Downtown Clearwater is still working on their effort to find an identity. Their five step process?
Some of the plans in the five step process could be used in other areas seeking to find themselves.
I’ve been thinking about two things in the past week or so, and both have to do with the opportunity, artistic and otherwise, provided by living on the edge of a frontier, an exurban terra incognita.
Thing One: Getting in on the ground floor of any movement or trend is an appealing thought. Your chance to make big profits, be a big shot, re-invent yourself. But the reality of ground-flooring an urbanist movement on the new city frontiers is that of guts, risk, and hard, gritty work.
It seems to me that if your vision of a revitalized city neighborhood seems eminently do-able and just around the corner, it is far too late for ground-flooring. When the local zoning, law enforcement and neighborhood schools and shopping districts are on the way up, so are the property values and speculators.
Historically, who have been the first in?
Which places in the Tampa Bay area appeal to this demographic?
My suspicion is that if it is going to happen on a macro scale, urban pioneering is already happening in subtler, hidden but substantial ways. Without any media coverage. In neighborhoods that are a little, or a lot, scary. Places you don’t visit or have forgotten about. Places that are unpleasant to look at.
Thing Two: Sprawls like the Tampa Bay area have been described as “soulless”, but to the degree than any place has a soul, certainly the Tampa Bay area must have one. Perhaps it is a diffuse essence which is, like everything else in the Sunbelt, spread too thin to be distinctly visible. What is the Tampa-ness of Tampa Bay? What is the special thing that makes it not, say, suburban New Jersey? Or Jacksonville?
Here are some things that do not give regional definition to the Tampa Bay area:
Let’s quit pretending. Tampa isn’t a city. St Petersburg isn’t a city. Clearwater and all the other municipalities in the Tampa bay region are not cities in the traditional sense. Lacking a coherent functioning core and distinct boundaries (other than saltwater), they are, or have become, no more than jurisdictional regions.
The small urban cores of the now arbitrary sections that make up our metro area were ripped out in the 60’s and 70’s,and the foresight and political will to restore whatever value they once had is not evident at this time. I once had the privilege to watch a city rise up from decay and sprawl and become a great creative and tech center. It wasn’t easy, and it took guts and visionary leadership and the united will of its citizens through neighborhood associations.
With lots of exceptions, people in the US live in a place because they like the place. People live in the Tampa Bay area because they like sunshine and warm temperatures, proximity to the Gulf. Low taxes. People choose exurban areas because they like racial and cultural homogeneity. Lawns. And shopping malls. Freeway closeness. And all the kinds of land use that are impossible without cheap oil.
This is not to say that exurbanites dislike art or innovation. They simply value it too little to pay for it, with dollars or with the psychic cost of urban life. (I would argue that the psychic cost of exurban isolation is higher, but I’ll do that another time). They aren’t offended by the squalor of a US 19 or [your favorite corridor of glaring hell here].
These preferences aren’t arguable. They are simply preferences. It may be useless for urbanists to attempt dialogue with those whose highest values are the lowest taxes. Cities with good transit, great art and technical and educational achievement, cities that attract and keep knowledge and cultural workers don’t come cheap. The leaders in tech innovation, art, and the urban amenities– and high-paying job growth– are not low-tax cities.
So what about those of us who stay behind in the diaspora? The cities that never were are not coming back. Should we just suck it up and establish a brave new exurban aesthetic? Or is it better to nurture little outposts of creative community dotting the metropolitan area, coming together occasionally for regional celebration? Can that essential creative critical mass be sparked without diversity and the constant inflow and outflow of new creative blood? Are online dialogues with the like-minded a satisfying substitute for coffee house and tavern exchanges?
Investigative journalism is crucial. In addition to exposing unethical immoral and illegal behavior, sometimes those journalists find simple (but expensive) stupidity and laziness.
Back in 2004, Greg Neal of Keystone Ventures envisioned a Tampa Sports Centre near Raymond James Stadium. A couple of months later, HCC envisioned a retail complex including a hotel, conference center, restaurant, medical complex, public pool and sports facility in their “Front Yard” facing Dale Mabry.
In early 2005, Neal approached HCC, and suggested he could build the world-class sports-medicine destination with a luxury hotel and a culinary institute. Four hundred jobs would be created, and students could learn from sports nutrition experts and hotel management programs. In return, HCC would guarantee low rental rates on 40+ acres to Keystone for fifty years.
HCC was rightly intrigued, and asked for a proposal with details.
After collecting proposals from them and other parties in 2006, evaluators for HCC placed Keystone fourth behind Cheeseburger in Paradise, Steak N Shake, and a hotel from a George Steinbrenner company. Although they found problems with the Keystone proposal, those top three did not include using the facilities for education, and HCC leaders kept Keystone on the short list.
HCC then paid $768,000 to a real estate firm to oversee the project, and that firm gave HCC more specific reasons for denying Keystone’s proposal, such as a lack of experience and unfavorable lease terms.
In an email sent in May 2007, HCC VP Ron Wolf suggested they look out for “smoke and mirrors” from Keystone at a scheduled meeting. They met with Greg Neal again, and were again blown away by his excitement and vision. Seems they forgot about the smoke and mirrors, and were still talking about the grandiose opportunities in March of this year.
Luckily, the St. Pete Times took an interest in the story. Doing the job that HCC leaders, HCC evaluators, and an $768,000 hired gun should have done, SPTimes reporter Thomas Lake has found that Greg Neal is full of sh*t.
A St. Petersburg Times investigation of Neal’s claims and credentials found nearly 20 statements that were exaggerated, misleading, disputed, or downright false. And public administrators repeated some of those claims in official documents without independently confirming them.
What an outrage! You would think that these basic background checks would be PART OF THE PROCESS by those entrusted to evaluate the proposal, yet none of it was discovered until the paper got involved.
Of course, in an attempt to save face, HCC plans to give Greg Neal an opportunity to address these new concerns in a meeting next month.
Thanks to Thomas Lake and the St. Pete Times for uncovering this nonsense. It’s a damn shame we must have journalists doing the job of lazy, uninspired “leadership.”
Hillsborough County employs about 10,000 people, but, blaming budget cuts, county commissioners are poised to lay off the ONE guy responsible for protecting our wildlife from the bulldozers. If they adopt the budget with this proposed cutback, they will gut our upland habitat protection program, just like they tried to gut our wetland protection program last summer.
We have only one wildlife biologist who manages and enforces our Upland Habitat Ordinance. The Environmental Scientist II position reviews development proposals to ensure that areas designated as “Significant Wildlife Habitat” are protected. He decides whether a site qualifies as “Significant” or “Essential” habitat. And if you want to report someone who is bulldozing gopher tortoise habitat or cutting down Scrub Jay nests, he’s the guy you call.
Without this single wildlife biologist in the Planning & Growth Management (PGM) department, we would have no one qualified to handle your habitat protection program. PGM director Peter Aluotto says one of his staff’s urban foresters could try to take on these responsibilities, but foresters are not qualified for this job, and he knows it. Urban foresters are tree specialists, qualified for overseeing our tree ordinances, and deciding whether a tree can legally be cut down. The work requires a biologist, trained to evaluate habitat for various animal & plant species, assess damage to a whole ecological system and prescribe mitigation.
When a developer’s attorneys and their hired biologists testify at a zoning hearing about what type of ecosystem is on their site, and whether their project will impact this animal or that, they will claim our forester lacks the credentials to dispute their biologists — and they will be right. They will sue the county if our forester dares to restrict their development without adequate expert review — and they will win. Meanwhile, environmental groups could also sue the county for abandoning its responsibility to uphold our laws protecting our natural resources.
At the July 29 budget workshop, Commissioner Rose Ferlita responded to Aluotto’s idea of using a forester to do a biologist’s job:
“Well, pretty soon — and I’m being funny — we can have — because he may be not busy that afternoon — we can have an electrical inspector looking at it and see if maybe he thinks that we’re taking care of gopher turtles. I mean, then it becomes just a train wreck.”
Aluotto admitted his foresters are “not specifically trained” for this, offering,
“in those cases where they couldn’t — if they couldn’t get that job done, we would defer to state and federal agencies like Fish & Wildlife and DEP and those folks.”
Please. State agencies can not enforce Hillsborough County’s environmental standards. (Even if they could, they don’t have extra staff to lend us to do our work!) Aluotto’s suggestion that we “defer to state and federal agencies” is simply suggesting that we abandon our local rules protecting our wildlife habitat.
So why are we even thinking of eliminating our one and only wildlife biologist?
Good question - I’m glad you asked.
Some county commissioners have found the tanking housing market to be a good excuse to financially hamstring the agencies that regulate their developer buddies. Commissioner Jim Norman falsely claimed building had dropped 80% – 90%, arguing that we should cut these agencies by a similar percentage. After he was slammed by the Times’ Truth-O-Meter, Norman backed down from the 80% “off with their heads” stand, but still led the board to direct the Environmental Protection Commission (EPC), and the Planning Commission to cut their budgets off at the knees — and PGM too, although they don’t want PGM cutting too many from their permitting staff, as that would inconvenience developers. (Heaven forbid we should slow down the process by which subdivisions and condos get built, because we don’t have nearly enough of that stuff laying around vacant driving down our home values.)
And so we find PGM’s Peter Aluotto offering to eliminate those positions that service small homeowners who want to add a room to the home they can’t sell in this market, and doing away with the one position that developers would most like to see eliminated: the one biologist qualified to handle wildlife habitat reviews.
Finally, at the July 31 workshop, the administration decided they need to meet with their “customers” to see how they want this handled. And by “customers” they do not mean us taxpaying residents of the county, they are talking about developers. That’s right, they want the regulated community to help decide which regulators they should fire.
But since it’s our money paying everyone’s salary, shouldn’t we tell them who to hire and fire?
If, somewhere between the subdivisions and strip plazas, you’d like to see some natural spaces left green and alive with the wild magic of bobcats, foxes & otters — places where the woodpecker hammers out a staccato beat, and the Chuck-will’s-widow still sings, backed by a symphony of frogs — write your commissioners and tell them to keep the Environmental Scientist II in PGM’s budget. Here’s my letter. You can also speak to them at the public budget hearings, September 9 & 18, 6:00 p.m. at county center.
“The Pier” has been a landmark of downtown St. Petersburg since 1899 when Peter Demens connected the Orange Belt Railroad to a half-mile wharf. D. F. Brantley 
started the first Pier Pavilion in 1895, and a “Municipal Pier” debuted in 1913. But it is the 1926 “Million Dollar Pier” (postcarded here) that long-time residents remember.
The Million Dollar Pier was the place to be - whether it was for a veteran’s meeting, a high school dance or a just getting a Coke at the drive-in. In the days before air conditioning, the way to cool off was to take a drive out to this community center pier. Cruise boats docked at the pier and during World War II so did the military ships.
The city began tearing down Million Dollar Pier in 1967, 
and opened today’s inverted pyramid structure in 1973. In 1978, the city installed a laser on the third floor of the inverted pyramid, sending a “beam of green” up the pier to downtown. It never really worked great, and was removed in the mid 80s.
The Pier got a $12 million makeover in 1988, with a lovely shade of turquoise contrasting the pale yellow building.
You may have noticed that The Pier Aquarium is looking to move off The Pier, and over to Baywalk. It seems that after 35 years, The Pier and the building at the end of it are falling apart. So now the city is looking for ideas on what to do with The Pier.
To do it right, some have suggested we look at other piers across the nation, such as Chicago’s Navy Pier (pictures), Santa Monica Pier (pics), and San Francisco’s Pier 39 (pics).
But maybe we ought to knock it down and replace it with a bridge to Ruskin.
You got any ideas?
Your Weekly Rays Update
Overall: 58-40
Last Week: AL Won All Star Game, Jays (2-1)
This Week: OAK, @ KC
Considering this was the first All Star game that had any real importance to the Rays (for obvious reasons), it was good to see the three Rays play well in it. Evan Longoria had a game tying RBI hit in the bottom of the 8th and Scott Kazmir picked up the win in one inning of relief work. Even Dioner Navarro helped turn a key double play in the 9th inning (although Navarro also gave up a run on an error the inning before). We all know the Rays are a young team but all three Rays who played in the All Star game were 24 or younger. That’s just the fifth time since 1963 a team has sent three players 24 or younger to the All Star game.
Tampa Bay…58—40 __ .592
Boston………….58—43 __ .574
New York……..54—45 __ .545
Baltimore…….48—50 __ .490
Toronto……….48—51 __ .485
The Rays probably don’t deserve to be in first in the division considering the seven games they dropped before the All Star break, yet there they are. We have three Red Sox losses to the Angels to thank for that. Of concern is the fact that the Rays play dreadful on the road (19-25). The Rays have been saved by their home record (41-15) but it’s difficult to consider the team a serious playoff contender unless they can improve their road record.
HERE WE GO AGAIN
A Commission has been formed as a joint effort between St Petersburg, Pinellas and the Rays to find a site for a new stadium. The Commission, called A Baseball Community, Inc. is looking for applications for the 9 member committee that will head this coalition. The Times Stadium blog, Ballpark Frankness, has a guess at the potential membership of this committee and the biggest question seems to be, will someone from the anti-stadium group, POWW, be allowed on the committee? Personally, I’m torn on the value of adding someone from POWW to this group.
LONGORIA HOT, UPTON NOT
Apologies for the uncreative headline but Longoria has been on fire since the All Star break with 3 homeruns in his last three games. On the flip side BJ Upton has played poorly lately and Joe Maddon has moved Upton around in the lineup to take pressure off of Upton until he finds his swing. Upton is not the only Ray struggling (Carl Crawford and Carlos Pena have as well) so you have to wonder how long can a rookie (i.e. Longoria) essentially carry the Rays offense?.
PERCIVAL BACK
Reliever Troy Percival returns from the 15 day DL and should pitch sometime this week. While the Rays bullpen as a whole is much improved from last season Percival seems to provide a calming influence for a young team.
PLAYOFF ODDS: 84%
(Courtesy Baseball Prospectus)
Despite a last-ditch effort by developer interests to weaken wetland protections last Thursday, interested citizens prevailed and your county commissioners adopted the final batch of wetland rule changes without any modifications.
Having failed to persuade EPC staff to agree to any weakening of the rules in this last part of the Hybrid, developers frantically lobbied county commissioners to stick last-minute changes into the proposal.
Speaking against those changes were representatives of the League of Women Voters, U-CAN, R-LAND, Sierra Club, Audubon, Tomorrow Matters!, Seffner Community Alliance, Taylor Road Civic Association, and several unaffiliated citizens. A few developers and agricultural interests spoke for looser regulations, but they were outnumbered and outmatched.
A key to the success of the conservationists was that many of their email and letters showed commissioners that they clearly understood the key points included in the changes. Developers’ demands were couched in harmless-sounding doublespeak like “net environmental benefits” or “classification of wetlands,” but citizens pointed out how those innocent-sounding buzzwords would weaken wetland protections.
Still, Commissioner Jim Norman pushed hard for the “classification of wetlands” modification, which would have made it easier to destroy some wetlands deemed “low class.” This idea was opposed by EPC staff, all 3 advisory committees and the non-developer citizens involved.
Commissioner Brian Blair tried to lend support to Norman, but Blair didn’t seem to understand the issues well enough to do more than flail about, finally resorting to reading a letter out loud. Blair wrongly claimed the letter was written by a member of the EPC’s Technical Advisory Group (TAG). In fact, the letter was written by Mike Peterson, speaking for the Greater Tampa Association of Realtors, not TAG. Peterson is also known as a lawyer for developers.
(Side note - I wonder if Tampa Realtors approve of their spokesperson calling for weaker wetland protections? He previously led Tampa Realtors to call for the total elimination of EPC wetland protections, and this letter reiterates that position. It’s obvious how it would benefit Peterson’s developer-clients to be allowed to destroy wetlands to build more houses, but how would it benefit Realtors to have neighborhoods flooded by wetland destruction just so their market could also be flooded with more houses for sale, depressing prices?)
Thankfully, Commissioner Mark Sharpe argued firmly against Norman’s pitch for the requests for modifications, noting some of the economic benefits of strong environmental protections.
Likewise, Commissioner Rose Ferlita moved to adopt the rules as proposed, and flatly refused to allow Blair & Norman to pollute her motion with any language that would direct EPC to weaken wetland protections.
If not for the concerted efforts of those above-mentioned groups and other interested parties, it is my belief that the already compromised rules would have been put off again, eventually leading to further weakening of wetlands rules. Instead, the concerns of citizens were heard by your county commissioners, and Mark Sharpe’s compelling arguments thwarted attempts to delay. With no commissioner wanting to be singled out as voting against wetlands (given all the heat the public & press has directed at them on this issue), the motion passed unanimously.
For more, see the Times and Tribune on the hearing, and the Times’ preview. The Tribune also printed an editorial and Denise Layne’s Op Ed before the hearing, both calling on commissioners to approve EPC staff’s proposal as is. At the hearing, all 3 of Blair’s Democratic opponents spoke in favor of EPC’s staff recommendation. Hear them all on this audio clip of WMNF’s excellent coverage. Full captioning of the hearing is here.
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