It's only recently that Tampa has embraced its inner history. Many older buildings laid empty and sadly rotted, eventually being bulldozed to make way for "new development." In this economy, however, everything old is cool again. Take Pickford's Sundries on Hillsborough near Armenia Ave. CL Tampa Editor David Warner recently profiled the building:
Pickford's Sundries, the drugstore/diner in the squat pink stucco building on Hillsborough Avenue, closed more than a decade ago. But its mystique has never died. A local bluegrass band named themselves after it. Tampa's 2006 Photographer Laureate, Steven S. Gregory, shot photos of it. And the building's owner, Marie Lesiak Haley, never lost her dream of seeing new life in the spot where, 60 years ago, her father opened a business named after silent film star Mary Pickford.
"He admired her because she was an independent woman," remembers Haley.
Now she has found a latter-day independent woman to rent the space. Baker and cake decorator Michelle DiMicco opened Custom Creations Café & Bakery earlier this month and will officially greet the public with a grand opening on April 1. Read more
This article appears in Apr 1-7, 2009.