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What Wine Goes Best With Bat?

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By JOYCE McKENZIE

The Tampa Tribune

Published: May 31, 2008

TEMPLE TERRACE - A group of residents committed to rebuilding a piece of the city's history hopes others in the community will help toast them toward its success.

The Friends of Temple Terrace Parks and Recreation and the Temple Terrace Preservation Society have partnered with Aspirations Winery in a fundraising project to reconstruct the Bat Tower. It was built in 1924 on the banks of the Hillsborough River and destroyed by arsonists in 1979.

The winery's owner, Michael Rice, is offering two wines under the Vin de Tour de Batte label: the Bordeaux-style red L'Collage and the orange-infused Temple Terrace Orange Riesling, in honor of the Temple orange. The bottles are priced at $12 each, $3 of which will go toward rebuilding what many residents say was Temple Terrace's greatest icon.

The wines are available at Aspirations Winery, 5116 E. Fowler Ave.; Olde World Cheese Shop, 11001 N. 56th St.; Chuck's Natural Marketplace, 11301 N. 56th St.; and the Empress Tea Room, 6810 E. Fowler Ave.
Temple Terrace resident Lana Burroughs, a member of the Temple Terrace Preservation Society, designed the wine's labels based on old photos of the Bat Tower near Riverhills Drive. It was one of 14 in the world designed by noted architect and Nobel Prize nominee Charles Campbell.

"The preservation society is trying to increase the community's interest in Temple Terrace's history, and the Bat Tower was very unique to this city," Burroughs said.

Al Latina, president of Friends of Temple Terrace Parks and Recreation, a volunteer arm of the city-run department, is thrilled about the sale of the Bat Tower-labeled wines.

"I think they'll make wonderful gifts, and my wife and I are planning to buy them as Christmas presents," he said. "It's for such a great cause because it was such a landmark. It's so disturbing when traveling on the river to see just the remnants of the old Bat Tower."

Architect Grant Rimbey, also a Temple Terrace resident and Temple Terrace Preservation Society past president, plans to design the new Bat Tower from precise measurements he has taken from a tower at Sugarloaf Key. It is one of three remaining Campbell-designed bat towers worldwide.

Rimbey said unlike the old Temple Terrace Bat Tower, this will be a functioning roost, where bats that are known to eat hundreds of bugs - including moths and mosquitoes - an hour, can call home.

The structure will be constructed in the new 150-acre Riverfront Park, adjacent to the recently completed pavilion, designed and built by students at the University of South Florida School of Architecture and Community Design.

"The new tower will be a focal point for the new park and is far from existing residences, which is why we're not rebuilding the tower at its previous site," Rimbey said.

The Bat Tower reconstruction project is projected to cost between $50,000 and $60,000. About $3,350 has been contributed by the community.

Donations, made out to the City of Temple Terrace, may be mailed to Al Latina, 7002 Doreen St., Tampa FL 33617. For details, call Latina at (813) 988-6794.

Reporter Joyce McKenzie can be reached at (813) 865-4849 or jmckenzie@tampatrib.com.

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