Category: Tampa Bay

Bernard Goldberg’s latest shot across the bow of liberalism, “100 People Who Are Screwing Up America,” includes many all too familiar names: from Michael Moore and Jerry Springer to Eminem and Maury Povich. They skew and coarsen the culture, contends Goldberg. It’s not that hard a case to make. The challenge had to be narrowing it down to a manageable 100.

At the end, Goldberg even invites readers to try their hand at their own list. Here’s an abbreviated, customized version: “5 People Who Are Screwing Up Tampa Bay.”

#5 BRIAN BLAIR: Would you suspect this rookie member of the Hillsborough County Commission is a former pro wrestler? Of course you would. Carrying the water for Republican puppet masters Sam Rashid and Ralph Hughes, Blair is earning a reputation as clownish obstructionist while waving the banner of fiscal conservatism.

#4 DWIGHT “CHIMURENGA” WALLER: As president of the Uhuru Movement, Waller has carved out St. Petersburg’s pre-eminent race-card niche. Acts as a one-man governor on revival scenarios of St. Petersburg’s historically impoverished Midtown section. His charge is to hector, not to help. Has only criticism for those, such as Mayor Rick Baker, who are actually working – and succeeding – in bringing investment to Midtown.

#3 VINCE NAIMOLI: From the get-go, the wrong owner of a Tampa Bay Devil Ray franchise already beset with issues of facility design and regional location. Still calling all the important shots. In so doing, has turned national reporting into a firing squad of bad publicity for the team and the area. Keeps payroll low enough to assure also-ran status and declining attendance, lowest in Major League Baseball. Franchise viability a serious concern to MLB. Compounds Rays’ poor performance with several, nationally-reported PR gaffes annually. Refuses to fire GM Chuck LaMar or himself.

#2 JOE REDNER: Tampa’s strip club impresario has made a financial killing perverting the First Amendment. Gets away with it because he’s street smart about the law’s slippery slopes. No one more responsible for Tampa’s unsavory image as the epicenter of “lap dancing.” Should have made Goldberg’s list too.

#1 RONDA STORMS: This Hillsborough County commissioner is much more dangerous than the average yahoo-pandering pol because she’s smart, glib, fast on her feet, always prepared and nasty. Single most polarizing presence in the region. Politician most responsible for the ongoing – and escalating – misunderstanding and antipathy between Hillsborough County and the city of Tampa. Led the crusade against even “acknowledging” Gay Pride, the implications of which range from the ethical to the economic. Topped Vince Naimoli as a recent magnet for national notoriety.

Here’s the good news about those recently installed, “Welcome to Tampa, City of Champions” signs. The red, white and blue numbers look pretty spiffy. And why not capitalize on a niche that identifies the city as a winner? Of a Super Bowl, a Stanley Cup and even an Arena Bowl. They are a notable upgrade on the dated “All American City” signs they replaced.

The bad news is the precarious shelf life of such signage. It’s inevitable when your identity is forged from the sports arena, notorious for its “what-have-you-done-lately?” ethic.

In the case of the Lightning, the answer is nothing – just waiting and wishing for the confoundingly stupid lockout to end. Fortunately, however, a reservoir of good will seems to await the defending Cup champions.

As for the Bucs, Super Bowl XXXVII now seems a Roman-numeraled eon ago. It’s what happens when your post-championship seasons are disappointing and disheartening. For now, “City of Champions”/Super Bowl seems to mock the reality of 7-9 and 5-11 the past two years, records more reminiscent of Leeman Bennett’s tenure than Jon Gruden’s.

But the NFL is a league of cycles and parity. The Bucs will be back. And when they return, those signs will be chest-thumpingly current again. Unless, of course, it takes too long and Tampa is re-named an “All-American City.”

This much seems evident amid the maelstrom still swirling around the art museum scenarios:

*The process has been frustrating, controversial, costly and so, well, un-Iorionic .

Granted, Tampa Mayor Pam Iorio inherited the polarizing “Mother of All Carports.” And paying to build – and operate — an endowment-challenged new museum was never going to be a slam-dunk. But isn’t Iorio too well-liked and politically instinctive to have allowed the perception that she had disingenuously undermined the original Rafael Vinoly plan?

*But also say this for the mayor. She’s a pragmatist .

She understood that the museum-site selection was looking more and more like a zero-sum, win-lose stand-off. If she ultimately had her way on a retrofitted courthouse, it would have been a Pyrrhic victory. Too many Tampa Museum of Art officials and board members adamantly opposed the courthouse option, and fund-raising would have been compromised without solid internal support. And some key donors are still smarting from the Vinoly implosion.

The mayor listened for a groundswell of support for her courthouse option and she’s now put away the ear trumpet. What she has heard, instead, is the case for keeping the museum on the waterfront. She has, thus, conceded that the courthouse isn’t viable, although still holding out for more green space by the river. Configuring a new museum site — somewhere in downtown — to accommodate that priority now awaits Solomonic compromise.

*A lot of people care . Folks are talking about a subject – art and where and how it’s housed – that too easily slips below the radar of general public interest unless an “Exploding Chicken” reference is included. The arts glass may be half full; people care enough to have really partisan, even heated, opinions.

*Many of the more opinionated turned out last week — in standing-room-only numbers — at the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center’s Jaeb Theatre for the city’s public forum on museum site selection. It was to prove catalytic. The mayor was literally center stage as she made her case for a retrofitted federal courthouse on Florida Avenue in downtown. She was received politely, if not enthusiastically.

Working without notes, she pitched what was, in effect, a three-part vision . You have the courthouse option, per se, and its function within historic preservation. More to the point, you also have the courthouse/museum’s role in helping create a more pedestrian-oriented, vibrant downtown. And then you have what the riverfront – sans a museum – would yield: a village green and unobstructed views of the University of Tampa’s minarets, the city’s most precious and prestigious work of art.

*The mayor is her own best advocate, but she wasn’t preaching to the choir – which included the polite nay-saying of Sandy Freedman, Jan Platt, Frank Morsani and museum board members — on this one. From the tone and tenor of most (of the 40) speakers’ comments to robust audience responses, it was a one-sided, anti-courthouse crowd . When East Tampa activist Betty Wiggins exhorted Iorio to “make a bold move – put it in the courthouse,” you could hear the sound of one hand clapping. It was the evening’s only such exhortation.

*While issues ranging from historic preservation costs and expansion scenarios to direct street access and appropriate legacy were noted and re-noted, there was a sense that Iorio and her audience of ardent skeptics were talking past each other . This was not a forum – or foundation — for consensus. Somebody would have to blink.

The philosophical breach was manifest among the Jaeb jabs. Put it this way: Iorio wanted a GOOD museum location and the BEST possible game plan for downtown revitalization. The discordant choir wanted the BEST possible place for a museum. Would that they were one in the same.

*Iorio’s charge is to be more pragmatist than purist here. All options – as presented on a “Limitations Matrix” hand-out — were flawed. In fact, the courthouse choices had more criteria “no’s” than “yes’s”. But Iorio’s perspective is inherently different from the anti-courthouse crowd’s. Among all the low -and high-profile partisans, only Iorio is currently and directly responsible for a city that – for all the changes in the works — is still stuck with a dysfunctional downtown. Nobody else loses sleep over that one the way Iorio does. Jaebberwocky comes easy when you’re not responsible for the big picture.

That’s why she doesn’t want just a museum. She wants synergy; she wants catalysts; she wants both condo residents and visitors in the core of downtown. She wants a “city of the arts” – not just a city with a new art museum and a cultural arts district largely limited to parts of the waterfront. From her point of view, a facility on the Hillsborough River wouldn’t go far enough. And a courthouse that is home to a charter school, among other things, hardly furthers a serious revitalization vision.

As Iorio put it: “We want to bring the cultural district farther into downtown. From the University of Tampa to downtown.”

*An interesting subplot is the re-emergence of former mayor Sandy Freedman, who threatens to quit running around her backhand and come out of retirement if commercial developers desecrate the waterfront . For Freedman – and many others — the association of “private sector” and “waterfront” is an aesthetic red flag. With all due respect, Freedman and others who care passionately about the waterfront appear to misread what Iorio wants there.

The plan has been to add a net 4.8 acres of green “gathering place” space along the waterfront. “Our Central Park,” the mayor hyperbolized. Commercial development would be limited to the fringes. It would include restaurants, cafes and possibly Hyde Park Village-like condo units above shops that would complement the Riverwalk and, along with the Children’s Museum, help “hide” the south side of the Poe Garage, a prime study in riverfront desecration. (Moreover, developers’ fees could underwrite the conversion of Zack Street into an “Avenue of the Arts.”)

In her Jaeb presentation, Iorio underscored that she’s hardly looking to sell off and sell out the waterfront. Several times she hyped her stewardship bona fides by mentioning that it was only her signature that stood between the waterfront and a 24-story condominium tower planned under the Dick Greco administration.

*Bottom line: Throughout this painstaking, circuitous process, the mayor has looked at the museum choice as a cultural-arts means to a downtown-revitalization end. It’s a vision . Others seemingly saw a new museum as its own ideal end. It’s a viewpoint . Both are valid.

For those of us who have been around a while, downtown Tampa has been for too long a plywood monument to urban abandonment. A ground-level eyesore with an office building skyline. A Potemkin embarrassment in the post Kress, Maas, Woolworth, Newberry era.

Not that there haven’t been periodic, serious efforts to get downtown off the dime. In fact, we still have a bunch of heralded revitalization plans on shelves – or in time capsules — somewhere.

But as we’re seeing, Tampa is no longer an aberration in the national trend of urban infill. Channelside is morphing in front of our eyes and downtown – finally – is on residential developers’ radar. Including the forlorn stretch that has been North Franklin Street for the last generation.

That’s why it was puzzling to see that recent vote of city council that looked askance at a rezoning request by the Doran Jason Group. The 3-3 deadlock, in effect a “no” vote with a rider to “try again,” reflected concern over height and density, notably the former.

The Coral Gables developer wants to build a 975-unit condominium complex. It plans to save the historic Kress Building as well as the facades of the Woolworth and Newberry department store buildings. The scenario calls for condo towers of 24 and 27 stories behind the facades as well as a 44-story tower on an adjacent block. Units would sell for $130,000 to $300,000.

The tie vote forces the developer, whose interest is presumably unwavering, to make revisions, at least one result of which will surely be fewer units in the most affordable range. That’s an outcome at variance with a key downtown priority.

The dissenting voters, Linda Saul-Sena, Kevin White and Rose Ferlita, come from a good place. They are not rubber stamps – and height and proportion are hardly irrelevant. And Franklin Street is not exactly Park Avenue or Michigan Avenue. But, hey, Donald Trump is here, and his riverfront tower will be taller than Doran Jason’s big unit.

But more to the point, North Franklin and the rest of downtown desperately need what Doran Jason wants to provide. AFFORDABLE housing. And a jumpstart of critical mass – with more residents than investors – helps ensure that the city’s core won’t long remain an express lane from the interstate to South Tampa.

The reality of downtown land values and the charge to keep prices reasonable puts a pragmatic onus on any developer to make the numbers work. The most practicable place to go for any major city’s downtown is – up.

Council member John Dingfelder had it about right. “Downtown is downtown. Buildings should be tall.”

In short, he’s correct. No one is asking Tampa to sell its proportional soul, just be a common-sense public partner on this one.

Here’s the part I don’t get about that vote. You know the one.

It wasn’t just Ronda Storms. Media-seducing, yahoo-pandering, red-meat rhetoric still only gets you one vote.

Hers was one of five Hillsborough County Commission votes in favor of adopting a policy that prohibits the county from “acknowledging, promoting or participating in gay pride recognition and events, little g, little p.” Only Kathy Castor, who has to answer to her constituents, her conscience and her mother, voted the other way.

For the record, Brian Blair, Jim Norman, Tom Scott and Mark Sharpe supported Storms the way the Jordanaires used to back up Elvis. Ken Hagan wasn’t there. On a subsequent vote – stipulating that the policy can only be repealed by a (5-2) super majority — Hagan joined the majority in a 6-1 vote with Castor again the lone dissenter.

The obvious legal and public relations ramifications should have been foreseen – if not the sense – and perception — of right and wrong. Mayor Pam Iorio, who wasted no time distancing the city from the ham-handed policy and its Storms trooper rhetoric, probably preferred another fire house photo-op to “Take Back Tampa: The Sequel.”

Actually, there’s another part I don’t get either. It is equating acknowledgement with promotion.

In a society with constitutional qualms about displaying the Ten Commandments in public venues, “promotion” will always lend itself to contextual and legal parsing. As it should.

But “acknowledgement?”

Gays and lesbians – and their lifestyle and attendant pride – don’t exist in a vacuum or a closet. Or only in incorporated Hillsborough. They are an integral part of every community’s fabric. This one is no exception. An acknowledgement is little more than a nod to reality. What they don’t deserve is an official, demeaning cheap shot that deigns to speak for more than a half-dozen small-minded commissioners.

One final point. Topical Storms Ronda is, in a perverse way, good at what she does. She’s smart; she’s calculated; she’s never sound-bite challenged; and she knows which visceral hot buttons to push. She can pervert populism with the best.

On the county’s new gay pride policy, she got what she wanted. It will play well to the usual “us vs. them” (Big U, little t) suspects that she patently panders to.

But that still doesn’t explain – much less justify — those other votes. The other commissioners, at least, should have known better. Shame on them. Big S, little t.

For many Floridians, having a refreshing, man-made body of water in their backyard is no mere amenity. It’s a Florida lifestyle necessity.

Over the years, the needs would include more elaborate pools with more sophisticated bells and whistles and increasingly lush landscaping.

But the fastest growing segment of the backyard waterscape business is spas, according to the National Spa & Pool Institute. There are now more than 6 million spas and hot tubs in the (contiguous 48) United States – 10 per cent of them in Florida. Only California has more.

“Almost everyone today wants a spa with their pool,” says Jim Holloway, vice president Holloway Pools Inc., a Tampa-based builder of classic, concrete pools and spas. “Ten years ago, we hardly saw any. There are even folks who only want a spa.”

The explanation is easy, says Laraine Hancock, a yoga instructor who had Holloway build a stand-alone spa – with accompanying, bricked-over patio slab — in her South Tampa backyard.

“We don’t have kids, and I’m not into swimming laps,” explains Hancock, 58. “It’s therapeutic; it lends itself to entertaining; it’s relatively low maintenance; and it’s the aesthetic centerpiece of our backyard.”

Hancock could be Exhibit A for the surge in spa popularity, says Wendy Parker, the director of marketing for the Florida Swimming Pool Association.

“Baby boomers have more disposable income than any generation before,” she points out. “A priority is creating backyard living space. For that, a spa works wonderfully well. Some like the feel of a resort. It’s more for adult entertaining. Often they’ll add grills and barbeque islands.”And a lot more. Spas with custom art work can easily cost at least $50,000.

“Spas now have every accoutrement you can imagine,” says Parker. “It can get very personalized. It’s way beyond cup holders.”

Indeed, it can range from electronic controls that work from a cell phone, fountain-type statuary and variations on a lighting theme to murals, foggers, oxidizers, sound systems, therapy jets, below-the-water-line tiles and 24-carat gold step edges.

In fact, spas can now be customized with glass tiles containing digital images. As in corporate logos, family photos or commercial aquatic scenes.

“As long as an item isn’t copyrighted, we can print it,” says Phil Williams, the owner of Seminole-based Tilesque. “There’s certainly a market for custom looks. We’ve seen exponential growth the last year or so.”The myriad of aesthetic and comfort options also has created an inevitable niche: design consultants. Their advice is a lot more than “Just add water.”

“The visual element is much more important today, and many contractors don’t have the time to spend on design,” says Brian VanBauer of Miami, perhaps the state’s pre-eminent designer. “We do lots of stand-alone spas. Space is at a premium. Smaller lots. Zero lot lines or townhouses. A lot of aging baby boomers with aches and pains.

“Probably two thirds of our projects involve some sort of covered area outside,” adds VanBauer, whose international clientele includes the Tampa Bay area. “Cabanas, trellises, gazebos. You have to focus on the clients’ needs. They’re all different in their own way.”

That recent, headline-grabbing shooting in Ybor City – in the parking lot beside La Tropicana Café – was unfortunate and troubling on a couple of levels.

Two Haines City visitors were pistol whipped by (five) armed predator-cowards, but were not seriously injured. Traumatized to be sure, but not hurt badly. They won’t soon forget the frightening experience.

And, chances are, they won’t soon return to Ybor. That – and the attendant publicity — makes Ybor City another victim.

An ironic one in that the incident, in which three of the perpetrators were wounded and one killed by plainclothes officers, actually belies falling crime statistics in the historic entertainment district. More aggressive law enforcement has resulted in lower numbers across the board – rapes, aggravated assaults, robberies, burglaries and vehicle thefts – for the first four months of 2005 compared with the same period in ’04. Murders for the period remained the same – zero.

“The vast majority of the time – even late — things are pretty comfortable,” says Tom Keating, president of the Ybor City Chamber of Commerce. “I think the word is out that people are paying attention.”

Keating was alluding to the beefed up police presence, including plainclothes officers on the streets, uniformed officers on horseback and off-duty cops in clubs. He also salutes the ongoing liaison between police and the business community.

“We do a lot of events here,” Keating explains, “and we need to know what happens and what is happening on a regular basis. The interfacing with police – and I want to single out Cpt. Marco Trigiano – has been outstanding.”

He also underscores the importance of merchants looking out for one another.

“This isn’t a business district,” he points out. “This is a business community. The people are very aware and very good about covering each other’s back.

“A shooting is not some daily activity, to say the least,” says Keating. “But the real trick is getting more traffic – literally more eyes on the street – in the early part of the evening and then de-emphasizing the really late night.”

Someone else had something pertinent to say about the shooting incident. That was Tampa Police Department spokeswoman Laura McElroy, who stressed a TPD bottom line.

According to a Bay Area daily, she said, “A police shooting is something you never want to have to deal with. But this is the best outcome. The officers walked away, the victims walked away, and the suspects are paying a price for their actions.”

In a revolving-door criminal justice system, one which all of the Ybor predator-perps were well acquainted, this qualifies as justice ultimately dispensed.

Bottom line, indeed.

The University of South Florida: It’s not your father’s USF anymore.

Cosmetically, the Fowler Avenue entrance no longer features that ’60s industrial park ambience. There are on-campus fraternities and dorms that wouldn’t look out of place in SoHo. There’s a snazzy, contemporary Bulls’ logo and a football team that plays in the Big East Conference with the likes of Syracuse, West Virginia and Pittsburgh.

USF, which didn’t graduate its first class until Lyndon Johnson was president, is the second largest university in the Southeast with an enrollment of some 43,000. It anchors the I-4 high-tech corridor. Sponsored research now tops $250 million.

The campus is home to the state’s only accredited college of public health and houses the H. Lee Moffitt Cancer and Research Institute, the third busiest cancer center in the country. Currently under construction is a $20-million Alzheimer’s research institute.

Even with its geographic misnomer of a name, USF is on the map.

Now it goes for the globe — thanks to the Kiran C. Patel Center for Global Solutions. That’s what will be built on the USF campus – thanks to the biggest gift in the university’s history. That $18.5-million bounty – from Tampa doctors Kiran Patel and his wife, Pallavi – will be matched with $16 million in state matching grants. Ultimately, it will be parlayed into a $62.5-million project that will include a conference center, classrooms, an auditorium and quarters for scholars and foreign dignitaries.

It means that USF’s academic credentials will be significantly enhanced as well as its international status.

The timing couldn’t be more propitious. It wasn’t that long ago that USF, a global nonentity, was smitten with the World Islamic Studies Enterprise, a think tank of dubious virtue and value. The WISE guys ultimately brought ignominy instead of enlightenment. “Jihad U” epithets made “Sandspur U” pejoratives seem quaint. An upcoming trial in downtown Tampa is a disturbing reminder.

But USF will now be a real player on the world stage of academe. The Patel Center represents the legitimate big time, an institute that could logically have been located in Washington or New York. It will house researchers and host foreign leaders on a range of planetary topics from global trade and environmental destruction to world hunger and health issues.

Most impressively, the Patel Center’s charge won’t be theoretical or abstract. Its mission will be concrete and solution oriented.

And it will be in our own back yard.

If ever there was a “win-win” scenario, this is it. USF’s profile should ratchet up markedly. But much more importantly, the world will be better off.

The Patels, whose generosity already ensures their legacy, are more than philanthropists and humanitarians. They are natural resources. We are all in their debt.

People who seem to be in the know seem to like the choice of MaryEllen Elia to run the Hillsborough County School District. You get the idea that she doesn’t suffer fools and won’t venerate the status quo. But there are also those who note she doesn’t have a doctorate and say she won over the School Board by default; the competition was less than stellar.

We’ll know soon enough.

But I do know this after having seen the candidates interviewed on HTV 22. No candidate gave this, in effect, as an answer when queried about priorities:

“Nothing’s more important than neighborhood schools. Certainly not social experiments in the name of diversity and “resegregation” antidotes. And frankly the less time kids spend on school buses the better off they are. Ask Pinellas County.

“Kids fare best when they are in the comfort zone of their own neighborhood schools, where parental involvement – and local sources of leverage — can be maximized. Schools as institutions of identity and pride should be more than quaint concepts from yesteryear.

“Moreover, it shouldn’t – and it doesn’t – matter what the classroom racial ratios are. Learning is learning and in the post-Jim Crow era, to think otherwise is to court racism.

“The problem historically, as we know, has been the relative inequality of schools mired in low socio-economic localities. There will be hell to pay if that is countenanced here. And I’m talking about physical plants, equipment, course offerings and quality of staff. I accept neither bureaucratic excuses nor victim cards.

“Everything else is a subset of this priority.

“Any other questions or topics — including the ridiculous notion of exempting students from final exams who show up every day?”

Mayor Pam Iorio’s modest lock box set aside $200,000 for Bayshore Boulevard improvements. This paid for signage – including electronic — additional sidewalks and a public awareness campaign. What doesn’t require City Hall funding, however, is an extra measure of common sense.

We’re talking about the Spandexed bicyclists who choose to ride south during rush hours and effectively close off their lane. Also included: the countless motorists who still consider a u-turn a Bayshore birthright.