PALM HARBOR - Sheila C. Johnson, owner of Salamander Hospitality LLC, had just begun to talk about her company's plans for the Innisbrook Resort and Golf Club when she stopped herself and posed a question to the audience.

Did anyone know why she named the company after a salamander?

The room was packed - about two hundred people, with every seat filled and people lining the walls - but no one spoke at first. People were there ostensibly for a news conference to celebrate that Salamander had purchased Innisbrook, the 900-acre golf resort tucked off U.S. 19 in Palm Harbor, for $35 million, but the news was hardly new. The deal, which closed Monday morning, was announced several weeks ago.

However, it seemed most people were really there to see Johnson, a black entrepreneur and philanthropist who had made a fortune as co-founder of Black Entertainment Television.

At last, an answer, shouted out from the audience, about salamanders and flames.

'That's right,' Johnson said. 'A salamander can walk through fire and still come out alive.'

Johnson and Innisbrook have both shown tenacity.

Johnson explained she founded Salamander in 2005 as her 'third act in life,' after her first career as a concert violinist and teacher, and her second one as co-founder of BET, which was subsequently sold to Viacom for $3 billion.

Innisbrook, home of the PODS Championship, has been passed around to several different owners, including Hilton and Westin, since opening in the early 1970s. It was sold to Salamander by Golf Trust of America.

At Monday's conference, Johnson spoke about Salamander's success at the Woodlands Resort & Inn near Charleston, S.C. Under her company's care, the inn was named the No. 2 resort in a recent reader poll in Travel & Leisure magazine.

'We're going to go for No. 1 - and that is what I want to do with Innisbrook,' she said.

'I am putting my money where my mouth is, and we're going to make this work,' she said. 'We are going to turn this place around and put it back on the map.'

David Downing, public relations director for the St. Petersburg/Clearwater Area Convention & Visitors Bureau, said Johnson brings 'a level of excitement to the local community that we haven't seen in a while.'

'For us to have someone of Sheila Johnson's stature - not only as a businesswoman and an entrepreneur, but also as a philanthropist - and to have her set her sights on Pinellas County is a compliment,' he said.

Additions Include Spa, Market

What exactly is in the works for Innisbrook? Johnson said she will add a spa and a retail village with a gourmet market, but didn't specify when construction might begin. Improvements have already begun on the Island course, one of the resort's four golf courses, she said.

A hotel might be a possibility in the future, but it won't be a high-rise, she said. Innisbrook has 620 suites and rooms, four restaurants, and three conference halls with a combined 65,000 square feet of meeting space. It also has several recreation facilities, including a pool shaped like the mythical Loch Ness Monster. The resort employs more than 600 people.

Salamander President Prem Devadas said 'every building that we own' will be improved at Innisbrook over the next 24 months, and that plans should be available in about 60 days.

Chuck Pomerantz, Innisbrook's vice president and managing director, said that the resort doesn't have any firm plans yet for changing its conference facilities but will talk to focus groups and meeting planners.

Owner Has Sports Connections

Johnson said she will use her connections in the sports world to help promote Innisbrook. She's the president and managing partner of the WNBA's Washington Mystics, and has an ownership stake in the Washington Wizards, of the NBA, and the Washington Capitals, of the NHL. On Monday, she also introduced several players from the NFL's Washington Redskins, who had traveled to Palm Harbor for the event, and said she hoped to build strong relationships with teams based in the Tampa Bay area.

At one point Monday morning, Johnson was asked whether she was the first woman, or the first black woman, to own a large golf resort. She said she and other Salamander employees are investigating the issue but don't know for certain. If it turns out that Johnson is making history, then she will promote it.

'If I am the first woman, or the first African-American woman, than why not?' she said. 'Let's capitalize on it!'

Reporter Dave Simanoff can be reached at dsimanoff@tampatrib.com or (813) 259-7762.