Dick Greco is a Tampa original.
His roots are Ybor City; his passion is Tampa. He’s dined with presidents, generals and at least one dictator. He’s never met a stranger. He’s old-school loyal – sometimes to a fault.
He became mayor of Tampa when he was uncommonly young. He quit before his second term was up. He returned in his 60s to serve two more terms.
His sales pitches were part charm offensive and part blunt, deal-cutting pragmatism. His legacy includes the Tampa Marriott Waterside, the Stetson College of Law and the Community Investment Tax — and all the resultant ripples.
Now the former, four-time mayor has his own image as public art. And the recently unveiled bronze homage is also a Tampa original.
For openers, such honors are typically reserved for the deceased. Greco, at 74, looks like he has more city hall terms in him.
And his life-sized likeness is not so much mounted as it is affixed — to a bench across from the Convention Center and behind Embassy Suites in the Southern Transportation Plaza. It’s now “Dick Greco Plaza.” A pedestal would have been inappropriately formal; a bench with room for an old — or new — friend is appropriately approachable.
*At the official unveiling Mayor Pam Iorio, Greco’s successor, was gracious in recognizing his contributions, and whatever she omitted was largely fleshed out by Ron Rotella, long-time City Hall official/consultant and a Greco confidant. But ironically, no one in Greco Plaza mentioned the streetcar. Sure it’s controversial, but it was Greco who signed off on the project. He saw beyond the nostalgia to an investment in an economic development tool with major implications for the convention business – as well as a potential, light-rail starter set.
*The statue, by local sculptor Steve Dickey, was paid for with private funds. Councilman John Dingfelder was the driving force behind a group that raised $55,000. Biggest of the contributors: Don and Erika Wallace, Edward DeBartolo Jr. and John and Susan Sykes.
*Dickey’s approach was to approximate the Greco look between mayoral tenures – roughly age 50. That, however, precluded the likeness from being dead-on for contemporaries. For future generations the point, of course, is moot. But for now, frankly, you’d have to know it was Greco.
*Such eventful civic ceremonies will always draw key politicos and Jack Harris. But such an occasion wouldn’t truly be complete — or appropriate — without a formal contribution from James E. Tokley, Tampa’s poet laureate.