Print

Email story

Comment

Letter to the editor

Digest

Manatee developer joins transit board

By Times Staff Writer
Published October 26, 2007

TAMPA BAY

Gov. Charlie Crist on Thursday made his final appointment to a new seven-county Tampa Bay transportation board: Manatee County real estate developer Hugh E. McGuire.

McGuire, 67, joins 14 other board members of the Tampa Bay Area Regional Transportation Authority, which spans west-central Florida from Sarasota to Citrus County. Its job is to develop a regionwide transportation plan. Its third meeting is this morning.

McGuire, a lawyer, co-founded Mainstream Companies Inc., a land development firm. The board is a mix of county commissioners, big-city mayors, and four governor's appointees from the business sector.

WESLEY CHAPEL

New Publix approved - on one condition

A new Publix supermarket, destined to join the Home Depot store at State Road 54 and Eiland Boulevard, got the green light from Pasco County's top staff planners Thursday.

It's good news for the crowded subdivisions in that area, but not so great for CRF Zephyrhills, the developer proposing the 64,000-square-foot grocery store.

Pasco planners, for safety reasons, want CRF to add a deceleration lane on SR 54 for cars turning right into the plaza.

CLEARWATER BEACH

Patel shifts direction of resort-condo project

The owners of a long-stalled Clearwater Beach resort and condominium development say they will redesign the project and are looking to a major Miami-based builder for help.

Tampa entrepreneur and philanthropist Kiran Patel and the Related Group are negotiating a partnership that would change the scope of the $250-million Kiran Grand Resort and Spa.

"The condominiums are out," Dr. Patel said Thursday. "It's too fluid a situation with them."

In their place, he said, "we're going more toward a transient-hotel type of development."

Original plans were for a resort 150 feet tall and 500 feet across with 350 condo-hotel units and 75 condominiums. The new project would consist of a 250-room hotel with 200 time shares.

WESLEY CHAPEL

New mall's 1st anchor opens doors today

Best Buy, the first anchor in the new $175-million Grove at Wesley Chapel mall, just northwest of Interstate 75 and State Road 54, opens for business today.

Two other malls are under construction in central Pasco.

Land clearing is going on at full bore at Cypress Creek Town Center, on I-75 and SR 56. Its developers, the Richard E. Jacobs Group, were before Pasco's top staff planners Thursday, where they got an approval to slightly bump up the mall's area to 930,475 square feet.

Steel has gone up at the Shops at Wiregrass, a $105-million project backed by Forest City Enterprises and the Goodman Co.

Jim Richardson, Forest City's vice president, said Wednesday that he expects groundbreaking to take place soon, as the mall works to close tenancy contracts.

[Last modified October 25, 2007, 23:22:37]