NEW TAMPA — After more than two decades of waiting, K-Bar Ranch’s long-promised community park is finally moving toward construction, with Tampa City Council expected to vote next month on roughly $8 million to build the 56-acre park.
The vote will come about a year after City Council member Luis Viera secured $1 million to begin the design process. Skanska Construction has been selected to lead the project’s design-build team, and residents are hoping to influence the park’s layout before plans are finalized.
“This is a big deal for them,” he said. “It’s been a long time coming, and we want to make sure they get the park they want.”
Before public design meetings expected later this fall, neighborhood leaders hope to sit down with Skanska’s designers to share ideas residents have spent years talking about.
“We just want to make sure that we’re able to express (what we want) and make sure we’re able to express it before the cement begins to harden,” said Patrick Leduc, president of Bassett Creek Estate Homeowner’s Association, whose neighborhood borders the site. “Public input is nice. Sometimes, it doesn’t move the ball that much. You got to get to them before they make the design.”
The site, south of Mistflower Lane near the Pasco County line, has been largely untouched for years. It was once part of a cattle ranch and later served as a burrow pit during construction of the surrounding neighborhoods. Other than three live oaks along the southern edge, Ledus says there’s not much to it.
“It looks like something out of Kansas” he said.
The landscape is beginning to change, however. The city planted about 6,800 trees (mostly pine saplings) last December and added another 3,500 oak saplings earlier this month along the park’s southern edge.
“The 56-acre site is bursting with potential,” said mayor Jane Castor, “and the addition of these oaks means we’ll be building a great park with shade already taking root.”
There have been expectations of a park in the community since the early 2000s, but multiple ideas stalled. At one point, Hillsborough County and the City of Tampa planned to develop the site together. The county favored a revenue-generating sports complex before eventually abandoning the partnership, leaving the city to move forward with its own more passive park plans.
Assuming the vote to fund the park passes, Viera and Leduc are hoping to hold a zoom call with Skanska’s design team in September, preferably before any renderings go public, to walk through a wish list residents have refined since the park was first promised.
Near the top of that list is a long-sought after cricket field to serve New Tampa’s large South Asian community. Leduc estimates that roughly a quarter of K-Bar Ranch residents are of Indian, Pakistani or Bangladeshi descent.
“The community wants that, so of course I’m going to represent it strongly,” he said.
The city has said the plan is for a large multi-use field, within which cricket will be incorporated. Others have pushed for a more cricket-centric field that might even be used to host tournaments and become a regional draw.
Leduc doesn’t think the kind of bleachers and lighting that would require, as well as the additional traffic it would attract, is appealing.
“Keep it simple, Sally. You know, build a field, go out and play on the field. Bring your own chair,” Leduc said. “The idea is to let the park meld into nature, or nature meld into the park.”
The park is also expected to have a playground, picnic facilities, paths and trails, a restroom and parking.
Leduc points to Branchton Park as a model. The county-built low-key daytime park with a playground, trail and pickleball courts is located nearby on Morris Bridge Road.
But unlike Branchton Park, K-Bar Ranch Park will be bordered by homes, creating additional concerns about traffic and noise.
Leduc says residents would prefer park amenities clustered more towards the park’s southern edge, away from existing neighborhoods. They also prefer funneling traffic through a single entrance with Paddock View Drive while reserving a second access point for maintenance and emergency vehicles. Even the entry gates, Leduc said, should reflect the surrounding community’s character.
One idea Leduc continues to push for is the expansion of a pond informally known as Sunrise Lake along the park’s northern edge.
Widening the lake southward, Leduc says, would provide builders with needed fill dirt, which he says would save money, and produce a larger lake and potential fishing pier for neighborhood kids to cast a line from.
It would also create another buffer between the park and nearby homes.
If the funding is approved next month, Viera said he intends to move quickly to schedule public meetings before his term on the council ends. He has already submitted his resignation effective Nov. 2 as he campaigns for the Florida House District 67 seat.
“I won’t be in this seat when the park is finally finished,” Viera said, “but it is critical that certain pillars be solidified in this project, and we do that through vigorous public input. That is why I have been very aggressive in pushing for these meetings.”