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By JOHN C. COTEY john@ntneighborhoodnews.com

K-Bar Ranch is tucked away in the northeasternmost part of Hillsborough County, with pretty much only one way in and one way out. However, another option is finally on the way.

This July, a road connecting K-Bar Ranch Pkwy. to Wesley Chapel’s Meadow Pointe Blvd. is expected to be complete and open to travelers.

K-Bar Ranch Pkwy. is an east-west road that runs through K-Bar Ranch, from Kinnan St. to, eventually, Morris Bridge Rd.

City of Tampa chief traffic management engineer and head of the Smart Mobility Division Vik Bhide confirmed during a Tampa City Council workshop that construction on the final stage of the Pasco County side of the planned connector road will begin soon.

“The developer (M/I Homes) has already secured permits from Pasco County for that work and will be moving forward with it,” Bhide said. “We are coordinating with Pasco County (its planning and engineering departments).”

City Council member Luis Viera, who represents K-Bar Ranch and the rest of the city’s New Tampa area as part of his District 7, called for the workshop last year in light of mobility and safety concerns, as well as fire response times, all of which were raised at the meeting.

Of most interest to K-Bar residents is the connection to Pasco County, which will allow easier travel north to the S.R. 56 corridor, which includes shopping, restaurants and the Shops at Wiregrass.

Currently, residents of the western portion of K-Bar Ranch would have to take Kinnan St. south to Cross Creek Blvd., then west to Bruce B. Downs Blvd., then north towards Wesley Chapel.

When K-Bar Ranch was planned, Bhide says four northbound access points to Pasco County were envisioned. The connection to Meadow Pointe Blvd. would be only be the second one to actually be completed, along with a connection at Kinnan St. and Mansfield Blvd.

However, that Kinnan connection to Mansfield Blvd. is only available to the public via walking or biking.

Otherwise, a safety arm monitored by Pasco allows only emergency vehicles through. Sometime soon, there will be a connection for vehicular traffic from Meadow Pointe Blvd. (above) in Wesley Chapel to K-Bar Ranch Pkwy. in New Tampa. (Photo: Charmaine George)

As for fire rescue response times, which have not been good in New Tampa (and in K-Bar Ranch in particular) according to the most recent reports published last year, City of Tampa Fire Chief Barbara Tripp said her department is working on better ways to access K-Bar Ranch area in order to decrease response times.

While K-Bar is on the schedule to receive a new Tampa Fire Rescue station, sometime during the next few years, Tripp suggested a satellite station or maybe increasing units at the existing stations until then.

A third connection, further east at Wyndfields Blvd. in Pasco, and a fourth connection when K-Bar Ranch Pkwy. is completed all the way to Morris Bridge Rd., won’t be ready for at least two more years, according to Bhide.

But, with K-Bar Ranch residents clamoring for relief, the Meadow Pointe Blvd. connection is a needed addition, according to the City of Tampa.

“Our recommendation, in light of the access needs in this area, is to open that up for traffic,” Bhide said. “The reason is….we feel the more access, the better. After hearing neighborhood concerns about public access and mobility, this would be the right thing to do.”

Viera, who has had multiple meetings with K-Bar Ranch residents, said he hasn’t ever met anyone living there who didn’t want the connection to Meadow Pointe Blvd. to be made.

“Now, we’ll schedule a community meeting to let them talk about the pros and cons,” Viera said. One of those cons will be additional traffic into K-Bar Ranch.

“It will increase traffic,” Bhide said. “However, we think it will be a two-way benefit.”

Bhide also discussed some of the safety measures already put into place on K-Bar Ranch Pkwy., but added that speeding in the area remains a major concern. There have been two fatal crashes on K-Bar Ranch Pkwy. in five years, and the community has made numerous complaints about the speeding.

The city also is studying the intersection at Bassett Creek and Kinnan, in front of Pride Elementary, due to traffic concerns.

“We are doing a deep dive on the safety concerns,” Bhide said.

Sensory & Autism Friendly Park To Break Ground Feb. 14

By JOHN C. COTEY john@ntneighborhoodnews.com

District 7 City Council member Luis Viera has championed building a sensory park in New Tampa since he first took office in 2016. The inspiration for the idea is personal — Viera’s older brother Juan has autism.

It’s somewhat fitting, then, that Viera’s labor-of-love — the New Tampa Sensory & Autism Friendly Park — will officially break ground on at 9 a.m. on Valentine’s Day (Monday, February 14), at the New Tampa Community Park in Tampa Palms.

“There have been some delays, like Covid, but it is a great day for New Tampa that this park is finally going to be built,” says Viera. “It’s going to be a big deal for a lot of people.”

While the city has made a number of improvements in recent years with playground equipment that has made its existing parks more accessible to children with autism, including the New Tampa Community Park, this full-fledged autism/sensory park will be the first of its kind in the city.

Proponents of the park have said that as many as 40,000 children in and around the New Tampa area are likely to use the park each year.

Viera said the lack of such facilities has always been a pet peeve of his. One year after being elected in 2016, he says he pulled the previous City of Tampa Mayor Bob Buckhorn aside and they had a long discussion on the importance of possibly building a sensory-friendly park for those on the autism spectrum.

Viera requested $90,000 be allocated in the 2018 budget for the design, and that the park be located in New Tampa.

He jokes that he told Buckhorn he would wrestle with whoever the next mayor was for the construction money to build the park.

Fortunately, it didn’t require too much wrestling. In 2020, current Tampa Mayor Jane Castor passed a $1.3-billion budget for Fiscal Year 2021, which included $1.7 million to build the park (rendering above).

The park, which was originally earmarked to be built on five acres of land behind the BJ’s Wholesale Club on Commerce Palms Dr. in Tampa Palms., is for children with a wide range of physical, cognitive, sensory and socio-emotional abilities.

It will include multiple play pieces that are wheelchair accessible, a sensory area geared towards children with autism or other sensory or cognitive challenges, a new art mural based on a ‘Fantastic Florida Nature’ theme, and more, all built on 10,000 sq. ft.

Those identified as having Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) generally do not process information from their five senses as everyone else does, and can become overwhelmed and unable to communicate and interact because they are overcome with anxiety. The park will benefit families with children and adults with ASD (and other similar disorders) and focus more on soothing and serene activities.

Everyone, however, will be allowed to use the park. Viera says the hope is that all children will be able to play together.

With ASD numbers growing, from one in 150 children in a 2007 report to one in 44 children — according to the most recent data provided by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) — sensory parks (and increased sensitivity to those afflicted with ASD) are becoming more prevalent across the country.

Most recently, the Wesley Chapel District Park, located 20-25 minutes north of New Tampa, opened a universally inclusive 7,000-sq.-ft. playground in 2019.

“I think this will be symbolic,” Viera says. “This tells parents raising kids with sensory issues that they are a priority, and that we care (about) and stand with them.”

To further his cause, which includes putting playground equipment for the disabled in every city park, Viera says he is looking to plan a handful of townhalls across Tampa — including one in New Tampa — to discuss other special needs concerns and how communities can help.

Gary Brosch, a West Meadows retiree who runs the No Fret Guitar Camp, was at a music conference in Nashville when he first met guitarist and harp guitarist Muriel Anderson.

They became friends. He asked her for a plug on her Facebook page and has followed her career ever since.

He was still surprised, however, when Anderson called recently to tell him she was going on tour and would be in Florida. And, she was offering something even better than a social media plug — “She wanted to do a fund raiser for us,” Brosch says. “It was a very pleasant surprise.”

Brosch’s last, and only, fund raiser for his guitar camps was in 2019, before Covid got in the way. “I hadn’t really even thought of this year’s fund raiser yet,” he says, but now, just a month after her phone call, it is scheduled.

On Tuesday, February 15, at 7 p.m., Anderson will headline a free concert at St. James United Methodist Church to benefit the No Fret Guitar Camp, Brosch’s nonprofit that gives underserved teens free guitars and free lessons.

The concert also will feature Skip Frye, Sr., who played at the first No Fret fund raiser in 2019 and was a big hit. The Hall of Fame blues artist also has been an instructor at two of the No Fret camps.

While Frye played his own songs as well as hits by other artists that were familiar to the audience at the first fund raiser, Anderson’s performance is likely to offer a unique sound, touching on genres like folk, bluegrass, classical and pop, played on a unique instrument — a harp guitar (photo), which combines your typical guitar strings with open, harp-like strings that allow for plucking.

Her show is a multimedia spectacle, with a backdrop of visuals projected onto a screen behind her.

More than 800 students have received free guitars and lessons through Gary Brosch (third from left) and his No Fret Guitar Camps over the last five years. (Photo courtesy of Gary Brosch) By JOHN C. COTEY Anderson is the first woman to win the john@ntneighborhoodnews.com National Fingerpicking Guitar Championship, and her 2013 CD, Nightlight Daylight, was chosen as one of the top-10 CDs of the decade by Guitar Player magazine. The fund raiser also will feature a silent auction and the event’s proceeds will Muriel Anderson and her harp guitar. benefit the No Fret Guitar camp, which has provided more than $320,000 of free guitars and lessons in five years for 800 students. Any church or organization can contact Brosch about hosting one of the camps, which are limited to six students each. No Fret students each receive a guitar and two-hour lessons for five days, with the focus on teaching basic chords and playing songs, rather than reading music. While Covid may have forced some changes and wiped out his fund raisers the past two years, it also helped Brosch realize the impact the camps have had on many former students. He says he has heard from a number of parents that while their children were confined inside at various times during the pandemic, they were able to turn to their guitars instead of their computers, which also helped with anxiety and depression. “That’s really been exciting for us,” Brosch says. “We really have a life-changing impact, and music can do that.” St. James United Methodist Church is located at 16202 Bruce B. Downs Blvd. in Tampa Palms. To reserve a free VIP table, call or text Gary Brosch at (813) 597-1925.

By JOHN C. COTEY john@NTNeighborhoodNews.com

Michael Varnadore is a nerd, and he’s proud of it.

He says he’s been a nerd since the 1980s, when he first laid his eyes on an Apple IIe computer, bought his first Commodore 64 and got his first Information Technology (IT) gig in 1986, when the U.S. Air Force started using the new Zenith Z-100.

What a decade that was. The computer world has changed a lot since then, and Varnadore has changed along with it. Now, he directs an entire team of nerds at NerdsToGo Computer Services, located in the Pebble Creek Collection shopping plaza on Bruce B. Downs (BBD) Blvd. Varnadore’s nerds can come to you and solve your computing needs.

“First and foremost, we want to be known as the guys you can trust with your IT, with your business, and with your data,” says Varnadore. “All of my nerds are certified, backgroundchecked and drug-tested. Everybody here is a professional IT specialist of one type or another.”

NerdsToGo offers a slew of services, ranging from replacing a cracked screen on an iPhone to serving as an

Michael Varnadore (white shirt) and his team of nerds at NerdsToGo in the Pebble Creek Collection can solve almost any consumer or business computer problem.(Photos courtesy of NerdsToGo) on-demand mobile IT department for your small business.

“We basically do everything,” says Varnadore, who opened his NerdsToGo franchise in 2019. “Our motto is ‘We Make IT Work.’”

NerdsToGo was founded in 2003 in Guilford, CT by David Colella to provide computer service for residential and small business users, long before computers were ubiquitous. The concept hasn’t changed, and there are now 25 locations nationwide, mostly along the east coast but as far west as Seattle.

On the consumer side, Varnadore’s franchise does hardware repair, and can even replace the back glass on an iPhone (and other phones) with its new laser machine. In many cases, they can have your cell phone or laptop with a cracked screen back to you within a few hours.

And, they will never put business ahead of honesty.

“This was my first time visiting NerdsToGo, but definitely will not be my last,” wrote one of the customers on Google, where the New Tampa NerdsToGo franchise has a 4.9 rating. “All of the staff here were super knowledgeable and pleasant. They were upfront and honest, did not try to haggle me for business. In my case, I had numerous devices to repair and they were very honest and told me which ones were not repairable. For the items that were repairable I received same day service.”

Varnadore says home networking, mostly involving setting up mesh networks to improve the WiFi range in homes, is popular, as well as options like setting up a new computer and transferring data off an old one, setting up printers, installing certain applications, removing malware and other issues with cyber security.

All of these are even more impor-

tant issues now, in a Covid world, than they were before, because so many more people are working from their homes.

There are enough computer conundrums to keep NerdsToGo busy. One of the most common complaints from consumers? “My computer is too slow.”

NerdsToGo specializes in tuning up your device by offering solid state drive (SSD) bundles, where they swap out an old hard disk drive (HDD) for a newer SSD, while transferring all your data to the new drive.

HDDs have moving parts, like a spinning “platter,” which can be broken when dropped or bumped, while an SSD is more like a large memory chip.

The difference in speed can be like trading in a station wagon with side paneling for a Porsche.

“The slowest thing on a computer these days is the hard drive,” Varnadore says. “Data is read and written to the disk so many times, people don’t realize how much that it slows everything else down. Now, with new solid state technology, there’s no moving parts. It’s very fast. You put (an SSD) in, it turns that slow computer into something running better than the day they bought it. People are amazed at the difference in speed, and that can save them hundreds, even thousands of dollars.”

NerdsToGo also is bolstering and emphasizing its local and small business offerings for those who can’t afford a full-time IT employee or don’t want to invest in expensive managed service companies to monitor their networks.

Through its NerdAssure program, NerdsToGo can manage the IT services for small businesses, supporting anywhere from one to hundreds of computers.

“From the day we opened our doors, we’ve always provided services to small business,” Varnadore says. “The new NerdAssure is a new branded capability we are rolling out that can do stuff in the background.”

The service monitors more than 3,000 different elements of the business computer hardware and software to make sure it’s running effectively, and if there’s a problem, NerdAssure is alerted so it can take action.

Varnadore says that NerdAssure also provides a real-time antivirus, “that not only looks for bad guys’ signatures but actually has a security operations center watching for any events that might be taking place.”

One of the most valuable services is backing up the business’ data.

“If you lose critical data you can be out of business,” Varnadore says. “Everything else can be replaced. But your intellectual property can’t. We can protect that.”

NerdAssure provides hosting for a Microsoft 365 environment and takes care of email issues while offering other IT administrative support as well.

And, when problems do arise, NerdsToGo can be onsite the same day to fix them.

“We want to be the small business’ IT company,” Varnadore says. “When they need us, we are there, and we can be there onsite and they are only paying for the time that they need us there. When they don’t need us, NerdAssure is monitoring and securing their network in the background.”

And when you do need NerdsToGo, Varnadore says you won’t be passed through to a call center somewhere else. The New Tampa location phone is answered by a customer specialist, one of the technicians or even by Varnadore himself. Give your local nerds a call for a free technology evaluation.

NerdsToGo is located at 19651 Bruce B Downs Blvd., Suite C6. The store is open Monday-Friday, 9:30 a.m.-6 p.m., and 10 a.m.-4 p.m. on Saturday. For more information, visit NerdsToGo.com, call (813) 321-1700 or see the ad on page 23.

NerdsToGo does most repairs in its office, but sometimes a trip to your home or business

is all it takes.(Photos courtesy of NerdsToGo).