Category: Tampa Bay

Don’t count Teddy Roque among Ybor City’s hand wringers and naysayers. He’s the general manager of the new, $12-million Hampton Inn & Suites at the corner of 13th Street and East 7th Avenue, and he’s thrilled to be opening the red-brick property with 138 rooms (including 50 suites) by Thanksgiving.

“You have to look on the bright side,” says Roque, an engaging, continental sort from Split, Croatia. “I would love to see more investors bringing dollars to Ybor City, but it takes people who can see beyond the present. For example, the developers who are bringing in condos on 5th (Avenue). They obviously have a vision. As do we. We think we’re in the right place at the right time with the right deal. We think this is an ideal site for both the leisure and business market.

“Ybor City has a bright future,” underscores Roque. “Sure, I wish it were happening faster, but the last five years I’ve seen impressive growth. From here to Channelside. And we’re in the middle, with the trolley taking guests back and forth.”

Roque’s first-hand look at the evolving market comes courtesy of his four-plus years as general manager of the highly successful, 95-room Hilton Garden Inn at 17th and 9th Avenue. Hampton is part of the Hilton chain.

Tampa has those eight, yellow, barely broken in retro streetcars. They are reminiscent of a bygone, pre-bus era, one that ended in 1946. By January there should be a ninth ready for delivery.

But as of last week there was another — especially notable — addition to the mini fleet. It is a newly restored 1922 Birney streetcar, the sole survivor from Tampa’s original line. In fact, the 28-footer (which will be used exclusively for special occasions) is the only restored operating streetcar in Florida. Its restored state, featuring oak floors and mahogany seats, was more than a decade in the making and the product of some 10,000 volunteer hours. Its cost — approximately $250,000 — was covered from community donations.

At the Birney 163’s recent dedication, no one seemed more nostalgic than 70-year-old Tampa City Council member, Mary Alvarez. In her childhood, she used to ride the streetcar daily from her West Tampa home to MacFarlane Park Elementary School. Her cousin was a conductor who would let her stand at the wheel. She thought it a privilege, she recalled, to help switch the seats and bring down the line.

“We took it for granted,” she sighs. “Who knew we wouldn’t have them much longer? So I think it’s terrific to have an authentic car returned to use. It’s an important symbol. It helps connect people with the roots of Tampa.”

Not that Alvarez is all about nostalgia. She wants to see the streetcar system carrying more than the 1,200 daily passengers (mostly visitors and tourists) it averaged in its most recent fiscal year. She agrees with tentative plans to expand the line from the Southern Transportation Plaza across from the convention center to the Fort Brooke parking garage via Franklin Street. She’s also pushing for expansion in Ybor, specifically from 20th to 26th street.

“I’d like to see an actual residential component brought in,” stresses Alvarez. “That’s my vision. And wouldn’t that be a beautiful thing?”

For those who have been following the sad soap opera that is the crumbling, 28-acre Central Park Village — and its seedy environs — it has come down to this. If all goes well with a Tampa public housing plan, the 484-unit CPV, the nether world between downtown and Ybor City, could become a nicer public housing project — still surrounded by all that seediness. That will have to qualify as progress.

When the Hillsborough County Commission nixed the Civitas proposal, a public-private partnership that planned a mix of subsidized and market-priced housing on 157 acres, it eliminated the only scenario for meaningful success.

Then the Tampa Housing Authority was forced to scramble — unsuccessfully — to land a federal grant to replace the complex.

Now there’s a new plan afoot — cobbled from low-interest, tax-exempt bonds plus HUD tax credits and project-improvement funds — calling for a $56-million, 590-unit “Historic Central Park.”

For the residents and the city, anything is better than the status quo. But that never should have been the standard.

Here’s a suggestion to the administration of Tampa’s Freedom High School. You’re the adults; act like it.

Allowing an arbitrary rule about a national flag (that of Colombia) — during Hispanic Heritage Month — to fuel a furor of student overreaction and suspensions is an absolute abdication of common sense. How would you handle a real problem?

Freedom’s Hispanic enrollment is about 18 percent. Whatever demographic fissures might have existed, it’s likely some have now become fault lines. Quite the educational experience.

Mayor Pam Iorio’s recent announcement to set aside primo real estate for the new home of the Children’s Museum of Tampa spoke volumes about the city’s commitment to the downtown riverfront. The property, worth some $3 million, is adjacent to the Poe Parking garage and near the proposed Riverwalk along the Hillsborough River and just north of the future Tampa Museum of Art. It had been ogled as a condo tower during the last days of the Greco administration, but Iorio never signed off on it and looked to a more public use.

The new, 25,000-square-foot Children’s Museum would be part of a nationwide trend — and could attract an estimated 100,000 visitors a year. Its projected opening is 2007. A $10-million capital campaign would still await.

Also in the wings — a Pamglossian scenario: Key cultural synergy with the new art museum and the Performing Arts Center; a leg up on downtown as more of a destination point; and the opportunity for critically important, early learning activities and experiences for children.

That may be as close to a hat trick as we’ll see around here for a while.

Call this a public service tip.

Chances are there are other MacKay Bay Transfer Station rookies out there, who need to clear debris and all kinds of junk quicker than the city can officially get around to it. Thanks to some three dozen decrepit, raftered screens that have been displaced in my garage by plywood, I had reason to come calling on MacKay at 112 South 34th St., about a half-mile south (on the left) of Adamo Drive.

It’s an easy process to drive in and drop off — and a lot of it is gratis.

Here’s what’s free of charge: appliances (2 per visit); televisions (2 per visit); carpet; tires (4 per visit); furniture and mattresses; yard waste (no stumps over 100 lbs. or limbs over 4 feet in length.)

Here’s what you pay a fee for: commercial waste; items delivered in commercial vehicles; large quantities of items that appear to come from a commercial establishment; construction debris such as bricks, tile, concrete, plywood, roofing material, plaster, cabinets, doors, windows, etc.; large automotive parts; household garbage; and mixed loads of free and chargeable items.

Hours are Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday from 7 a.m. to 5:30 p.m., and Wednesday and Saturday from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Closed on Sunday. Phone number is 242-5320.

By the way, it cost about $4 to jettison those screens.

Before the senate primary campaign was over, the Betty Castor campaign was already busy allocating resources and strategizing in South Florida about the general election. Not that the campaign was overconfident — although the polls consistently had accorded Castor a double-digit lead over eventual runner-up Peter Deutsch — just that it knew its chances against the Republican nominee could depend significantly on South Florida scenarios. To wit: Would the support of Congressman Deutsch and Miami-Dade County Mayor Alex Penelas prove to be token or true? Would there be a meaningful get-out-the-vote effort on behalf of Castor?

Still fresh in the collective Democrat memory was the ill-fated Bill McBride gubernatorial campaign after the narrow primary win over South Florida native and former U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno. There was never any coalescing of the Reno constituency — card-carrying Dems and minorities — for McBride in the general election. More like a groundswell of indifference. Could there be a reprise in the works?

For the record, the Castor camp doubts such a scenario and remains optimistic about South Florida support.

“A presidential year is much different,” reminds Castor Communications Director Matt Burgess. “Democrats who may not turn out for a gubernatorial race turn out in much higher numbers for a presidential race.

“Congressman Deutsch has been helping with fund raising, and some of the Penelas staff have actually come aboard and are helping with Hispanic outreach,” adds Burgess. “Betty’s been down there quite a bit already. We’re thrilled with the support we’re seeing.”

President Bush has provided an opening for Democratic politicians in Florida with this summer’s restrictions on travel and remittances to Cuba. Congressman Jim Davis, for example, has filed a family-friendly amendment to spending legislation that lets Cuban-Americans visit island families annually without a specific license. Democratic Senate candidate Betty Castor is emphatically on the record as being “totally opposed” to the restrictions and has labeled them “not humanitarian.”

What would be the ultimate stand on principle, however — even for “moderates” — would be the denouncement of the 40-something U.S. economic embargo. It has had an inarguably adverse humanitarian impact on the Cuban people — not Fidel Castro — for two generations. But that’s too politically dicey.

Cuban-Americans still represent nearly 60 percent of this state’s 850,000 Hispanic votes. That’s the principal reason the embargo remains untouchable for Florida pols — even moderates.

Betty Castor’s field-trouncing primary win may have finally put the Sami Al-Arian issue to rest — or at least into a politically comatose state.

The Peter Deutsch campaign — via the American Democracy Project — had hoped to fan the flames of controversy and outrage over the indicted, alleged terrorist conspirator. It sought to portray Castor, the former USF president who put the tenured computer science professor on paid administrative leave, as disingenuous and indecisive on Al-Arian — and by extension craven on terrorism, weak on national security and vulnerable to GOP exploitation.

Not only did the ploy not work, but it came across as a counter-productive cheap shot. U.S. Rep. Deutsch lost to Castor by some 30 percentage points — a nearly unheard of margin for a well-financed, battleground senatorial race. As it turned out, it was also bad pandering — Deutsch even lost the endorsement of a key Jewish newspaper in his own South Florida back yard.

As to the Nov. 2 general election showdown with Mel Martinez, the Castor campaign knows that, while virtually anything might seem fair game to the Bush Administration-backed candidate, the GOP brings up Al-Arian at its own peril. And not just out of fear of a cheap-shot back draft.

There’s that George W. Bush presidential campaign photo with Sami and friends at the Florida State Fairgrounds. And then there’s that 2001 Al-Arian visit to the White House. Playing the 9/11 terrorist-revisionist card against Castor on Al-Arian would be a strategic rapier.

At the Castor victory party at Ybor City’s Italian Club, retiring Senator Bob Graham acknowledged the Al-Arian factor has likely played out and stressed that it never should have played in — in the first place.

“It was a silly issue to begin with,” opined Graham, while noting that the FBI never provided Castor with “fire-able” evidence. As for the primary win “inoculating” Castor from the issue in the general election, Graham wouldn’t concede that much substance to the matter.

“Betty isn’t ‘inoculated,’ if you will,” Graham said, “because it was a disease that never had any kick to it.”

With the Republican primary as prologue, however, the Martinez campaign is hardly issue-challenged sans Sami. He and Castor differ on a lot — from foreign policy to abortion.

Martinez, the former U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development, did more than wrap himself in the mantle of all things presidential. He took no ideological prisoners and earned enough ire from the Bill McCollum campaign to be labeled a practitioner of “the politics of bigotry and hatred.” That angry retort was in response to Martinez having defined McCollum as “anti-family” and “the new darling of the homosexual extremists.”

And McCollum is a fellow Republican conservative.

And Castor is a moderate Democrat.

And Florida is one of a handful of states with an open Senate seat. Control of the Senate — now 51-48 (with one Democrat-aligned, nominal independent) in favor of the Republicans — is very much at stake.

This won’t be pretty — even though Martinez will try to tack back toward the center from the religious-right fringe.Perhaps Deutsch did Castor a favor in preparing her in his own inimitable way.

Sam Horton, the president of the Hillsborough NAACP, is on to something. He has been pointing out that the school district ought to be able to find a better way to spend the $4.6 million allocated to launch the voluntary desegregation effort called “controlled choice.” That’s the plan that has replaced 33 years of busing for integration purposes.

To Horton, as well as anyone else who can differentiate a boondoggle from a pedagogical priority, that’s money that could have been spent on something else. Improving instruction comes readily to mind.

Horton, however, should have stopped right there.

Instead, he segued into his main agenda: That the choice plan concern is more than a matter of misspent money. More to the point, it’s a very ineffective way of protecting integration. You see, in this first year of “controlled choice,” not enough students are choosing to inconvenience themselves by opting for a school that’s not nearby. Imagine that.

To the NAACP, that’s “resegregation.” And, sure enough, statistics show that 33 county schools are now “racially identifiable (black enrollment of more than 40 percent) in a county where the black population is 15 percent.

To the kids and parents who no longer want to be part of a social experiment, there’s another word for it: neighborhood schools. Remember them?

To Horton, this is “back to the future” stuff. As in the bad, old “separate but equal” days that predated the Supreme Court’s Brown vs. Board of Education decision in 1954.

A little perspective, please.

Two points:

First, there’s a chasmic difference between de jure segregation whose underpinning was the racial-inequality affirming Plessy vs. Ferguson and parents who simply choose to send their kids to the nearest school.

Second, how insultingly racist is it to make the case, in effect, that too many blacks in a given school cannot constitute a sound educational environment? Surely, the NAACP wouldn’t want to be party to that twisted tenet.

Hillsborough County and any other school district have the legal — and moral –responsibility to provide equal education opportunities in terms of school facilities, equipment, curriculum, textbooks and instructional personnel. That well-monitored mandate can co-exist with true neighborhood schools, regardless of the racial composition.

As with any other school district, however, Hillsborough has no control over certain key educational variables, such as parental involvement and an education-encouraging culture. And no “controlled choice” scenario or busing blueprint will change that.

There are better ways to spend educational dollars than on marketing “controlled choice” or gassing up a lot of school buses. You’d think we would have learned at least that these last 33 years.