YMCA Names Miller Dowdy For Campo Award
Longtime community advocate and developer Miller Dowdy, of Trinity Advisory Group, recently won the YMCA’s Ray Campo Leadership Award, named after Ray Campo, a developer who donated the land for it and two other YMCA facilities. Campo served on the YMCA’s board of directors and, upon his death, also donated more than $1 million toward the Valrico Y and Camp Cristina, a YMCA facility in Riverview. Read more
Newland Communities Renames Lake Hutto To Circa FishHawk
By Michelle Caceres
It’s not a part of FishHawk Ranch, but the 700-acre site formerly known as Lake Hutto has been renamed Circa FishHawk to reflect its close proximity to the master-planned behemoth.
FishHawk and Circa developer Newland Communities and its advertising agency worked closely to settle on the new name. Read more
No Increase in CDD Fees for FH
When is zero a good number? When it is the amount of dollars your Community Development District (CDD) fees are going up the next fiscal year, if you live in FishHawk Ranch. Originally, it was thought that the charge could go up as much as $67 per household with the proposed district’s combined multimillion dollar budget. Right now each resident pays $1,242 in CDD fees and that will stay the same when it shows up on your Hillsborough County tax bill. CDD District Manager Debby Bayne with Rizzetta and Company, an agent for FishHawk Ranch Developer Newland Communities, says, “Both boards have worked hard to decrease costs and it has paid off.” Bayne sent letters to each homeowner in FishHawk explaining the originally proposed increase and inviting them to the workshop and public hearing. Only a handful of people showed up at the workshop which Bayne took as a good sign, saying, “I guess people are happy with the way things are.” It was at the workshop that Bayne explained the numbers and how she was able to whittle the increase down to zero, even keeping in resident’s requests for aquatic plants to be installed in ponds, to include pond bank repairs because of low water levels this year and maintain some small capital improvements. Bayne also says, “These workshops allow me to get feedback from the residents and present it to the board before the final decision on the budget is made.” Each CDD board went over its own budget, line by line, before it was finally adopted by both Districts l and ll at the public hearings. Although there are two different districts in FishHawk Ranch, there is an interlocal agreement between the two where operations and maintenance costs are shared at a flat rate, meaning all residents in FishHawk Ranch pay the same assessment and it lets them use all the facilities in each district. Each CDD meets the third Monday of each month beginning at 2 p.m. at the Palmetto Club in FishHawk Ranch and both are open to all residents. For more information about what is going on in the community, you can go to www.fishhawkconnect.com and to learn more about the Community Development District, click on “CDD”.
Mosaic Gives Development Boost
A 7.4 acre purchase for a regional headquarters by Mosaic fertilizer on the fledgling Lake Hutto project being built by Newland Communities, near FishHawk Ranch, is a boost to the community and a spur for the development. Newland announced the purchase in July of a building that will house 400 jobs in a 100,000 sq. ft. proximity and will abut a planned town center commercial project with an additional 100,000 sq. ft. of neighborhood commercial businesses.
Newland Communities Vice President of Operations Tom Panaseny spoke to a room full of 70 residents and representatives to update residents on development plans for the community.
“We are proud to have partnered with Mosaic on this project,” said Panaseny. “Mosaic will break ground on its headquarters in 2009 and the building will be completed by 2010,” he described. The headquarters will have its own entrance off of FishHawk Blvd. and will face the boulevard. A national commercial leasing company is being brought in to lease the 100,000 sq. ft. of additional commercial space. “This is about three times the size of our current Park Square,” he described.
Rich Krakowski, vice president of Mosaic, said, “We conducted a study to determine a suitable geographic location that’s closest to the center of where our administrative and staff employees live. FishHawk Ranch area was the bull’s eye.”
Ryan Companies US, Inc. will be developer and contractor for the building, which is scheduled to break ground by early next year and open in the first quarter of 2010.
In addition to the Mosaic entrance, a four-lane divided boulevard with an entrance off of FishHawk Blvd. is scheduled to break ground to access the now-under construction, combined elementary/middle school which is also scheduled to open in the Fall of 2009.
“The school represents the district’s efforts to share some parts of the facility, including administration offices, across the two campuses,” he described, adding, “The district has not yet named the schools, and they will each have their own bus drop off points.”
In addition to Mosaic headquarters and the school, Panaseny said that specific plans for the residential portion of the community are not yet available other than a planned 200 rental apartment complex surrounding the town center.
For more information on Mosaic, visit www.mosaicco.com. For Newland, visit www.newlandcommunities.com.
