Category: Tampa Bay

Since the 1980s, Tampa has periodically unveiled revitalization plans for downtown only to shelve them all — save one.

That was obviously the one that recommended hodgepodge development and discouraged connectivity and critical mass.

Now all the others have been dusted off and some of the better ones actually incorporated into a 10-year Downtown Vision and Action Plan put together by a team of consultants headed by Hunter Interests Inc. The nonprofit Tampa Downtown Partnership and the city jointly underwrote the $130,000 plan.

The recommendations and suggestions were rolled out recently at a well-attended public forum at Tampa Theatre. The focus was on a major makeover, such that downtown would be more than a skylined Potemkin sans residents, shoppers, diners, imbibers and arts patrons.

A key goal, underscored Hunter, is “to re-establish downtown Tampa as the core area of the Tampa Bay metro area.”

Critical catalysts include the formation of aggressive public-private partnerships; an emphasis on affordable (and workforce) housing; establishment of a downtown development corporation with enough seed ($5 million) money to jumpstart (retail) tenant leases; revitalization of downtown’s “waterfront edge;” and implementation of a marketing strategy to better target – and expand – the meeting and visitor markets. Specific elements include a rejuvenated North Franklin Street (“café district”) corridor and a metamorphosis of iconic eyesores such as the Floridan Hotel and Maas Brothers’ building.

Some Vision Plan observations — and candid asides — from Don Hunter, president of Annapolis, MD-headquartered HII:

*“Let’s ride the residential wave – but provide for different income groups.”

*“(Civitas) was a good plan. The plan, itself, had merit. The problem apparently was the process.”

*“Make the North Franklin Street area the place you go before going to the Performing Arts Center or the (Times) Forum.”

*“The art museum park could be a ‘Central Park on the Water.’ It could be a peaceful, signature destination for downtown.”

*“You need an expanded convention center to remain competitive.”

*“Downtown Tampa needs to grab more of the seasonal visitors to this area.”

*“The Floridan is a great old building, but it’s very hard to make the numbers work. The owner has an unrealistic view of its value. The building is worth $1 million. No more.”

*“The Floridan’s future is in “moderate-rate rental apartments. But it isn’t going to happen without public-private sector participation

The Tampa Tribune’s lead editorial two Sundays ago – the one calling for the head of Tampa Museum of Art Director Emily Kass – had to have raised a lot of community eyebrows as well as some museum-staff hackles.

It criticized Kass for failing to “build a communitywide constituency” for the still unstarted new museum, coming up short on “dynamic shows” and neglecting due diligence regarding critical paperwork.

For a number of insiders, however, it simply gave public voice to what has only been whispered privately. While it’s been abundantly evident that for too long Tampa has been saddled with an undersized, nondescript facility unworthy of a major metropolitan market, what largely went unstated was that the museum leadership wasn’t – and won’t – be ready for prime time.

A new museum with a formidable antiquities collection does not, ipso facto, put Tampa into the cultural big leagues. Bigger isn’t better by enough without first-class leadership and ambitious vision.

The timing of the editorial cattle prod was hardly happenstance. Crunch time is now.

Poor judgments that have had adverse capital-campaign implications don’t reflect well on Kass. And the window for finalizing guarantees from lenders and donors is about to slam shut. City Council, which grows increasingly skeptical, has been scheduled to meet this week (Feb. 10) on the museum financing package. It may not. Three days later the contract guaranteeing the construction price ($52 million) – barring further extensions – is set to expire.

This is all about closing the pragmatically best deal for the community and for the city that is counting on a premier facility – and a world-class museum experience — to help revitalize downtown.

The museum’s next-day response to the editorial was to initiate a last-minute letter-writing and e-mail campaign to the Trib and City Council.

What Kass should now be doing, however, is reading the writing on the wall, even if reversion to “square one” status results – which means a scaled down design and “adios” to Rafael Vinoly’s mother of all carports.

This community – and it’s hardly limited to the “elites” – and this city deserve a first-class art museum. Finally. And the implications are far reaching – from Monet-like renown and more children’s tours to downtown redevelopment scenarios.

Tampa wants to move to the next level. Mayor Pam Iorio wants a “city of the arts.” Nothing can be left to chance. Starting with leadership that never got the art of the deal.

A new museum — whatever the cost and configuration – coupled with the old leadership is a cultural white elephant in the making. That can’t happen.

Kass should take one for the team.

Among the hundreds of thousands of locals who were eyeing the weather forecasts in the Gasparilla countdown was Marsha Carter. Only she wasn’t all that preoccupied about the pre-parade or even the parade, per se. She wanted to know what it would be like later in the day – post-parade.

Carter is one of the city’s parks and recreation superintendents with managerial responsibilities for maintenance, which once a year includes the Bayshore Boulevard clean-up. Weather is a variable that can truly trash her Gasparilla experience.

“It’s OK to rain before – or even during — but not after the parade,” says Carter. “And that happens more times than we care to mention. When it rains, it makes everything stick to the ground, and that slows everything and everybody down. And we can’t exactly wait for it to stop. That’s not an option when we’ve got to get these major arteries open. So we keep on going — no matter how bad it gets.”

Wind is no less critical a factor for the 65 overtime employees – on loan from playground centers and parks’ maintenance staff — when you’re talking upwards of 50 tons of trash.

“We try to get everything that blows,” Carter says. “But if it comes up, we’re dead in the water. Then you have it in the bay and on private property.”

The key non-meteorological variable is bottles.

“That’s the worst for safety,” stresses Carter. “For employees and equipment. It can puncture a tire. If a sweeper hits a bottle the wrong way, the sweeper goes down.”

Carter, a Tampa native, speaks from the perspective of 19 parade clean-ups. Weather permitting – and no doubling up with a local Super Bowl – the drill tends to improve with practice, she says.

“The equipment is certainly a factor,” she explains. “We now use tractor blowers to blow the trash from under the bleachers out into the street. We have learned to rake and pile and bring in loaders and skid steers (bobcats). We put it in garbage trucks and high sides (dump trucks). I think we get a little better at it each year.”

Carter acknowledges that for most folks Gasparilla is remembered for its floats, krewes, beads, flashers, drunks and $20-some million in economic impact – not the well-honed efforts of Team Debris.

“From those we talk to, it seems that people have come to expect it,” says Carter, who does a lot of monitoring as well as her share of trash toting and tossing. “That means we’ve done our job. Our staff is trained and motivated – although that’s not to say they enjoy it. When you look up and see miles and miles of garbage, the fun is gone. But we are a public service department, and we know what to do and how to do it. There’s a lot of responsibility resting on our shoulders.

“When people look at Bayshore on Sunday morning,” underscores Carter, “we want them to wonder if there really was a parade the day before. That’s what we want them to say.”

It’s understandable that a mayor would want to be careful when evaluating top employees in writing. It’s a public record. There are sensitivities. Hence, the flap over how Tampa Mayor Pam Iorio evaluated former Fire Chief Aria Ray Green.

Apparently Green, whose allegedly aloof, sometimes tactless leadership style was adversely affecting morale, was evaluated more critically in person than on paper. Which is understandable – and hardly precedent-setting.

Theoretically this is still better than what former Mayor Dick Greco did. Which was nothing other than a verbal evaluation. Which comes up short on accountability for highly-placed public officials.

What doesn’t compute, however, is a written record that allows for one of three ratings: outstanding, excellent and successful. Green was accorded an “excellent,” which he subsequently has cited as being at variance with a performance that resulted in his forced resignation.

He might have a point if the written evaluation were credible and didn’t require a wink and a nod. Outstanding, excellent and successful. Say what? How much farther would department morale have had to plummet for Green to have been adjudged merely “successful?”

If Newspeak is the game, why not super, superior, splendid and superb? Or if obfuscation isn’t a goal, maybe MacArthur minus the hubris, effective, satisfactory, ineffective, not salvageable and pyromaniac? Or Good, bad and ugly?

In retrospect, the promotion of Green, a good, decent, intelligent man seemingly ill-suited to handle the department’s good ol’ boy union dynamic, was a mistake, however well intentioned. However awkwardly, that has been addressed with the swearing in of Fire Chief Dennis Jones.

What remains unaddressed are written evaluation standards that are misleading and unworthy of the process.

It would seem that if anything our kids need more days at school – not fewer. Regardless, we now have what amounts to a reasonable request from local Muslims for the Hillsborough County School Board to add an additional holiday: Eid al-Fitr, which marks the end of Ramadan. They point out that schools close on days that coincide with Christian Christmas and Good Friday as well as the Jewish Yom Kippur.

Two points.

First, Christmas shouldn’t count. It’s far too institutionalized and secularized.

Second, school districts have brought this on themselves by designating purely religious-observance occasions – Good Friday and Yom Kippur — as public school holidays. Now they’re stuck with such precedents – and will eventually yield to this inclusive request. Possibly for the 2006-07 school calendar.

This column didn’t start out this way.

But as I gazed out my home-office window the other day, I saw a perplexingly familiar sight: a pair of dachshunds on the lam, lumbering down the street headed for nearby Bayshore Boulevard – and possibly an awful demise. I cringed at the prospect of such an unnecessary, unfair fate.

Since this had happened before – more on that later — I knew the drill. I raced out with a couple of leashes (not then needed by two resident peek-a-poos) and gave chase.

And chase. I am not a runner or a jogger — just a stamina-challenged pedestrian.

With the help of a Good Samaritan I caught one, gave it a big drink and put it in the back of my Jeep for safe-keeping. And, by the way, to the South Orleans Avenue jogger who wouldn’t alter his gait, his glance or his course to help out, thanks for nothing. And, no, I don’t apologize for what I said, but you deserved every hyphen.

Up and down Hyde Park streets and alleys went the discouraging search: foot by unfit foot. There were a couple of sightings and subsequent near captures. I regretted the stationary-bike time misused watching ESPN with the lowest level of resistance. I also grew increasingly irritated that these same dogs had gotten out yet again, and frustrated that I couldn’t recall the owner’s name or street. And, still, no second dachshund.

But knock on enough doors and inquire of enough people, and you get leads. One led to the right house, where the residents were out of town. The dogs had escaped again from the backyard. It appeared a gate had been left unlatched.

And talk to enough folks – especially on South Boulevard — and you get an earful. This wasn’t the second time these dogs escaped. It was simply my second experience, one that left me wondering why I cared more about the safety of these canine Weiner-mobiles than their owners seemingly did. Nor was it the third time. Or fourth.

Now for the editorial comment. Some people – and you know who you are — don’t deserve the company of and responsibility for innocent, unconditionally loving, totally dependent pets. Goldfish included. Such pets deserve better than clueless, careless owners.

Next time, I’m taking them to the pound – or I’m keeping them – incumbent, turf-protecting peek-a-poos notwithstanding.

As for that other dachshund, it finally found its way back to its owner’s porch. The bad news is that it didn’t look so much at home – as between escapes.

Here we go again.

Because of a high-profile affair between a student and an English professor some months back, the USF faculty is at odds again over whether the university should have a formal policy banning romantic relationships between professors and students. A lot of universities have such stringent policies. More do than don’t.

It’s a shame it has come down to this, but a formal ban – with some common sense wiggle room for the rare exception — probably works best.

Relationship chemistry – any more than human nature — will never, of course, be exempt from the college campus. But this is not about budding romance between peers; this is about something that is inherently exploitative – and too often winds up in a sexual harassment suit.

This is about conflict of interest. Corporations with less noble objectives than universities won’t tolerate it.

And this is less about the civil rights of consenting adults (albeit only technically so in some cases) than it is about the responsibility of an employer to ensure integrity – and protect the vulnerable. It cannot co-exist with conflicts of interest.

To reiterate; it’s too bad this has to be codified. But for those who need it spelled out – and most don’t – this is why: Professors shouldn’t date those they have leverage and influence over – whether as a grade-wielding instructor, a truth-espousing guru or a life-defining mentor.

In short, show some class. You’re the one in charge.

Robinson High School, as we all know too well, was rocked again recently by the murder of a student, freshman John Simmons, and a recent alumnus, Vanderbilt football player Kwane Doster. Two young men with much promise cut down before realizing their potential. In their tragic wakes were the familiar refrains of “senseless killing” and “wrong place at the wrong time.”

All too true. And yet there’s another, largely unstated factor, which won’t be listed on any coroner’s report: death by black sub-culture. That is an urban black sub-culture that is too accepting of attitudes and lifestyles fundamentally incompatible with safe passage through adolescence. Would that misogynistic, thuggish behaviors were limited to BET videos.

In the case of Simmons, who was 15, he was murdered by a 17-year-old at an after-hours street party, where “trash-talk”-induced confrontations had been known to occur regularly. Simmons was shot about 2 a.m.

Why a 15-year-old was out at 2 a.m. and why a 17-year-old needed to be armed for a block party are not rhetorical questions. In fact, to not ask them smacks of racism.

As for Doster, a 21-year-old junior at Vanderbilt, he was at the wrong place at the wrong time at the wrong end of escalating “trash talk.” So-called “trash talk” is an in-your-face insult-a-thon popularized by black athletes — and excused and even exploited by the media. It’s hip-hopped, macho madness expressed as end-game rhetoric that’s not looking to take prisoners.

And when the combatants are armed with more than words, it will take a life.

Maybe those killer abs can wait yet another year. Perhaps 2005 is when expanded horizons move up on that New Year’s resolution short list.

If so, consider what the University of Tampa is offering this semester. A chance to get familiar with the language and customs of the world’s most populous – and most economically hard-charging – country in the world — China.

For the first time, UT will offer “Chinese Language and Culture” in each of two seven-week spring sessions. Classes, which are limited to 15 students and designed for those with little or no experience with (Mandarin) Chinese, will meet on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 6-7:30 p.m. Session I begins Jan. 18; Session II , March 15. Cost of the (two-credit) course is $510 for credit; $389 for audit. Both sessions will be taught by adjunct instructor Amy Chou, a native of Taiwan.

According to Susan M. Taylor, associate professor of languages and linguistics, UT is testing the foreign language waters beyond the traditional offerings of Spanish, French, German and Italian. A course in Japanese was well received last semester.

“We have to start small,” says Taylor, “because we don’t know if there’s a market for it. But I think there will be.” That market, Taylor says, is travelers, the culturally curious and “business people.”

Additional information is available at 253-3333 (x3359)

In less than three months, the Iorio Administration will be half way through its term. A couple of observations:

Mayor Pam Iorio remains a mediameister’s dream public official. She is absolutely who you want out front, especially when empathy matters – which it always does. She connects with people and is not confrontational. The camera — as well as the podium and any microphone – still love her.

Having said that, how disappointing is it that one of her most critically important audiences – the Hillsborough County Commission — remains unmoved? In fact, the city-county relationship seems no better than before. Even with two new Hillsborough County commissioners, a solid “working relationship” still appears oxymoronic.

The mega, public-private sector Civitas development, of course, didn’t happen on Iorio’s watch because the county wouldn’t sign off. The recent county commission-influenced (read Ronda Storms) MPO vote against the street car indicated that new blood isn’t a transfusion of bi-partisanship.

Two points:

First, it’s as amazing as it is frustrating and embarrassing that this eastern side of the Tampa Bay market should still be sporting such a not-ready-for-prime-time, parochial perspective. Whether the mayor is named Iorio or Greco.

Most recent Exhibit A: The latest in counterproductive hyperbole from Commissioner Storms. As reported by the Tampa Tribune, she characterized the city’s attitude as one that says “we’re the center of the universe and all the planets rotate around us.”

That populist piffle plays well outside city limits, especially in the Rustic Belt, where so much growth – and resulting tax-base expansion — is occurring. And because the county administrator is appointed by the commission, some commissioners have fiefdom-like clout and points of view.

The result: Tampa, with 320,000 residents, is seemingly seen as merely the biggest city – with the biggest municipal ego – in the 1.1 million-resident county. Brandon on steroids.

What Tampa is, however, is what every other major metropolitan statistical area in the country has – a hub. A center-of-the-market, urban hub. It’s not a Copernicus-defying presence demanding tribute and obeisance, but it does do what all hubs do. It’s an economic engine and catalyst.

It’s reflected in the thousands who commute daily from the suburbs to Tampa. And it’s reflected in the economic ripples created by the likes of Tampa International Airport and the Port of Tampa.

It’s why the Bucs and Lightning and USF are here. It’s a reminder that office parks and residential developments don’t happen in a Valrico vacuum – as the word “suburban” suggests.

The second point: Now that the half-way mark approaches, look for the mayor to trot out the bully pulpit on occasion. The gloves – even the velvet ones – are off.

In fact, the pro-active, hard-ball approach on the new, yet-to-break-ground art museum was illustrative.

There’s a lot riding on the museum – for the city and the mayor. The $72-million project is the linchpin for a cultural arts district, which is, in turn, the key catalyst in downtown revitalization per se. It’s the cornerstone of the mayor’s plans for downtown.

It has to happen.

Yet the mayor’s mantra is to never put tax payers at risk, even for an economic development tool. Centro Ybor, The Sequel, is anathema to all Iorions.

And yet to wait for all the financial planets to align perfectly is to incur additional, project-threatening construction-cost increases. Already, the costs have risen by $10 million. And that revised construction price of $54 million is only good until Feb. 10.

The mayor, as we know, made a very high-profile demand last month for a “business plan” – as if the concept hadn’t occurred to anyone before. But it got everyone’s attention, got the trustees off the dime and gave the mayor cover. It also signaled to a few new arrivals in the business community that the time was now to ante up and make that debut commitment.

The museum’s board of trustees then produced financial backing for its share of the project, whereby they would be responsible for any operating-cost shortfalls. City Finance Director Bonnie Wise found the numbers credible and acceptable. The mayor than agreed to send the lease proposal and operational agreement to Tampa City Council this week (Jan. 6).

The trustees figure ticket sales (with prices increased from $7 to $10), plus memberships, program fees, corporate support and restaurant sales can carry the day operationally. It probably can – and not just for the first few years when sheer newness and novelty are big draws.

A much larger facility means the museum can display its full collection – and it’s extensive — and open itself to the sort of blockbuster exhibits that it currently can’t come close to accommodating.

Next up for the Tampa Museum of Art, for example, are two exhibitions: “Signs & Symbols/African American Quilts” and “The New York Yankees & The American Dream.” It can – and will — get better.

Look for ground to break sometime next month.