Kennedy Barbeque takes over restaurant at Heritage Isles

 

[ATOYIA DEANS | Times]

Ernest Kennedy Jr. is the co-owner of Kennedy Barbeque at Heritage Isles Golf and Country Club. He owns the restaurant with his father, Ernest Kennedy Sr. “Because it’s our dime, we have the incentive to do well,” Kennedy Jr. said.

HERITAGE ISLES — The restaurant at this golf community has never been known for its cuisine. Rather, the buzz has been about its debt.

New ownership hopes to change all that.

A barbecue restaurant intent on becoming a popular New Tampa eatery has taken over.

Kennedy Barbeque already has a loyal following from its to-go barbecue smoker in the parking lot of a gas station at the corner of Cross Creek Boulevard and Morris Bridge Road. The family that owns it has moved to the Heritage Isles restaurant, hoping to attract a bigger fan club.

Network and learn more about neighborhoods

OK. This is a little bit of a drive out of New Tampa suburbia, but with 25 workshops at this year's Neighborhood's Conference there should be something for everyone's neck of the woods.

The 6th annual conference is from 8 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. Saturday (March 21) at the Dale Mabry campus of the Hillsborough Community College, 4001 Tampa Bay Blvd. Cost is $15.

The event is also a good place to network with other neighborhood leaders and local government officials.

The workshops are on topics including homeowner and condominium board association training; how to set up neighborhood Crime Watch programs; emergency preparedness at the neighborhood level; energy efficiency; legal advice on foreclosures; and writing neighborhood grants. Call (813) 307-3564 or check here.

Prepare print news' obit? Diehards say absolutely not

By Marlene Sokol

Years ago I had an editor who drank a lot, but was otherwise a capable newswoman and almost evangelistic about our craft.

Returning from a vacation, I remarked that the city I had visited had such a lame newspaper, it wasn't even worth a quarter.

You would think I had spilled her tequila. "Every newspaper is worth a quarter, and so much more,'' she insisted.

I thought of her when I read what could be the last printed newsletter in my Carrollwood neighborhood. Unable to support itself consistently with advertising, the paper will likely be replaced by an online report.

Snob that I am, I did not always appreciate our newsletter. The information was sometimes outdated, owing to early deadlines and a bulk-mail delivery system. Short on community content, it ran pages of generic material that I called "filler copy.''

That's what happens when you don't appreciate something.

Like the deli that had slow service and is now boarded up, and the dry cleaner that lost your button and now shows a "for lease'' sign in its window — things we took for granted are now precious somehow, their absence signaling a frightening economic free fall.

I called the newsletter service, IKare Publishing of Wesley Chapel, to see whether, like my own industry, community newsletters are suffering from the competition of free Internet advertising.

"I've been doing this for 30 years, and I expect I'll be doing it for another 30,'' said IKare founder Karen Uhlig.

New Cory Lakes CDD quick to make changes in first meeting

The Cory Lakes taxing district board convened for the first time last night with a board comprised of mainly elected members.

The board, which had been developer run and was made up of developer appointees, now consists of Kerri Ringhof, Dan Morford and David Burman, three residents who ran on the same ticket of change. They joined current members Jane Taggart and Madeline Backes as they set priorities for the upscale community.

The tone was quite friendly in the beginning, when the first order of business was to select a chairman.

Backes nominated Morford, who in turn nominated Ringhof. After talking up each other as qualified candidates, the board chose Morford as its leader and Ringhof as vice chair.

[Pictured from left to right: Jane Taggart, David Burman, Dan Morford, Kerri Ringhof, Madeline Backes. John Daguirda and Mark Straley.]

Tax district recount produces same winner

A recount in the Tampa Palms Open Space and Transportation seat 4 race has yielded the same outcome, with the winner beating her second-place opponent by 16 votes.

Newcomer Susanne Shea Alfonso was victorious over Martin E. Maldonado and incumbent Rosanne Clementi. Alfonso originally led Maldonado by 21 votes. Because the race was so close, elections officials had to count the votes again.

Alfonso, who lost five votes in the recount, received 1,201 votes, Maldonado got 1,185 and Clementi garnered 1,148 votes.

The taxing district operates recreation centers in West Meadows and Richmond Place.

Dong-Phuong Nguyen, Times Staff Writer

*

Heritage Isles duo focuses on failing restaurant

NEW TAMPA — For years, Barbara Adams has been an active participant at virtually every taxing district meeting in Heritage Isles.

As she watched discussions unfold over the development's failing restaurant and the inability to make the bond debt payment, Adams decided that her role during public comments wasn't enough.

"I've been screaming for a long time," said Adams, head of the community's Neighborhood Watch efforts. "I had to do something."

Adams ran for a seat on the board and last week came out on top. She defeated the incumbent, Dr. William Martello, with almost 60 percent of the votes. Adams said her top priority is stopping the financial bleeding of the restaurant, which residents pay to maintain and operate.

"It's like an albatross around our necks," she said. "I have no idea how we're going to fix it, but we have to come to a solution."

Adams is joined by Frank Camara, who beat out Jack Meehan, a former board supervisor who resigned his seat over charges of ethics violations and then tried to get his position back.

Camara, who beat Meehan by a roughly 2-1 margin, also is focused on the restaurant problem. He said leasing it out and washing the district's hands of it might be the best option.

"We have a lot of challenges ahead of us," he said.

In other New Tampa election news, 21 votes separated the winner and the second-place candidate in the Tampa Palms Open Space and Transportation race, forcing a recount, which was scheduled to take place after press time this week.

Seat 4 of the taxing district, which operates recreation centers in West Meadows and Richmond Place, drew three candidates.

In the initial election results, newcomer Susanne Shea Alfonso garnered 1,216 votes, Martin E. Maldonado received 1,195 votes and incumbent Rosanne Clementi came in third with 1,161 votes.

Dong-Phuong Nguyen can be reached at (813) 269-5312 or nguyen@sptimes.com.

Seething politics tear at Cory Lake

NEW TAMPA — They sipped red wine, nibbled on pasta al forno and stuffed mushrooms and laughed around the granite-topped island in the host's kitchen.

The mood was upbeat and festive and the 30 or so people — all neighbors — were chatty. The only immediate indication that this was no ordinary dinner party were the name tags on their shirts.

This Friday evening gathering of residents of the upscale community of Cory Lake Isles in northeastern Hillsborough was inspired by an often uninspiring and relatively thankless job: supervisor of a taxing district.

It's notoriously difficult to find homeowners to run for community taxing district boards, and even harder to draw opposition. But that's not the case in Cory Lake Isles this year, where competition is plenty and campaigning is fierce.

Hence, the dinner party.

This was the eighth such appearance at a home by the nonpartisan ticket of Kerri Ringhof, Dan Morford and David Burman — three residents hoping to shake up the board amid contentious times.

The past several months have turned so ugly, the board hired off-duty sheriff's deputies to watch over the meetings; challengers printed up campaign T-shirts; and one person filed a complaint about election law violations. The candidates also have sent out mailers, participated in meet-and-greets and stumped door to door. Oh, and there are also two lawsuits floating around out there.

"It has gotten so nasty, it rivals the presidential race," said Cathy Kelly, who has lived in Cory Lake Isles for five years and hosted the latest meet-and-greet. "People have said things that are out of line on both sides."

More records produced in Cory Lake Isles lawsuit

Lawyers for the Cory Lake Isles Property Owner's Association handed over an additional 600 pages of documents yesterday, a day after a court-ordered deadline to do so.

Mark Basurto, the lawyer representing eight residents who filed a lawsuit more than a year ago for the records, said the papers he received appear to be bank statements for Cory Lakes Ltd. and the Community Development District.

"I have not and neither have my clients had an opportunity to review them to see whether they are complete," Basurto said. "In addition, we are still looking through the first 6,000 pages that were given to us in mid-September."

--- Dong-Phuong Nguyen

Heritage Isles saving a little here...a little there...

Like many upscale golf course communities, Heritage Isles is feeling the economic pinch. Residents here pay to keep the golf and restaurant operations afloat, but that hasn't been enough.

After meeting for more than five hours today, taxing district supervisors found ways to make a bit more money, including charging higher golf membership fees.

Dempsey Resort Management Inc. (DRMI) will put in place a new membership program that eliminates unlimited green fees and cart fees.

Taxing supervisors were split in their decision to support the higher membership costs. Stephen Stark, Dan Barravecchio and Dr. William Martello voted for the proposal. Sherry Parrish and Frank Camara, both of whom have golf memberships, opposed the plan.

The goal is to bring in more members and more revenue and be competitive with other golf courses, said general manager Shaun McCormick.

Under the new plan, a resident wanting a new single membership would pay a $221.25 initiation fee, $93.75 a month and a $13.50 cart fee each round. If that person played three times a week, the cost would come out to $3,452.28 a year.

Under the old plan, a resident membership  for a family was $2,500 for the year, which included unlimited cart and green fees.

"So if we raise prices, we'll get more members?" Parrish asked in casting her dissenting vote.

Stark countered by saying current resident members have been getting a deal for years and that the golf course membership fees were well below those of comparable courses.

Towards the end of the meeting, Parrish offered two ways to save: she suggested that agenda packages for CDD meetings that are FedEx-ed to supervisors' homes now be sent in one package to the community center where they can be picked up. She also asked that the district's general counsel, who charges $300 an hour, now only attend meetings when necessary and be available for questions over the phone.

--- Dong-Phuong Nguyen, Times Staff Writer

Judge to Cory Lake Isles developer: Turn over records

Cory Lake Isles homeowners who sued for financial records won a big victory in court Thursday after a judge ordered the developer to produce the documents within 20 days.

"(Residents) are entitled to see where their money went," Hillsborough Circuit Judge Martha Cook said in her ruling.

Eight residents filed the lawsuit almost a year ago, saying homeowners in the upscale, gated community in New Tampa paid about $4.6-million over five years for operation and maintenance, but there was no documentation showing how the money was spent.

Lawyers for the property owners association turned over about 15,000 pages of documents, but the contents were incomplete, said Mark Basurto, an attorney for the homeowners.

Basurto said he wrote an e-mail to the lawyers for Cory Lakes Ltd., the company run by Gene Thomason that collected the fees, asking for more detailed records, but never got them.

"My clients are extremely frustrated with the process," Basurto said. "The time has come now for us to get these documents."

Philip Friedman, an attorney for the property owners association, argued that the association didn't have any of the records since checks were made out to Cory Lakes Ltd.