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Cozy neighborhood perfect for family life

By ELIZABETH BETTENDORF
Published May 16, 2006

[Times photo: Zach Boyden-Holmes]

Mireya Semonick, 23 months, crawls on a living room table as her grandparents Judy and Don Semonick look on. Judy and Don are amicably divorced and both moved from the East Coast to separate homes in Wesley Chapel to be close to Mireya and her parents, Tim and Inelia Semonick, who live in a home on Chatterly Drive in Meadow Pointe III.

WESLEY CHAPEL - Who knew that an extended family could find bliss in one big Pasco County development?

But they did.

Just ask Tim and Inelia Semonick.

The newlyweds and their 23-month-old daughter live in a cozy, 1,700-square-foot house overlooking a pond and a stand of tall pine trees in Meadow Pointe, one of the area's oldest but still rapidly growing communities that straddles the Pasco-Hillsborough county line just off Bruce B. Downs Boulevard.

Tim's mom lives across the street.

His dad lives a few blocks away.

"They're divorced but very friendly," explains Tim, 37, who moved to the Tampa area from New York in the 1990s but decided to buy a lot and build a four-bedroom, three-bath home in Meadow Pointe three years ago.

Tim and Inelia liked the neighborhood so much they even got married at his dad's house. Inelia did everything herself: arranged the flowers, candles, hors d'oeuvre platters - all for $1,000.

"We turned his dad's whole house into a wedding chapel; we are definitely a Meadow Pointe family now," says Inelia, who immigrated to the United States from Chile as a teenager when her diplomat father was assigned to a post in Bethesda, Md.

A jewelry designer and silk floral arranger, Inelia, 36, founded the Meadow Pointe Entrepreneurs Club, which after one year has 55 members. By day, she works in bookkeeping and shipping at Beall's Department Store. In her spare time, she makes her own feminine style of jewelry - dangling earrings, chokers and bracelets - all with tiny Swarovski crystals and freshwater pearls.

"When I started my silk floral and jewelry business I wanted to let everyone know about it. I figured there were other people who wanted to do the same," Inelia recalls.

The club celebrated its first anniversary this month with a bash at a Meadow Pointe clubhouse that included salsa music performed by a member's 20-piece salsa band. The club's diverse membership includes a roster of caterers, real estate agents, a cruise planner - even an accordion-playing house painter.

"When we promote our club, our motto is: "We're in business for the community,' " Inelia says.

Settling in Meadow Pointe was an easy decision for the Semonicks. Tim, who works for Verizon in Telecom Park off Fletcher Avenue, had been renting in the New Tampa community of Hunter's Green. Impressed with his father's home on Timber Trace Drive in Meadow Pointe, he began to look seriously at the community and its expanding swath of development.

"We looked at model homes, and we liked the prices and the fact that it was so close to my work - I can take (Interstate) 75 and get off on the first exit or take Morris Bridge Road. I'm at work fast."

The couple found a lot on Chatterly Drive in Meadow Pointe III. With its serene view of pond and woods, they were sold on the location.

"When we first looked there were no other houses or even a road across the water," Tim says. "But we knew that when it was eventually built we would be far enough away from everything that it wouldn't really matter."

The little houses might snuggle close as dolls in a paper chain, but that doesn't bother Tim and Inelia.

"We love it; we will never put a fence up between our house and the neighbors' - our neighbors are great," Inelia raves.

Tim couldn't agree more: "We all get together for events and dinner. It's great. Even in the neighborhood where I grew up, after 19 years we maybe knew one neighbor. This is totally different."

The couple agree that the house is a keeper, one they will probably live in for a long time. Tim, who once worked for a company that installed kitchen cabinets, is an amateur woodworker and good with his hands. He installed their new Brazilian cherry hardwood floors himself, laid the stonework for the patio overlooking the pond and built an entertainment center so beautiful it belongs in a fine furniture catalog. Right now, he says, he's eyeing a piece of walnut that he hopes to use to install a breakfast bar between the kitchen and living room.

Plus, he and Inelia, who met at a dinner gathering at Stump's restaurant in Tampa's Channelside district, love living so close to his parents, who watch their daughter Mireya, or "Mimi."

"Mireya," Inelia explains. "Means admired."

And that she is.

"I just love it - it's just great spending time with her - she's so easy to fall in love with. It's the kind of love I haven't seen in a long time, all of her hugs and kisses," says Tim's dad, Don Semonick, who watches Mimi while her parents are at work.

Don, 69, a retired senior scientist for a pharmaceutical company, says Meadow Pointe was the perfect arrangement for their whole family.

"It's definitely a community I could afford," he says. "And having everyone so close together means we can get together for every birthday, Easter, Thanksgiving, even dinners out. It's so wonderful that Tim and Inelia wanted to get married at my house."

Elizabeth Bettendorf can be reached at ebettendorf@hotmail.com

[Last modified May 16, 2006, 01:50:15]