by Janan Talafer • jvt916@tampabay.rr.com

START AT THE NORTHERN TIP OF HILLSBOROUGH County where Interstates 275 and 75 meet and half-milliondollar homes line the fashionable suburbs of New Tampa. Go south on I-75 toward the sprawling residential and retail hub of Brandon - Florida's fourth-largest city if it were incorporated. And travel further south to the once-rural wilderness of small fishing, farming, phosphate and carnival towns, now fast becoming fashionable SouthShore communities.

This two-decade-old stretch of Interstate 75 is both connector and catalyst for the development of this mass of land on the eastern front of Hillsborough County - one of the fastestgrowing sectors in all of Florida. New Tampa, with its high-income wage earners and location near the University of South Florida, hit a major home run recently with the announcement of not one, but three major corporations moving operations there.

In early June, MetLife announced the $24.5-million purchase of two buildings totaling 240,000 square feet in New Tampa's Highwoods Preserve business park. Plans call for the company's accounting, contract fulfillment and information processing functions to move there this fall.

MetLife will be in good company. Depository Trust and Clearing Corporation, the nation's largest clearinghouse for stock, bond, governmentbacked and mortgage-backed securities transactions, moved in last year. So did T-Mobile. And Syniverse, a major hub provider for more than 300 wireless carriers worldwide, will relocate there this November.

Of Highwoods Preserve's five buildings, 89 percent or 700,000 square feet is now leased, with "very real prospects" for the remaining 91,000 square feet, says Ed Fritsch, chief executive officer and president of Highwoods Properties, developer of the New Tampa business park.

Syniverse (www.syniverse.com) decided to move its headquarters in Tampa after last summer's disastrous hurricane season posed numerous challenges to its downtown location, says Helen Harris of Syniverse. "Although we have a sophisticated business continuity and disaster recovery plan, it became clear that we needed to be away from the water and out of the flood zone."

The move to New Tampa offers the company many benefits, including "a telecom grade facility, with all the backup power and fiber redundancy we require," says Syniverse Chairman and CEO Ed Evans. "Our new headquarters building better meets our existing needs and, more importantly, provides us with the facilities that will meet our planned growth."

Syniverse's growth has been steady, with $241.9 million in net revenue in 2003; $308.7 million in 2004; and a 2005 outlook of $315-$325 million. Syniverse went public in February, and counts as customers the 10 largest wireless carriers in the U.S., including Sprint PCS, Cingular Wireless, T-Mobile and Verizon Wireless. In May, Harris says Syniverse was selected by the wireless industry to be the company providing the national messaging system for wireless "Amber Alerts," a cooperative program with the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and local law enforcement agencies. Wireless subscribers can receive text message alerts based on the geographic area they live in. The first week it was offered, 40,000 people signed up as subscribers, says Harris.

Business continuity and recovery for a different reason - the 9/11 attack on New York City - prompted Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC) to begin thinking of decentralizing some operations and establishing back-up data centers around the country, says Steve Letzler, a spokesperson for the company.

Last year, New Tampa's Highwoods Preserve beat out 300 other contenders as the site for DTCC's new $34- million southern business center operation. The company began operations in the 176,000-square-foot facility late last year. New Tampa's business boom may be a surprise for some people, considering its fairly recent history. The area was annexed by the City of Tampa only two decades ago. At the time, Bruce B. Downs Boulevard, now a heavily traveled main thoroughfare, was described as the "Road to Nowhere."