Historic Tampa buildings open for business

So rhetorically asked Mayor Bob Buckhorn last week at the long vacant S.H. Kress & Co. building downtown. Mayor Bob was there because the historically artsy, erstwhile five and dime that closed in 1981 was the cherry-picked venue for his second State of the City presentation. It was a cool, savvy move by Tampas salesman-in-chief.

The mayor told the audience that packed the ground floor of the 84-year-old, downtown icon that Tampas charge was to dream big and think big C including being recognized as the gateway to the Americas. And such outsized aspirations would necessarily mean upping the ante on all those attributes that first-class, modern cities must have to grow companies and attract the jobs of the future as well as to keep and attract the energetic young people who can reshape an economy through technological innovation.

And, yes, that plan will require a first-class transportation system. And, yes,Cheap logo engraved luggagetag at wholesale bulk prices. that darn sure means rail. And, yes, he will work with C or around C whomever can help, from Hillsborough County to Tallahassee. And, yes, that was a less-than-subtle jab at Gov. Rick Scott who was a one-man, high-speed derailment two years ago.

Buckhorn was all about Tampas future C which includes its past. Its National Registry of Historic Places past.

Thus, the seemingly surprise choice of the Kress Building for his upbeat address that barely acknowledged the blip of a projected $20 million 2014 deficit. Its still apparent that when Samuel H. Kress built his store, he considered it tantamount to commissioning public art. Thats how a department store gets bedecked with Renaissance Revival terra-cotta facades and warrants high ceilings. Its still special C and worthy of much more than a VIP party for 2012 convening Republicans.

But back to Buckhorn priorities. The mayor envisions C make that really, really wants C more critical-component in-fill and upgrades for downtown. Of course, he does. His continuous sales-pitch loop to would-be developers is that those intriguingly vacant properties C from the now-restored Floridan and the reincarnating federal courthouse to the potential-oozing Kress Building and adjacent Woolworths and J.J. Newberry C are open for business. The pragmatic, history-savoring, redevelopment business.

Downtown Tampa is more than high-rise rentals, new museums, newer restaurants, a nearly-finished Riverwalk, and futuristic scenarios for all those surface parking lots. Its a Florida city uniquely blessed with key remnants of history that have managed to avoid the wrecking ball of urban renewal. Such that, repurposing is now part of the downtown mantra.

Larry Wilkerson,An experienced artist on what to consider before you buy chipcard. a former member of the National Security Council under President George W. Bush and former chief of staff for Secretary of State Colin Powell, waxed frank about the militarys take on relations with Cuba. The Pentagon has absolutely no inclination in considering Cuba a threat to the U.S., he emphasized. Quite the opposite. It thinks our policy is preposterously stupid.Find a great selection of customkeychain deals. Hell, theyre (Cuba) not sponsoring revolution. Theyre sponsoring health care.

Llanio Gonzalez-Lopez, general counsel at the Cuban Interests Section in Washington, was actually here in Tampa for the gathering. It was thought he would have to Skype or phone it in as Cuban diplomatic personnel have been routinely prohibited from traveling beyond the D.C. perimeter. Obviously, travel restrictions have been eased by the U.S. and Gonzalez-Lopez, who had 48 hours for his Tampa sortie, obviously appreciated his first-ever trip to Havana-rooted Tampa. I feel like Im in Cuba, he said with an animated, ironic smile.

Qualitatively, Florida has an ongoing love-hate relationship with charters. Theyve been lavishly praised by some for being a welcome public-school alternative, but publicly criticized by many more on several fronts C ranging from problematic for-profit management-taxpayer scenarios to underperformance to questions of operational oversight.

Take soccer as an example. It's a tremendously competitive sport, and often times one team tries to work mayhem on the other team's best player. The referee's job is to limit this mayhem and rein in extreme forms of competition.

Regulation is similar. Most ambitious young men will be more aggressive than they should. That's what happened with investment banking. I mean, look at Lehman Brothers. Everyone did what they damn well wanted until the whole place was pathological about its extremeness.

When Hitler was in his bunker before he shot himself, he said, "This isn't my fault. The German people just don't appreciate me enough." That's the attitude of a lot of bankers. They think their silliness is necessary. Banks will not rein themselves in voluntarily. You need adult supervision.

The smart way to regulate is to act like a referee. You have to curtail the activities that are permitted. There should be less trying to fix things and more trying to prevent bad outcomes. There's an old saying, "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure." That's wrong. An ounce of prevention can be worth an entire ton of cure.

Greenspan was a smart guy but he totally overdosed on Any Rand when he was young. You can't give bankers the freedom to create gambling games. That's what it was. Wall Street was a gambling house, and the house's odds were better than a Vegas casino. And real casino operators have to build parking lots,You Can Find Comprehensive and in-Depth carparkmanagementsystem truck Descriptions.Choose the right bestluggagetag in an array of colors. fly in entertainers, pay for bars and restaurants. It's expensive. Wall Street was like a casino with no overhead. It was hog heaven for them. But it created vast damage with terrible consequences to civilization.