Ybor’s art scene has never acted so natural.
Since beginning construction 14 months ago, The Roosevelt team has taken its antique building – so-named because it once housed Teddy Roosevelt’s Rough Riders – from leaky and creaky to clean and green.
“If we weren’t all really passionate about what we do here, then this project wouldn’t be what it is today,” says Bryan Roberts, one of the Roosevelt’s three über team leaders, and contractor of the first Earthship in Florida. Roberts and the other two Roosevelt frontmen, Rudy Arnauts and Steve Francois, have turned their building into a fully functioning, carbon-free art gallery and multipurpose space with “zero” startup capital and no lack of elbow grease.
The gallery has attracted a legion of sponsors – over 60, according to the last count by Arnauts, who doubles as The Roosevelt’s marketing guru – to spruce up the building in exchange for services like, in the case of plumber Joe Boyer, free advertising.
This article appears in Mar 10-16, 2010.