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Forget Perfection; For Real Life, It's New Tampa

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By TOM JACKSON

The Tampa Tribune

Published: August 13, 2008

To properly appreciate New Tampa, that area of real estate extending like a salute from the incorporated city's otherwise-boxy silhouette, it is necessary first to establish what it is not.

For all the planning that has gone into its quilt-work of communities, for all the contractual deed restrictions its homeowners eagerly ink at closing, for all the roadside limitations business operators accept for access to the region's lucrative market, New Tampa is far from orderly; it's scarcely even predictable.

In short, lurking behind all those security gates is not Stepford South. New Tampa may strut House Beautiful landscaping manicured to the standards of image of Epcot during garden festival season; its well-tended streets may lack the punctuation of potholes; its children may attend school in uniforms; and even its joggers may seem to keep design consultants on retainer. Appearances can deceive, however.

New Tampa proves the possibility of designing in idyllic surroundings and opportunities for daily self-improvement while routinely succumbing to that which betrays those efforts. However serene the veneer, life in New Tampa often is hectic, unexpected, inconvenient, complicated, exhausting and exasperating - just as it is in the chock-a-block, provincial and smug neighborhoods S-O-K (South of Kennedy).

Well, You Have Trouble

The heir apparent needs tutoring, or was picked by a coach whose kid plays the position your kid prefers. The tile subcontractor didn't show up - again. The lawn service mistook the new ground cover for weeds and zapped it with herbicide. The president of the PTA is pressuring you to chair the fundraising committee.

Your spouse is diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis; the husband across the street has cancer - again. The neighbors waging the ugly divorce moved out, abandoning four cats. The new dog next door is a yapper. The high school junior wants a car, but the latest communique from the corporate office said layoffs are likely in the third quarter.

No, not everything is perfect in New Tampa: planned, yes; exquisitely designed, to be sure; lavish, indeed, in its attention to detail. But perfection lies elsewhere.

If such were not the case, New Tampa would not fairly explode with businesses peddling stress relief, beginning with day spas, soothing salons and massage stores and extending to at least seven places to sip designer coffees (nine if you count the two McDonald's); four or more ice cream cafes; assorted smoothie bars; a reliable supply of comfort-food eateries satisfying a wide variety of budgets; groceries well-stocked with wine and beer; taverns, pubs and sports bars of every stripe; an escapist multiplex movie house; and for those who seek wisdom and peace from the inside out, more than a dozen outposts for worshipping the Almighty.

Wonderful Town

Still, a place needn't be perfect to be wonderful for living, working, shopping, recreating or procreating. For instance, when the summer skies wring out the daily deluge, New Tampa residents don't require watercraft to get home from work. Furthermore, living in New Tampa means never having to miss your tee time or an appointment with your personal trainer waiting for the Roto-Rooter man.

New Tampa means outstanding public schools, a standout library, a robust YMCA and never being more than a five-minute stroll to a lake (OK, retention pond) teeming with bass, crappie and catfish. New Tampa means about a million miles of bicycle paths and routine sightings of central Florida's great water birds: gray and blue heron, spoonbills, snowy egrets, white ibis.

New Tampa means open spaces. Well-equipped parks welcome everyone from tots with moms to youth football teams to kite-fliers to duffers working on their medium irons. New Tampa also means buried utility lines, the better to fly those kites and work those irons.

Christmas in New Tampa is the main entrance to Hunter's Green transformed into a wintry Candyland, with the guard shack making a star turn as a fairy tale gingerbread house.

Yuletide also means the annual return of snow-white grapevine reindeer monitoring the light changes at Bruce B. Downs and Tampa Palms Boulevard; once the management started anchoring them in place, their arrival no longer meant discovering (and wracking your brain to explain to the backseat kindergartner the meaning of) the reindeer embraced in twiggy lovemaking.

Of course, New Tampa means convenience for practicing retail therapy - absent only a substantial big-name department store and a bona fide bookstore. And each session can be capped with a visit to any of an array of specialty restaurants. Like Brazilian-informed cuisine? You'll love The Lime.

Or, if the shopping experience has been harrowing, there's always Roger McQueen, the Pensacola transplant built like a Southeastern Conference linebacker, solidifying his reputation as the Bay area's best - and, it says here, cheeriest - bartender from the well at the Stonewood Grill & Tavern.

Perfection? It's overrated. New Tampa has real life pretty much figured out.

Tom Jackson is a Pasco Tribune columnist. He lives in New Tampa. He can be reached at (813) 948-4219.

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