The images heaped insult upon injury. A crane from the 46-story 400 Central tower crumpled over the offices of the Tampa Bay Times. Hurricane Milton tearing the roof off Tropicana Field, the Teflon-coated fabric flapping in the breeze.
Billed the tallest residential building on Florida’s Gulf coast, 400 Central has been a headache from the get-go. For over a year, construction has clogged up traffic in a downtown ill-prepared to move people in and out. Like a beached cruise ship, the outsized oval mocks the adjacent post office and arcades, the sidewalk-scale establishments that made St. Pete special.
This building has bad juju. It sits over the former Pheil Hotel, previously known as the Cheese Grater for its ugly aluminum facade. Underneath the Cheese Grater was an 11-story historic structure, with a theater inside and elegant original facade still intact. Following the classic developer playbook, owners let the property rot, city council rejected landmark designation, and demolition came as an inevitability. St. Pete’s stalwart Preserve the ‘Burg ranks the Pheil Hotel as bad decision Number 9 in its tally of 11 Buildings We Lost.
For long-time residents, the image of the Times crushed by a crane carries an added weight of sorrow. Over the past two decades, we have watched our once-proud local paper slowly wither. With each budget cut, death or forced retirement, the paper has failed to replace a performing arts critic, media critic, music critic, outdoors editor, award-winning feature writer, and so on. Entire sections have vanished. The one-time daily is now a twice-weekly, with a paltry online app that (for some reason) cannot remember I have a subscription. Even with Florida stories, the Tampa Bay Times no longer serves as my go-to source. As Helene and Milton barreled across the gulf, I followed the news through another Times. The one in New York.
It’s a damn shame. Ask any local, would you rather have a solid newspaper or another overbuilt residential tower? When my wife Julie and I moved to St. Petersburg in 2001, we entered into a tight community of makers. We bought a home cheap, fixed up the property, and wrote. The sleepy little foot at the sock of Pinellas County sheltered poets, playwrights, activists, artists, and small business owners. Folks who could focus on what they loved, not on making rent. I personally came here during an in-between phase, my career stalled as an adjunct professor; St. Pete’s low overhead gave me time to publish, focus, and build the life I wanted for myself.
Which leads to the Trop. Earlier this June, as summer temperatures warmed up the same Gulf that juiced Milton to a strength that could tear the roof off Tropicana Field, St. Pete’s City Council approved a $1.3 billion stadium for the Rays. The deal was financially suspect before Milton and Helene; after the hurricanes, call it downright irresponsible. Subsidizing the wealthy franchise owners, city and county will kick in $287.5 and $312.5 million respectively. St. Pete will also hand over 65-acres of prime downtown, at well below market value. Anyone with a lick of sense (check out No Home Run) recognizes the boondoggle.
So what about that torn roof? $600 million could go a long way fighting the kind of storm that shredded the Trop’s Teflon-coated top. We have precedents. Two-thirds of the world’s metropolitan areas skirt the coast, the Global Center on Adaptation reports, and smarter municipalities have taken steps. The internet tells me that the city of Behai, in coastal China, has sunk $491 million (roughly the public tab for a stadium) into “marine ecological protection and restoration,” including capital improvements to reduce pollution and nurture mangrove habitats. Boston will spend between $1.7 and $3 billion on waterfront parks, “prioritizing nature-based solutions over hard infrastructure for coastal protection.” These blueprints exist for St. Petersburg. Instead, we’ll build a ballpark. Instead, at my state-job at the University of South Florida, lawmakers prohibit me from even using the term “climate change.”
The images from Helene and Milton expose the depth of our folly. The offices of a local institution crushed by the crane from a ridiculous tower the city neither wants or needs. The tattered cloth roof. What are we doing? What’s happening to the city we love?
“How much longer do you want to live here,” my wife asks on the drive back from our evacuation. Silently and simultaneously, we wince at the amber message looming over the Suncoast Expressway: “Tolls Suspended By Order of the Governor.” We talk increasingly about selling our home, a funky bungalow close to downtown. I cannot bear losing a house that has absorbed countless hours of hard work, the citrus trees and native plants that tell the story of my adult life, the front porch where I am writing this column right now. We have friends and family here. From my porch, I relish the morning breeze off the bay, the first cool touch of October, healing memories of the storm. I also feel an early stage of what social scientists call climate grief. I am angry.
When I see the picture of the construction crane crashing into a local institution, I cannot help but feel an ironic sting. The Trop roof and short-sighted questions that follow (where will the Rays play now?) smack of corporate welfare, the public subsidy for a stadium—with prior plans pushed down the list. Who wants to live here? In a vulnerable city with a crypto-fascist governor? With the culture that drew us here priced out by high-rise developments?
Julie and I did not leave St. Petersburg during Hurricane Milton.
Our city was already gone.
Thomas Hallock teaches English at USF’s St. Petersburg campus. For more of Tom’s reflections on St. Pete home, check out “Happy Neighborhood” (Mercer University Press).
Maybe cranes shouldn’t be left up during peak hurricane season?
You know, because they fall on stuff. Credit: Photo by Dave Decker
Back roads when evacuating are good, back roads when returning are bad
YOU SHALL NOT PASS Credit: Photo by Dave Decker
