Talk about historic.
When ground was formally broken earlier this month for the new Tampa Bay History Center, the event itself made history. Imagine, when the 60,000-square-foot center opens — the target date is December 2008 — it will have been the result of that rarest of occurrences: textbook collaboration among the city of Tampa, the county of Hillsborough and the private sector. For a region too typically mired in petty parochialism and political in-fighting, this is truly historic.
And how fitting that the perfect storm of cooperation will yield this $52-million project. Before there was a Jamestown or a Plymouth landing, there were Panfilo de Narvaez and Hernando de Soto exploring parts of present-day Pinellas and Hillsborough Counties. The Tampa Bay History Center will graphically – and interactively – remind us all of what we have in common, not conflict.