Author: opinionstogo

Skybox View(point)

Even if the Hillsborough County Commission should vote to drastically alter or raze the Tampa Sports Authority, the final decision rests with lawmakers in Tallahassee. So don’t look for an extreme makeover just yet.

However, there could be movement on a related front. The TSA has been taking ethical and PR heat over its policy of accepting free skybox tickets and meals for its members and dispensing additional freebies to selected public officials.

“I’m not going to totally defend that practice,” said TSA Chairman David Mechanik, who added that there was “no current written policy.” He also noted that “Staff are now working on it.

“We could do a better job of benefiting the community at large,” he conceded.

Evelyn Greco, RIP

I knew Evelyn Greco for the last of her 98 years. Would that it had been more.

I’m always fascinated by folks who have lived so much of the history we take for granted. I can only imagine Ybor City in the Roaring ’20s, the Depression and World War II. But she lived it. And upon request, didn’t mind reliving it.

The lives of the Evelyn Grecos are windows into a world – and society – long since past. When neighbors meant more than residential proximity. We need reminding.

Mrs. Greco wasn’t there at Creation; it just seemed that way. And she was still sharp at the end – still reading in Spanish, Italian and English, still reveling in grandchildren and great grandchildren.

And still keeping her kid – who’s a grandfather — in line. That would be former four-time Mayor Dick Greco. The relationship never ceased to amuse.

Till virtually the very end, Mrs. Greco would call her 70-something son to remind him “to be careful with your driving.” Which was typically the prelude to “Call me when you get home.” And for good measure: “You seem to be putting on some weight.”

When pressed about what made her proudest about her only child’s success, she couldn’t have been more old school.

“I don’t follow all that city business,” she admitted. “But what means most to me is that he was a nice, polite boy who worked hard – and never changed.”

Safety Harbor’s Downtown Makeover

Safety Harbor is a sleepy, village-like community nestled along Tampa Bay in eastern Pinellas County. It could be the poster burg for quaint. Its downtown is a mix of small shops, waterfront vistas and the landmark Safety Harbor Resort & Spa.

Look for that to change.

Sometime this spring Olympia Development Group will break ground – at the corner of Main Street and Bayshore Drive — on an upscale, mixed-use project that has raised lots of expectations for a downtown renaissance. Dunedin-based Olympia will develop Harbour Pointe: 45 condominiums, eight town homes and 45,000 square feet of retail and office on 3.3 acres.

The condos -in two 4-story buildings –will overlook the bay and a marina. Prices will start at $500,000. Construction is slated to begin by the end of the second quarter.The Shoppes at Harbour Pointe – consisting of a 2- and 3-story building – will feature a European village ambience. Construction should start by the end of the first quarter.

Moreover, Olympia recently bought the Spa property, which sits across the street from Harbour Pointe on 30 acres, from Arlington, Va.-based MeriStar Hospitality Co. According to MeriStar, the purchase price was in excess of $20 million. Olympia has ambitious plans for upgrading the 189-room resort plus major mixed-use development. The scenario – in a 5-to-7-year build out – could include more than 300 condos, retail, and a 300-room hotel.

“Harbour Pointe is important for our downtown,” emphasizes Ron Pianta, Safety Harbor’s assistant city manager and community development director. “Olympia has been very cooperative in working with us and making adjustments to the development order. This is a very sensitive project.

“And now they’ve purchased the Spa,” adds Pianta. “Obviously they have an affinity for the community and are in it for the long haul. They’re local, and they’re investing in the community.”

From Olympia’s perspective, giving downtown Safety Harbor a major makeover represents the culmination of a market evolution for the 14-year-old company. Its stock in trade had been commercial development – including more than 75 free-standing Walgreens throughout the Southeast.

“We’ve done enough of that kind of work to economically allow us to do other things,” explains Eddie Entreken, Olympia’s vice president/project development. “Mixed-use development is very popular. Our owner is an architect, and this is a project that excites him – and us as a company.”

That owner is 68-year-old William Touloumis, an immigrant Horatio Alger from Greece.

“We wanted to diversify, and this is a good vehicle for that,” underscores Touloumis, whose hands-on design work will be very much in evidence at Harbour Pointe. “We are creating an urban environment with resort-style amenities and restoring a pedestrian marketplace to downtown. We are also making a statement. For many generations people will benefit. I’ve always said, ‘If a job is done well and properly, the profit is a by-product.'”

To date, good will with local officials has been the by-product of Olympia’s two-year effort to seek input – including focus groups – from the community and to establish solid rapport with the chamber of commerce. Olympia is now viewed as vested.

And it hardly hurt that Olympia anted up for a restaurant and a community events-oriented plaza to sweeten the deal.

“We see this as a true partnership,” says Safety Harbor commissioner Nadine Nickeson. “It benefits them, and we wanted a draw downtown for our residents and those who drive through. This is not overwhelming – but a good fit. It’s all coming to fruition.”

“Abs From Hell” On The Juice?

Say this about Jose Canseco: He radiates believability when it comes to being the poster boy for steroids. An Action Hero torso and 600-foot home runs will do that. However, his inject-and-tell book, “Juiced: Wild Times, Rampant ‘Roids, Smash Hits and How Baseball Got Big,” is a he-said, they-said mixed bag. Que sera, syringe.

Where Canseco’s credibility atrophies is when – in the process of naming names of steroid users – he drops a dime on Wilson “Another Taco, Please” Alvarez. That’s the portly pitcher who misspent five seasons with the Devil Rays frustrating everybody but American League hitters.

Wilson Alvarez? Imagine if the Krispy Kreme poster lad hadn’t been doing steroids? Better yet, don’t.

But maybe in some perverse way this is what the steroids scandal has needed. To wit: Too many young athletes, regrettably, will continue to look at Canseco, or Jason Giambi, Mark McGwire, Ivan Rodriguez, Sammy Sosa, Juan Gonzalez, Barry Bonds or Bret Boone and think a growth-hormone deal with the devil may still be worth it.

But Wilson “Abs From Hell” Alvarez? Now there’s a real deterrent.

If it’s true, take one for the team, Wilson, and belly up to the bar of veracity. Your legacy will include something other than being the overpaid, underperforming Tropicana Dough Boy.

Adams Outed by Irish

A terrorist is a terrorist, although there are gradations based on degree of depravity and sheer numbers.

Now that the Irish government has officially fingered Gerry Adams as part of the Irish Republican Army’s seven-member army council command, shouldn’t Americans – especially Irish-Americans — regard Adams as something other than the glib, fundraising spokesman for Sinn Fein, the IRA’s political arm?

While it might seem blasphemous to those who still romanticize the IRA as doing nothing more than fighting the morally good, anti-empire fight for freedom and equality, shouldn’t the Adams’ outing change that once and for all? If vengeance and reprisals – inevitably complemented by the spilling of innocent blood – is still the modus operandi , isn’t that terrorism?

And fundraising, including that done at American universities and sympathetic neighborhood pubs, is still terrorism albeit once-removed. No matter what percentage goes to propaganda and “orphans.” No matter that it’s not aimed at us, for somebody assuredly is in the cruel crosshairs. And chances are, they don’t appreciate the bloody enabling.

In fact, when we are the targets – of Islamic jihadists in our midst — we don’t have qualms about dispensing with political and fundraising euphemisms. We know terrorists can have blood on their hands without picking up a weapon.

Image No Issue To Bucs

Say what you will about the Tampa Bay Buccaneers – from super to stupor – their public relations remains consistent. It still stinks.

From the organization that extorted a stadium, recoiled at the prospect of paying for some Super Bowl-celebration expenses, put up a stink about extra security costs at the RayJay and kissed off John Lynch like some journeyman stumblebum, we bring you yet another update.

The Bucs waited until late Friday of Super Bowl weekend to make a ticket price hike announcement. And just to make sure that the news stayed low profile, the Bucs’ PR flacks once again treated return calls to the media as another avoidable imposition.

Proving again that the National Football League is a market-economy anomaly and the Bucs’ organization haughty at its humblest, the Bucs raised their ticket prices ($2-5 per) in the aftermath of their worst season (5-11) in a decade.

That’s what you do when you have 108,000 fans on a waiting list to buy season tickets. That’s what you do because you can.

That’s how you do it because you are the Bucs.

And this just in.

A Dunedin fan called the Bucs to say he would like to give up the two club seats he has held for two years and maybe try purchasing general seating. The knee-jerk response he got wasn’t exactly an exercise in empathy and had nothing to do with possible re-sales. It had everything to do with the fine print in his 10-year contract. Did he want to run the risk of being sued by the team?

The hard-line, vintage Bucs’ approach is apparently a pre-emptive move against any fans – possibly disgruntled by the Bucs’ two-year spiral into an NFL abyss – deciding that the on-field product was no longer worth sitting through on club seats.

Anyway, the Dunedin fan runs the risk of being sued by the Bucs. If he doesn’t ante up, he’ll be in default, and the Bucs can declare the entire unpaid balance due – including money owed for the next eight years.

No, the Bucs don’t do anything illegal. They’re too astute to do that.

But they don’t do anything to ingratiate themselves with their fans or interact professionally with the media. They’re too arrogant to do that.

Cost Certainty, Indeed

What we have long suspected is now officially confirmed. Turn off the ventilator. The NHL season is dead. Cause of death: terminal greed, arrogance and stupidity. And given what we know of hockey’s second-class status in this culture’s sports firmament, don’t look for a Lazarus-like comeback.

But we finally have an answer to “cost certainty”: Catastrophic.

Teachers Least Favorite Parents

When this week’s “Time” magazine arrived, I couldn’t avoid a visceral reaction to its cover story, which was teased as: “What Teachers Hate About Parents.” Having been a teacher in a previous incarnation, I still have the short list.

It remains as follows:

*Shallow end of the gene pool over-represented.

*The MIAs. Always the ones who can least afford to be no-shows.

*PTA/ “Back-to-School Night” suck-ups.

*Those who never got the memo directing them to teach civilization skills at home.

*”Gifted” attitudes. Worse yet, it’s already generational.

*Those offering more resistance than reinforcement at home.

*Those who think nothing of signing off on phony excused absences – and letting somebody else (you) worry about making up for what their child missed.

*Those who don’t care that their kids show up at school pushing the dress code envelope on the gangsta, strumpet or generic slob look.

Dresden Remembered

Germany recently memorialized one of its most ghastly remembrances: the 60th anniversary of the devastating Allied bombing in World War II that killed some 35,000 residents of Dresden.

Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder said the anniversary was an opportunity for people everywhere to unite against the “inhumanity of war.” He also railed against several thousand neo-Nazis who were rallying against the Dresden firestorms. The neo-nazis were calling them a “bomb Holocaust” and vowing “The day of revenge will come.”

While the neo-Nazis deflected attention from Schroeder’s “inhumanity” message, there is another theme that needed to be – but wasn’t — specifically verbalized and directly underscored. It is this: It is always wrong to target civilians.

Theirs or ours – however you define “they” or “us.” Whoever started the war becomes a moot point; it surely wasn’t the citizenry. It never is.

It was wrong for the Germans to bomb London and intentionally kill innocents in an attempt to demoralize the English. It was not right for the Brits and Americans to firebomb the citizens of Dresden. Anymore than it was morally justified to drop the atomic bombs on Hiroshima or Nagasaki – or fly airliner bombs into the World Trade Center Towers.

No one legitimately claims the moral high ground when targeting the innocent.

The contexts, of course, differ significantly and cannot — and must not — be ignored. There is no equating the pragmatic decision of Harry Truman with the perverted agenda of Osama bin Laden. The U.S., for example, wanted to avoid the loss of thousands – maybe hundreds of thousands – of G.I.’s if Japan had to be invaded the old fashioned way. And there was Pearl Harbor that precipitated it all.

But the pulverized non-combatants are no less incinerated because it was their governments who were the bad guys.

Alvarez To The ‘Roid Rescue?

Say this about Jose Canseco: He radiates credibility when it comes to being a poster boy for steroids. An Action Hero torso will do that. In fact, the unwieldy title of his inject-and-tell book, Juiced: Wild Times, Rampant ‘Roids, Smash Hits and How Baseball Got Big , appears juiced as well.

Where Canseco’s believability atrophies, however, is when – in the process of naming names of steroid users – he fingers Wilson “Another Taco, Please” Alvarez. That’s the portly pitcher who misspent five seasons with the Devil Rays frustrating everybody but American League hitters.

Wilson Alvarez? Imagine if the Krispy Kreme poster lad hadn’t been doing steroids?

Maybe in some perverse way, this is what the steroids scandal has needed. To wit: Too many young athletes, regrettably, will look at Canseco, Jason Giambi, Mark McGwire, Ivan Rodriguez, Sammy Sosa, Juan Gonzalez, Barry Bonds and Bret Boone and think a growth-hormone deal with the devil may still be worth it.

But Wilson “Abs from Hell” Alvarez? Now there’s a real deterrent.

If it’s true, take one for the team, Wilson, and belly up to the veracity bar. Your legacy will include something other than overpaid underperformance.