
Remember life before the Veterans Expressway or the Citrus Park mall? Ten years ago you shopped in Hyde Park if you had money and the Kmart at Mission Bell if you didn't.
Mission Bell was also where you saw the latest flick - there, or Main Street.
You rented your movies on VHS, the Internet was something you were getting used to and you made calls at pay telephones. Yeah, you parked your car, got out and then talked.
On Sundays, Idlewild Baptist Church tied up traffic on Bearss Avenue.
Want coffee? It was Cool Mo's or Dunkin' Donuts. Nobody but dancers had heard of Pilates, and there was a buzz about something called the millennium.
Those were my diaper-changing years, and I remember clearly the day I signed my kids up for the JCC preschool. An easy shot up Gunn Highway it was. After dropping them off, I'd hang a leisurely left back onto Gunn and minutes later, I was at my desk.
Just think. A leisurely left onto Gunn Highway in rush hour.
A lot has happened in the decade since North of Tampa made its debut.
The Hollywood 20 movie theater came and went.
St. Mark the Evangelist Catholic Church opened in Cross Creek, and St. Timothy moved uptown to Lakeshore Road.
Rabbi Brian Zimmerman inspired my own congregation when he moved here in 1999 from Maryland. This summer he will leave for Texas.
Personally, I have found the years challenging and rewarding. Supervising entry-level reporters for a world-class newspaper will keep you on your toes every day of the week.
Living in Carrollwood? Not so bad, although I now realize I underbought my house. Looking back on a stack of newspaper clips, I read that 10 years ago, a four-bedroom house in Westchase sold for $200,000!
Then again, I'd never survive the deed restrictions.
So many of our stories have been about the area's unrelenting growth.
Here's a statistic:
Ten years ago we covered three high schools. Today we have nine.
Granted, two of those (Jefferson and King) came when we expanded our circulation area to include Temple Terrace and Town 'N Country.
But the other four - Sickles, Wharton, Freedom and Alonso - are brand new and bursting at the seams.
It's not your imagination.
Fifteen years ago, county planners tell us 209,900 people lived in Hillsborough County north of Busch Boulevard or Linebaugh Avenue.
Today? 327,900.
What this means, for all of us, is a longer wait to make a left turn, a higher stress level at Christmas shopping and, I would maintain, a sense that life is spinning out of control.
Remember, not too long ago, feeling like northern Hillsborough County was a relatively safe place to live, where you knew your neighbors, where you didn't need to wait too long for a table at dinner?
Statistically, the crime rate is dropping.
But life is ever more complicated. It can't be a coincidence that text-messaging and e-mailing are taking the place of face-to-face conversation. Being there is just not as easy as it used to be.
With New Tampa and Keystone barely built out, the next decade could hold even more surprises.
We hope you will enjoy today's look back, and will keep returning for more news to come.
* * *
As we celebrate 10 years of publication, we remember these and other newsmakers who left us.
Dentist: Jemale Wells.
Educators: Nancy Bartels, Mark Dafeldecker, Domenic Giunta, Darin Hartley, Richard Pride, Vince Sussman and Carol Woodson.
Law enforcement officers: Lois Marrero, Jay Mauk and Bob Weinhold.
Merchant: Ana Maria Baldor.
Real estate brokers: George Aboud, Carolyn Meeker and Vicki Robinson.
Restaurant workers: Danielle Miller and Eduardo Natal.
Road builder: Peter Azzarelli.
Students: Kiana Appleby, James Dungy, Ashton Howlett, Katie Jackson and Bryant Wilkins.
