Business & Tech

Many Hands, Hearts Behind Brandon's Grand Civic Space

Memories came flooding back for the many people who played a part in the building of Greater Brandon's grand civic space. The Brandon Community Advantage Center opens as "HCC at The Regent."

Kudos aplenty were given at the Jan. 14 grand opening of the Brandon Community Advantage Center to politician and board member alike.

Recognition was strong, too, that with state, federal and county dollars put to work, the BCAC, opening as “HCC at The Regent,” truly is a gift of the community back to itself — and to the civic leaders 30 years ago who first set in motion the idea for a grand civic space in Brandon.

The building, at 6437 Watson Road in Riverview, opened to a V.I.P. reception that left some people concerned about who made the list and who didn’t and attendees just happy to have an inaugural viewing of the grand civic building.

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A second ribbon-cutting had been scheduled for Jan. 15 at 1 p.m., at the open house celebration scheduled for the community at large. The open house, from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m., went on as scheduled but without the ribbon-cutting.

George T. May IV, chair of the Brandon Community Advantage Center's board of directors, opened the official Jan. 14 presentation: “Welcome to my little house,” he said.

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But it was — and is — a “house” that has many builders, whose hands and minds took the building from dirt to a grand, and marbled 32,000- square-foot presence, and that will have even more dwellers, not to mention owners, as a publicly funded building.

“It was my baby, I’ve seen it grow,” said Jeff Gentry, the field superintendent for the building, in an interview. “But it wasn’t just me, probably 400 people were involved, from subcontractors to designers to people who got the funding for the project” and oversaw its development.

“I’m still in awe right now,” said the building’s architect, Marty Mullin. “I just walked in and I have to let it settle in.”

Indeed, some hours later, he walked out onto the grand porch area, with a view down a grand staircase out toward the Winthrop community that rests on Bloomingdale Avenue. He talked about the craftsmanship that he said is evident in the building in a myriad of ways, pointing out the precision-laid marble, the turns in the grand staircase handrail and the laying of the concrete steps to ensure a perfect fit.

Minutes later he discussed the building with architect Antonio Amadeo, who sits on the BCAC board of directors. They noted the careful attention to detail that went into the scale of the building, making the space both grand and inviting.

Mullin met also with architect Reuben Cansler, who aided the board at crucial times in its ongoing work, and with Earl Lennard, who as a project manager early in the process, played a crucial role in laying the groundwork for the BCAC.

John and Kay Sullivan were in attendance, the town founders of Winthrop, who doggedly insisted throughout the process that the vision of “building as art” and as a structure that both looks like it has been around for decades and that in turn will last for hundreds of years to come, took root in the southwest corner of the cow pasture they bought for the development of a neo-traditional community.

“My gut feeling, when I walked out on to the patio, it was awe,” Mullin said. “And a sensation of, ‘look what we did.’ I’m still way down here on the totem pole in what actually took place to get this building here. I am just really humbled that I was lucky enough to be involved in a project like this. It’s such an enormous effort for the community to pull off a building like this.”

Mitch Burley, who moved to Brandon in 1960 at age 4, is the son of a builder, Boyd, whose work is scattered through the Greater Brandon area. Mitch Burley, with his wife, Rose, and his son, Ryan, were in attendance with him at the grand opening of the 32,000- square-foot building that took hundreds of people thousands of hours to build.

“It’s fabulous,” Mitch Burley said about the building. “There’s finally a building in Brandon that allows us to attend functions and weddings and not have to go to Tampa do so.”

A graduate of Brandon High School, Burley’s love for his hometown came through when he added: “We’ve finally arrived.”

Gentry, too, graduated from Brandon High, in 1981.

“When it’s your passion you enjoy everything,” he said when asked to point out his favorite features and remembrances of the BCAC’s construction. “There is so much attention to detail in this building. There are so many architectural details.”

The complexity of the building process is not lost on Gentry. “What used to take two screws, now it takes 15 screws to meet FEMA standards,” he noted.

The BCAC project is funded with $2.5 million in state dollars, $2.5 million in county dollars and $1.3 million dollars in funding from the Federal Emergency Management Association to construct a hurricane shelter capable of withstanding winds up to 190 miles per hour.

“To see the upgraded finishes, and to work with people who had a vision for how those finishes come together and function” was a great experience, Gentry said. “It’s nice to step back and see the accomplishment.”

May officially thanked his current fellow board members — Antonio Amadeo, Mary Boor, Terry Curry, Don DeCort, David Lemar Jr., Heather Ochalek-Stump and David Vaughan. He thanked the board's attorney, Marsh Rainey, the builder, Mitch Burley, and he gave a special thanks to Miller Dowdy Jr.

Dowdy, who also worked on the Greater Brandon Chamber of Commerce building and the Campo Family Y’s swimming pool, served as the board’s founding chair since his appointment in 2007 and up until a few months ago, when he relocated to Georgia for business purposes.

He was asked by then State Rep. Trey Traviesa to serve on the volunteer board. Traviesa, with his aide and now successor Rachel Burgin, secured the initial $2 million funding for the building from the State Department of Emergency Management.

Two years earlier, Tom Lee, then the Florida  Senate president, assisted by his then-aide Ron Pierce, first proposed the idea for a grand civic building in Brandon, and laid the groundwork for its initial funding. Pierce served on the board and, later, became a project manager for the building, taking over for Earl Lennard, who served in that capacity during the project’s crucial early stages. (Disclosure: Linda Chion Kenney was a project manager on the BCAC building before becoming editor of the Brandon Patch. She held that position under both Lennard and Pierce and wrote the business plan narrative below.)

At the Friday night ribbon-cutting, Brandon campus president Carlos Soto spoke on behalf of Hillsborough Community College. At the BCAC’s Jan. 13 board meeting paperwork was signed to move forward the community college’s ownership of the building. At that meeting Spoto resigned from to board to become the college's liaison with the board.

Al Higginbotham, chair of the Hillsborough County Board of County Commissioners, spoke on behalf of the county and Rep. Rich Glorioso spoke on behalf of the state. Brandon campus president Soto spoke on behalf of the college and past Senate president Lee offered a few remarks as well.

Background Information:

The history of the BCAC dates back some 30 years ago, as reported in the project's business plan. An excerpt of that plan's narrative is noted below:

"The need for a grand civic, cultural and event space in the Greater Brandon area is not in question. Indeed, the community has been aware of the need for more than 30 years, as it has grown from a “little bedroom burg” into the largest unincorporated area in Hillsborough County, with some 287,000 people in 2008, according to the Greater Brandon Chamber of Commerce.

"Paul Funderburk in 1967 was a county planner. In 1979, he was among a dozen individuals “motivated by their deep love for Brandon as a separate community and armed with an idea of what their little bedroom burg would grow to.” This group of civic-minded individuals, according to the 1979 Brandon News report, set about the task of “obtaining the things they felt would give Brandon its own identity.” Funderburk was quoted as saying that for Brandon to become something more than just a bedroom community of Tampa, it needed a library, junior college, hospital, additional banking facilities and, among other things, art.

"Greater Brandon today is a much larger community. It has its libraries, banks, junior college, and hospital; it has its cultural center, but that facility, the Center Place Fine Arts & Civic Association, can accommodate at most some 150 people in its main, and only, meeting room. This falls far short of the auditorium space that Funderburk and others had envisioned as far back as 30 years ago.

"In 1976, the Brandon Cultural Center Civic Association, armed with a federal Bicentennial grant, put forth “plans for a $4.5 million facility that would have included a 10,000 seat auditorium and amphitheater, among other things,” a news report noted.

“ 'That was pretty lavish,' Funderburk said at the time. 'But I don’t think the community could have supported something like that. We had to keep looking.' ”

"That search took a defining turn in 2005, when then Florida Senate President Tom Lee secured funding for a grand civic space in Brandon that could serve also as a site for community college uses.

"That project became known as the 'Brandon Advantage Center,' in keeping with the name of the funding legislation for the center initially secured by Lee. (The project would later become known as the 'Brandon Community Advantage Center.')"

"The impetus behind Lee’s push for funding was the concern of his constituents that despite its size and growth, Brandon had been lacking a civic space large enough to accommodate its main events, including those hosted by the Center Place Fine Arts & Civic Association, the Brandon Community Foundation (also known as the Greater Brandon Community Foundation), the Greater Brandon Chamber of Commerce and the Community Roundtable (formerly known as the President’s Roundtable and Roundtable Charities of Greater Brandon).

"In March 2007, under the direction of then State Rep. Trey Traviesa, a not-for-profit corporation headed by an all-volunteer board of civic-minded individuals was established to oversee the center’s establishment and construction. This led to the appropriation of funds that former State Senate President Tom Lee had championed: a $2 million grant from the State of Florida, Division of Emergency Management, and approximately $1 million in Federal funding, through the State Hazard Mitigation Program, for the hardening of the portion of the building that would be used as a disaster relief shelter. Moreover, the Hillsborough County Board of County Commissioners voted June 17, 2008 to approve a recommendation by Hillsborough County Parks, Recreation and Conservation officials to earmark $2.5 million for the establishment of the center, which the cultural and arts community of Brandon had also supported. 

"That building has become known as the Brandon Community Advantage Center, a multi-use facility serving also as a Multi-use Hurricane Shelter, for which the design and construction would be in compliance with the newly established, more stringent, requirements known as ICC/NSSA 500, established in the wake of Hurricane Katrina."

 

Note: Author Linda Chion Kenney served as an administrator for project management for the Brandon Community Advantage Center, prior to her position as Brandon Patch Editor. 


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