"Next month, we will open the doors."
Matt Mitchell, president and CEO of the Tampa Metropolitan Area YMCA, wrote that line in an August 20 letter to members, and he meant it literally. The building in question is the Mary W. Sierra Family YMCA, a $35 million, two-story facility going up on the southwest corner of Bruce B. Downs Boulevard and Eagleston Boulevard in Wesley Chapel. For years, if you lived near Curley Road and wanted a real day of swimming, the answer was the Lagoon. That hasn't changed this fall. What's changed is that it's no longer the only answer.
Membership Instead of a Day Pass
The Mary W. Sierra Family YMCA runs 49,319 square feet, built by Creative Contractors from a design by Fleischman Garcia Maslowski Architecture. Inside:
- A lap pool, a teaching pool, and a family pool with its own waterslide
- A turf training area and basketball courts lined for pickleball
- A two-story climbing structure inside the Stay & Play child care wing
- Floor-to-ceiling windows throughout the group fitness studios
None of that requires a ticket. It requires a membership, and the Y has been selling those since before the building was finished. More than one hundred families signed up in the first few days that online presales opened. Youth sports, swim lessons, and Kids' Day Out programs are already taking enrollments even though the front desk, finished with marble countertops according to the Y's own construction updates, only just went in.
Anna Carman, the branch's new Family Program Director, spent years with the YMCA of the Triangle in North Carolina before coming to Wesley Chapel. Asked what she wants the place to be, she kept it simple: "It's a community gathering place." Becca Anderson, who has led wellness programming at the Bob Sierra Family YMCA since 2023, moved over as Wellness Director. Michael Loftin, with more than two decades in youth athletics through the Polk County School System, is Sports Director. Andi Cornett, with nearly nine years of YMCA experience, runs membership.
The land itself came through a lease with BayCare Health System, whose own Wesley Chapel hospital sits nearby, a partnership BayCare President and CEO Stephanie Conners framed as two organizations with a shared interest in the area's growth. Last year's groundbreaking drew a thank-you list that included Congresswoman Laurel Lee, and the Tampa YMCA expects the finished branch to create more than 300 jobs while serving upward of 40,000 households within a short drive, plus close to 20,000 seniors in the surrounding service area.
That's the version of a new amenity that doesn't show up in a ticket line at the gate. It shows up on a membership card.
The Corner That Keeps Filling In
A few minutes north, along Curley Road near the Epperson and Watergrass communities, the retail corner that grew up around the Publix, Starbucks, Circle K, and Florida Medical Clinic is still adding tenants. Swig, the Utah-born drive-thru chain known for build-your-own "dirty soda" combinations, has a location under construction at 8076 Curley Road. As of early summer, no opening date had been set. The company said it wanted its newly opened Lutz shop running smoothly first before bringing the Wesley Chapel site online.
A BayCare urgent care has also been slated for the southwest corner of Overpass and Curley, according to commercial listings covering the area, joining a stretch that already serves the Epperson and Watergrass trade area alongside a credit union, Amazing Explorers Daycare, and two roughly 400-unit apartment complexes under construction nearby.
None of this would be filling in as fast as it has without the interchange. The I-75 and Overpass Road diamond interchange, complete with a flyover ramp carrying westbound Overpass traffic onto southbound I-75, widened Overpass to four lanes near the interstate and six lanes further out toward Boyette Road. That's the piece of infrastructure that turned a two-lane connector into a corridor retailers actually want to build on, and it's the reason a corner that used to be mostly rooftops now has a soda shop and an urgent care in the pipeline at the same time.
What the Lagoon Still Has Going
None of this touches what's happening at the Lagoon itself, which is running its own fall calendar in parallel. Football SUN-Days, the season-long ticket bundle, gets you in every Sunday through the current NFL season for $149, with weekly prize drawings for gift cards, team merchandise, and game tickets. On October 10, Cabana Cove hosts Cove24+, an adults-only pool party for guests 24 and up, running 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. with a DJ and games. The Lagoon also runs a recurring LagoonSide Market with its own Kids Market section, where young vendors set up alongside the regular lineup, plus a weekly rotation of live music, bingo, and musical bingo nights that changes month to month. This past week, the Lagoon ran a promotion pouring free draft Corona with any day ticket purchased between September 25 and 27.
Hours shift by day, which matters if you're planning around a weeknight versus a weekend. The Lagoon runs shorter hours Monday through Wednesday, stretches later on Thursday, and opens earlier with a longer night on Friday and Saturday before scaling back on Sunday. Some online reviews mention busy weekends where the inflatable obstacle course or bumper boats ran on limited time slots. That isn't a criticism of how the place is run. Ticketed attractions and membership clubs simply operate under different capacity rules, and a day pass has always meant taking your chances with whoever else bought one that morning.
Two Systems, Same Neighborhood
For years, Epperson's water recreation ran on one system: a day pass, priced higher on weekends than weekdays, subject to whatever crowd showed up. That system isn't going anywhere. Football SUN-Days and Cove24+ prove the Lagoon's calendar is as full as ever this fall.
What's different is that Epperson families now have a second system to choose from a short drive down Bruce B. Downs. No day-ticket code, no weekend markup, no capacity tied to who got there first. Just a membership, a set of programs already taking sign-ups, and a pool that doesn't care if it's a holiday weekend.
This fall, an Epperson family can pick between a ticketed swim day at the Lagoon or a membership swim at the Y, something that wasn't on the table a year ago.
For more on what's landing next along Curley Road, or just to keep a running list of what's actually changing in Epperson this season, Home Selling Group of Florida tracks the neighborhood as closely as it tracks the market.
