For years the hardscrabble, apartment-dotted area around USF has been known as “Suitcase City,” hardly a flattering connotation and enough to make any chamber of commerce cringe. Main arteries such as Fowler Avenue and nearby Busch Boulevard are variations on a visual pollution theme. Curb appeal seemingly a North Tampa oxymoron.
And yet this same North Tampa area is home to some of the region’s most prominent, economically impacting, cutting-edge entities. The juxtaposition has been glaring.
If USF and three other catalytic partners have anything to say about it, that jarring-context image will soon start to undergo an extreme makeover.
To that end, USF, H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center & Research Institute, University Community Hospital and Busch Gardens have recently formed the Tampa Innovation Alliance. They want an appropriate brand for the area, one that includes a serious sense of entry into the domain of the Big Four.
First step: the aforementioned Tampa Innovation Alliance. Second step: cooperating in enlightened self interest and reaching out to the local business community. Third step: setting aside funds and hiring a consultant. Among early priorities: aesthetic improvements in the major gateways that could range from code enforcement to beautification projects. Their turf is certainly not akin to, say, the Research Triangle, but neither will it be Suitcase City, the Sequel.
Many of the jobs of the future that come to Tampa will be coming to North Tampa. It’s that important–that marketable–and that in need of looking the part.
Among those who are part of the re-imaging conversation: Tampa Mayor Bob Buckhorn. It hardly hurts that his wife, Dr. Catherine Lynch Buckhorn, is the associate vice president of the department of obstetrics and gynecology at the USF Medical School.
In fact, USF could be the model. It was built on old Henderson Air Field and was referred to as “Sand Spur U” in the 1960s. For too long it had all the architectural ambience of a 1970s industrial park. Today it’s an economic-impact behemoth, a nationally-recognized research institution and one of the largest universities in the nation. And, no, it no longer looks like an industrial park. Plus, it has an aggressive, economic-development true believer for a president in Judy Genshaft.
With USF–and its Moffitt Cancer Center campus partner–as the epicenter of the re-imaging project, Tampa Innovation Alliance already has a leg up.