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Taste Of New Tampa Heading For New Home At Professional Center

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By GEORGE WILKENS, The Tampa Tribune

Published: November 25, 2007

TAMPA PALMS - After years of relying on shopping center parking lots to accommodate the popular Taste of New Tampa, organizers have targeted a professional center near the Freedom/Liberty schools complex for their 15th annual event.

The New Tampa Community Council fundraiser will be March 30 at the Tampa Palms Professional Center on Commerce Park Boulevard, said Frank Margarella, president of the nonprofit group that launched the food festival in 1994.

"We feel like it's a good site. It's got a lot of good parking opportunities," Margarella said.

Last year's festival drew an estimated 8,000 people and netted $35,000 for local public schools.

Planning is in the early stages and a site plan has yet to be worked out, but Margarella said the organization will seek permission to allow parking at Freedom High School and possibly the adjacent New Tampa Community Park. Free shuttles will operate between the parking areas and the nearby festival area, he said.

Development of the 38-acre New Tampa Professional Center began in 2005, and it eventually will have 400,000 square feet of office space and 60,000 feet of commercial space.

For the past four years, the event has been held at shopping centers: two at the Shoppes of Amberly in Tampa Palms and for the past two at the Shoppes at New Tampa in Wesley Chapel.

In the festival's early days, it was held in residential developments, including Hunter's Green, Arbor Greene, Meadow Pointe and West Meadows.

"Our first goal was to have it in a place where we weren't going to have the issues we had" in past years, including shopping center tenant concerns about the event's impact on customer parking.

Margarella, a Hunter's Green resident and longtime New Tampa real estate agent, said the 2008 site represents a return to the early days, when developers saw hosting the three-hour Sunday afternoon event as a valuable marketing tool to showcase property.

Most Tampa Palms Professional Center tenants are closed Sundays, Margarella pointed out.

Reporter George Wilkens can be reached at (813) 865-4847 or gwilkens@tampatrib.com.

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