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Survey Says: Finish Wiregrass Already, OK?

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By TOM JACKSON

The Tampa Tribune

Published: June 22, 2008

An intriguing, potentially instructive survey showed up among the usual flotsam in our e-mail inbox the other day. Stashed among the outright scams and subtler attempts to separate us from our money - process rebates at home! radiology school now! turnkey operation nets $300 a day! - that slip past the junk filter was a welcome invitation to comment on the condition of shopping in Tampa.

Finally, a subject on which we are an authority. This Space is nothing if not congenitally acquisitive, the appropriate chromosome array having been ignited - as 20th century social critic Vance Packard darkly predicted - in my formative years.

Inspired by the devilishly effective Sears Christmas Wish Books of the early 1960s and their co-conspirator commercials on Saturday morning TV, our yearnings for things shiny, mechanical and needful of batteries sank roots in our innocent, welcoming marrow.

A predisposition for desiring stuff can be the fount of endless trouble. Or it can precipitate industriousness. In the case of a certain future newspaper columnist, it sparked 43 (so far) years of gainful, steady employment, beginning at age 12. Behold the dogged expert at feeding the discretionary-income beast.

The survey organizers couldn't have found a more eager participant, or one more steeped in retail therapy's reliable bliss.

Shop Till You Drop

How many times have you been to these malls in the past six months? the poll wondered, listing International Plaza, University Mall and the erstwhile "shoppingtowns" of Brandon and Citrus Park (but not West Shore; go figure). How much do you spend? At the risk of being unspecific: Too often; too much.

The poll then sampled our awareness of The Grove at Wesley Chapel. Who told us? The newspaper, natch. Could we identify the stores? In our sleep. Would The Grove influence our visits to the aforementioned malls? Unlikely; insufficient overlap.

Seekers of a seismic shift in shopping habits, we thought, would inquire about the Wiregrass Potentiality. Click. Said the survey: Have you heard about the Shops at Wiregrass?

These guys are good.

Into History's Dustbin

The day Don Porter snips the ribbon completing the Wiregrass project will be the day University and Citrus Park cease to exist in the world as This Space knows it. Big, brand-name department stores? Check. Bookstore? Check. (Finally!) Wife's preferred specialty shops? Pretty much, check. If they ever recruit a Disney store, Brandon becomes a memory, too.

This is the info the survey took into its vast database. With luck, receptive humans will put it to illuminating use, also known as: acquiring a sense of urgency. After all, our inputs can't possibly constitute a unique response.

We are over Fowler Avenue and Gunn Highway and Brandon Boulevard. Gas could return to 1969 prices and it wouldn't matter. Driving isn't browsing. Subject to the same DNA twitches that keep your humble servant on what's-new alert, this is one development the acquisitive class of greater Wesley Chapel-New Tampa-Land O' Lakes is happy to see in its backyard.

Columnist Tom Jackson can be reached at (813) 948-4219.

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