Category: Tampa Bay

If you’ve lived around this area long enough, you know a certain regional reality. We can be our own worst enemy.

The provincialism. The parochialism. Up-county, down-county. County vs. city. Rural vs. urban.   A largely non-native residential base with other allegiances. The Bay as another Gulf. Hell, Pinellas County was once part of Hillsborough County until it seceded.

By most contemporary criteria, Tampa Bay is not a coherent, well-integrated market with an acknowledged conventional hub and key complementary spokes. Outsiders have been known to wonder whether we are a city, a region or a body of water. Tampa Bay has identity and turf issues and no mass transit. Demographic data doesn’t tell you nearly enough.

But that multi-county population now exceeds 3 million. This region has a world class airport, a major seaport, a large media market, three professional sports teams, one of the biggest universities in the country, impressive arts venues, the statewide STEM-jobs leadership, revitalized downtowns and an utterly appealing life style that manifests itself as a tourist destination. It has Super Bowl clout as well as Bollywood cachet.

As a result, we are a market that is easy to misread from the outside. Just ask Stu Sternberg.

We are, thus, a market that, more than most, must place a premium on Tampa Bay-as-a-single-metro-region marketing and getting all the key players on the same Tampa Bay page and playing to our considerable strengths.

No organization is better positioned to carry out this challenging charge than the Tampa Bay Partnership. It encompasses eight counties and is comprised of nearly 150 public and private businesses, along with 11 regional economic development entities. Its mandate is to help recruit businesses by corporate marketing and by establishing relationships with site selection experts and to help address relevant regional challenges–from water to transportation.

Some, however, have grumbled that the TBP has been coming up short in its domestic ground game–working to unite the area’s business and political leaderships. Its role in recent transit-initiative failures has sometimes been cited as a prime example. And it hasn’t helped that for nearly a year it has been operating without a permanent CEO.

That has now changed.

In what seems like a coup for TBP, it has landed Rick Homans, who will begin early next month. He’s the former economic development director for the state of New Mexico. More to the point, he has led the Tampa Hillsborough Economic Development Corp. for the last four years. He will not have to get the lay of the land. He’s already up to speed.

By all accounts, he’s acquitted himself well and become a key player in pitching the county’s selling points to relocation prospects. Just ask Jeff Vinik. Or Bob Buckhorn. Or Pam Iorio.

TBP Chairman Brian Lamb made it clear that Homans’ skill set and local experience made him “the right person” to solidify a “one voice” approach for the region.

“This is a pivotal moment for the Tampa Bay Partnership,” underscored–and probably understated–Lamb.

Indeed, in a global marketplace with ever-increasing competition, the onus is on Tampa Bay to get its collective regional act together like never before if it wants unrealized potential fulfilled.

And nothing on the Homans’ plate will loom larger than mass transit. It’s this region’s glaring deficit, and Homans will be a critically important middleman and pitchman. After that, a role to play in keeping the Rays here, diversifying the economy and recruiting Fortune 500 companies. And more.

Eusebio Leal, Havana’s celebrated historian and architectural preservationist, was the guest at last week’s Ybor City Chamber of Commerce luncheon–as well as Exhibit A for its “Cuba Initiative.”

The timing, of course, is obvious. The U.S. and Cuba are normalizing relations and the soul of Ybor is Havana. The roots are familial and historical: descendents of cigar workers and admirers of national icon José Martí, who frequented Tampa in the 1890s.

Leal’s history presentation, via an interpreter, underscored the proximity and nexus between Cuba and Florida–from trade to missionaries. And, for the record, Old Havana, just shy of its 500th anniversary (2019), is 50 years older than St. Augustine.

He later highlighted the old city of Havana restoration work that he presides over–from The Capitol to plazas, once-prominent buildings, warehouse reincarnations and Sloppy Joe’s. In so doing, he emphasized the priority that was repurposing and multi-use. “Restoration is not just a technical project,” said Leal. “It is also a social project.”

He also noted the role of tourism in furthering his restoration cause. He is counting on “the profit of tourism to carry out restoration.” For Americans, he pointed out, that means “finding part of their own history. Those ties will be re-established.”

There was no Q&A afterward. Just lunch, a Latin crooner and plenty of table talk about impressive restoration projects–as well as a certain trade embargo, remaining visitor limitations and scenarios for Cuba’s American consulate.

As we know, some lists are more relevant than others. Bloomberg News recently ranked the country’s top metro areas for STEM jobs. The list was topped by the usual stalwarts: San Jose-Silicon Valley, San Francisco, Seattle, Austin, Boston, Washington and Durham, N.C. (Research Triangle).

In general, the Southeast lags, but Tampa Bay was tops in Florida with approximately 65,000 STEM-related jobs equal to 5.5 percent of its workforce. Orlando was second. No, we’re not San Jose or Seattle, but neither are we call-center magnets these days.

Could CSX be part of the solution?

Just when we’ve pretty much reconciled ourselves to more mess transit and sprawl accommodation, along comes word that CSX is shopping a couple of segments, totaling about 100 miles, of its Tampa Bay freight routes. Commuter rail conversion is at least up for discussion. The track connects, however circuitously, the downtowns of Clearwater, St. Petersburg and Tampa. The steel grating also links USF and TIA.

“It’s there, it’s underutilized, and it connects important points,” notes former Hillsborough County Commissioner Mark Sharpe, a prominent regional transit advocate. “It’s very viable.”

This, mind you, from the folks who’ve brought us the liability insurance-end game with the TECO Line Streetcars over the RR crossing at 13th Street and 5th Avenue in Ybor. This also from the folks synonymous with downtown, train-horn wake ups in the wee hours of the night.

For a city–and region–that remains so demonstrably mass-transit challenged, this is worth scrutinizing. It may–or may not–be fiscally and strategically viable. Time, for sure, is not on our side.

Just when you wonder what Jeff Vinik will do for an encore, he doubles down.

That $1 billion “live, work, play” development around Amalie Arena is likely only phase one. If things pan out, Vinik sees “an opportunity for up to another billion dollars of development.”

But Vinik’s vision is about more than buildings, employees, synergy, sense of place and a-billion-here, a-billion-there wherewithal. There is also a literal health angle.

For that, he is formally partnering with Delos, a real estate company that builds health and wellness strategies into its projects. Call it Exhibit A for enlightened self interest.

This is well beyond the “new urbanism” walkability that is part of his master plan. This is about green space, low-pollen trees, acoustic-comfort facilitation and monitored air quality and light modification. It’s also about access to healthy foods. And it’s hardly happenstance that the WELLness priority is reinforced by the USF Morsani College of Medicine and the USF Health Heart Institute as pillars of this downtown community.

And this, to be sure, is definitely about marketing. When you announce your major investment in health- and wellness-focused technologies and design strategies in New York at the Clinton Global Initiative, you’re thinking big. When you get former President Bill Clinton to hype the effort as a blueprint for other cities to follow, you’re a major player with a leg up on the millennial market.

A healthy-by-design community is, as Vinik has acknowledged, a “major selling point.”

Indeed, healthy is also smart.

So much for protocol. Or class.

Move over, St. Petersburg City Council. You’re not the only off-putting fly in the Tampa Bay Rays stadium ointment.

What were the Atlanta Braves and Pinellas County officials thinking when they didn’t so much as accord the Rays a heads up about the Braves proposal to build a spring training complex on the former Toytown landfill? A county panel had actually ranked the SportsPark proposal first among three entries. And any such usage would be contingent upon the availability of county resort tax money.

This is land that could theoretically be in play as a possible Rays stadium site. And this is ($10 million) tax money that could conceivably be earmarked for a new Rays home. But nobody was involving the Rays until the news broke?

MLB, no less blindsided by the Toytown Braves maneuvering, had to issue an official statement saying that a new Rays ballpark in the “Tampa Bay region” remains “the most pressing need.”

Who knows what it said in private.

Maybe it should be called Gone Hillsborough instead of Go Hillsborough. That would be a more appropriate name for this county undertaking that seeks to bring a transit sales tax initiative to the voters in 2016.

Success has been more than problematic from the get-go.

First things first. A county-wide tax for virtually anything is a long shot. Cities the size of Tampa, Miami, Orlando, Jacksonville and St. Petersburg need to have their own, city-only referenda. It’s called self-determination. The Florida Legislature won’t hear of it.

That’s unconscionable and unfair. In Tampa’s case, meaningful mass transit is the one big deficit in its pursuit of unrealized potential. Just ask Rick Homans, Jeff Vinik or Bob Buckhorn.

Second, the way this half-cent/one-cent tax was proposed, it comes up too road centric. There is no future in enabling sprawl. Mass transit options are minimized to mollify the “No Tax for Tracks” set. Funding sources are rigidly limited.

And, third, with the Sheriff’s Office called in to investigate the Go Hillsborough engineering-bid process, this flawed plan is now tainted with conflict-of-interest accusations. From public outreach to public outrage. From skeptics to cynics. The most likely result: It won’t be voted down, because it won’t be voted on. Period.

“If a vote was taken today, the votes aren’t there for this thing to pass,” was the recent assessment of Commissioner Al Higginbotham.

Ironically, the only chance that Go Hillsborough, however compromised, has for ballot success in 2016 may lie with an all-out, first-class public relations blitz that puts the focus squarely where it belongs–the future of this region. But who to call on this one?

Ironic update on that fatal stabbing last month outside the Orpheum nightclub  in Ybor City. The lawyer for the suspect is claiming self-defense. In effect, lucky for him that he thought to bring a knife with him that night for the post-game party after the USF-FAMU football game.

A school district in need of an audit over runaway spending and shrinking reserves certainly didn’t need this. We now know that the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, that pedagogical deus ex machina, has come up short in its promises to Hillsborough County schools.

Instead of kicking in $100 million to improve teacher quality, its contribution will be $80 million. And that has to be matched by $124 million raised by the district–a reminder that this was not a string-less “gift.” And if teacher morale matters, and it always does, the results are notably shy of a district “win-win.”

No, it’s not a scandal, but if it were to become one, you know the media has “Gatesgate” at the ready.

Jeff Vinik won’t be typecast. He’s a low-key, self-effacing, game-changing titan-mogul.

He made a ton of money as a prescient hedge-fund manager. He owns a successful sports franchise. He has a billion-dollar project for a major downtown overhaul. He can speed-dial Bill Gates.

And before he bought the Tampa Bay Lightning in 2010, he googled: “How to buy a sports franchise.” He really did. Not exactly the second coming of George Steinbrenner.

He’s probably the least self-important, very important person any of us have ever encountered.

He recently spoke at a Tampa Tiger Bay Club lunch and was peppered with questions ranging from Steven Stamkos’ contract negotiations to transportation priorities to his urban-makeover project to societal obligations. More on such obligations a bit later.

His answers were often diplomatic, sometimes dryly humorous, and not designed to make headlines–or adversaries. He was, after all, fielding leading questions, the gotcha stock-in-trade of politically provocative, Tiger Bay Club members.

* The literal first query–which underscores how integral the Lightning have become in this market–was about re-signing Stamkos, NHL superstar and nice-guy avatar.

For the record, Vinik has “full confidence that Steve (Yzerman, the general manager) will figure out the deal with Stammer.” Of course he does.

* Why buy the Lightning? Who else was of interest? After noting that he looked into a number of franchises–including Atlanta, Dallas, Phoenix, Nashville, St. Louis and Carolina–he settled on the Bolts and summarized this area’s appeal. “What I saw here were friendly people, quality of life, weather, beaches.”

* That $1.7 billion Port Tampa Bay development plan: Complement or competition?  “Well thought out. Has a natural flow. Not sure about a 75-story tower.”

* Our car-centric community. “Improving transportation around here is critical. … I’m talking to a lot of companies, and the No.1 thought on their mind is, ‘How do we move our employees around this area?'” Based on population-growth projections, the area could grow by 2.5 percent per year, he estimated. “We’ve got to think ahead for transportation, and it’s going to require a lot of different means.”

Among those means: “More traffic (water taxis) on the river” and an expanded TECO Line Streetcar System. The latter, he said, needs to become “a real, viable means of transportation”–including a downtown loop and eventual extension to TIA.

* Light rail, to say the least, is an exercise in urban-planning frustration and political rancor around here. Would Vinik consider helping to organize and lead a business-community effort in support of modern mass transit? “Maybe.”

*His “live, work, play” downtown project. “If it looks like Miami or Austin, no. It’s got to be about Tampa and creating a sense of place. … We’re going after our demographic: millennials, families and empty nesters. Which is everybody.”

* As to recruiting a Fortune 500 headquarters, Vinik said he’s talking to a number of executives in the Northeast, where he’s originally from. “We are getting closer and we are resonating,” he said. “There are several major prospects out there we are having discussions with.” Likely time frame: “Next year or two.”

* He also emphasized that focus can’t solely be on the Fortune 500 recruits. “Let’s not turn away 2,000 high-paying jobs because it happens to be a regional headquarters,” he pointed out.

* Vinik also fielded multiple questions about his societal responsibility to those who still don’t fit his “everybody” demographic. As in, the working poor and people of color whose lifestyle might not prioritize, say, yoga in the park. What’s his obligation?

First, he’s not about to get into the political weeds that inevitably result when you become a social-justice crusader. Second, if done right and successfully, his makeover project will produce economic ripples that will benefit more than those living, working and playing on those 40 acres around Amalie Arena.

“We haven’t fulfilled our mission if all we do is benefit from those 40 acres,” he pointedly noted. “This is about long-term, economic sustainability. This is about changing this area for generations. … We think this rising tide will lift all boats of this area.”

One final thought on societal responsibility. I get the sense that a person such as Vinik–rich, important, impactful, generous–is perceived as an “all things to all people” sort by some. It’s not realistic–or fair.

Among other involvements, the Lightning have a Community Hero Program that gives a $50,000 check to a local non-profit at every home game. And the team just announced a $6 million plan to involve 100,000 bay area youth in school outreach programs. Jeff and Penny Vinik are also prominent community philanthropists.

Vinik’s ultimate contribution to all those calling Tampa Bay home will likely be that “rising tide”– its own form of egalitarian enterprise.