Well today is the grand opening
and the ribbon cutting for the Wiregrass
Ranch Sports Campus of Pasco
County.
One! Two! Three! (Claps, cheers.)
Well this is a huge impact obviously.  This
is something we've been working on
for a long time,
now we're putting our TDT dollars to use
and again TDT dollars
are paid for by visitors that come to
our hotels, so this facility was built 100 percent with those TDT dollars from people that
came from outside the area - not
a dime from our local taxpayers here
in Pasco county. So this hundred thousand square foot indoor facility
is going to bring in youth sports
from all over the nation, if not over the
world to come here on the weekends,
and when they come here they're going to
bring their families they're going to
bring their spectators,
and they're going to shop in our stores, they're going to eat in our restaurants
they're going to buy our gas, they're
going to stay in our hotels; it's going
to be a huge economic impact for our local community
and our citizens here in the county.
It allows us to really position
the county as a major player in the
sporting world.  So
we're basically coming in and our number
one mission is to create an economic
impact for Pasco County through events
and tourism and secondary to provide
programs for the local community
through basketball, soccer, cheer,
and volleyball and then some other
sports that we can add in after that
also creating an academic portion to
make sure our kids are
academically set to get through high
school. It's really a community-based
facility so our kids are going to grow
up here knowing that this place is home.
One thing I love about the campus is
it's multifaceted, so there's so
many things that you can do here
outside of just sports. Every event that
comes through the building they feel
like this facility was made for them.
I'm super excited, you know also being
the chair of the Tourism Development
Council, this is something that's been on my
radar for some time. Just
ecstatic that it's happening.
