neighborhood news
More bars in more places? Not in my neighborhood.
Condos on Tierra Verde? No thank you.
Brian Blair: My neighbors are extremists.
Rays looking for a new neighborhood?
Tags: bars, Brian Blair, condos, neighborhood, news, Tierra, Verde, ybor-city
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November 18th, 2008 at 11:53 am
The recounting of Blair’s meeting meltdown and the piano-playing Baptist retort make for some dang funny reading.
November 18th, 2008 at 2:25 pm
Beggars can’t be choosers!
I find it odd that the Historic Ybor City Neighborhood Civic Association would rather look at a building that has been boarded up for over two years instead of a business that is used 2-3 nights a week.
It’s not like they are replacing a thriving existing business with a nightclub. They are replacing a vacant eyesore at ground zero of Ybor!
That’s what makes today’s Ybor so depressing. It’s just block after block of vacant storefronts.
November 18th, 2008 at 3:10 pm
Tino, it may seem odd but more nightclubs in Ybor are not the solution to the problem. The problem began with too many large nightclubs, too close to each other: crime, bad rep, the ghost town effect during the day. You can ask most people and they will tell you what they think about Ybor: not good news.
It is a vacant eyesore, but guess what, these large clubs seldom care about restoring facades on 7th ave. Have you looked at Prana or Full Moon? They are practically falling apart. And you think that Ybor’s vacant storefronts look depressing? Clubs do nothing to contribute to storefronts! They are closed most of the time!
November 18th, 2008 at 5:13 pm
This sounds exactly like the City Council when they were insisting that old downtown facades (the Kress, Newberry and Woolworth buildings) be preserved by condo developers because somebody famous took a dump there 75 years ago. The condo developers walked away, and the buildings are literally falling down.
I guess that in Tampa, beggars CAN be choosers.
November 19th, 2008 at 4:06 pm
Tino,
The real issue here is Tampa’s general disregard and disdain for historic structures. While restoration and preservation are accepted norms in great cities all over the U.S., residents of Tampa- as evidenced by your above sentiments- place little value on their own historic landscape. Perhaps you equate Civil Rights sit-ins with “taking a dump” however, I doubt many people share your dim point of view. Perhaps they should have knocked down the Loraine Motel in Memphis. After all, MLK probably just took a dump there before being shot. Historic buildings provide a sense of place and identity. They remind us of where we’ve been and where we want to be and, by they way, they entice people to live in and visit our urban neighborhoods. Behind Busch Gardens, Ybor is Tampa’s most visited location. Only a fraction of those people come for the clubs. Travelers from all over the world come because of the history, the architecture, and the small cigar shops and cafes.
Regarding Ybor, it is precisely the “take what you can get and be happy” attitude that has created our current problems. We deserve better.
November 19th, 2008 at 5:16 pm
I am dumbfounded by the statement that these squatters dens “entice people to live in and visit our urban neighborhoods”.
Build a display at the new Tampa History Museum to tell me about the history of those buildings? Sure. I’ll take a few minutes to read about them.
Spend millions of our hard-earned dollars to rebuild and maintain vacant, decrepit buildings that no one besides squatters and arsonists (see: the Albany Hotel) wants to use? Call me shallow and dim, but no thanks.