Major Gary Elliott, the Salvation Army's commander in St. Petersburg, envisions an "intergenerational campus" for kids and seniors. W.J. Morris lives two doors down from the Salvation Army's property and has questions about its plans, shown behind him on an aerial photo. A Central Oak Park expansion has raised suspicions about the Salvation Army's plans. In a shaded corner of Central Oak Park, the St. Petersburg neighborhood that is one of Tampa Bay's most active housing markets, there is a growing concern among some folks that their surroundings are rapidly turning into something other than residential.
They wonder aloud if they've been targeted as a new ground zero for various nonprofit agencies' halfway houses, children's homes, low-income senior housing and other various government-funded social services.
Just because they're paranoid doesn't mean they're wrong.
The most recent concern is a proposal by the Salvation Army to rework its collection of buildings for children's services and low-income housing in the 3800-4000 block of Ninth Avenue N. into what it calls an "intergenerational family campus."
The Salvation Army has asked the city to let it close two streets and two alleys and grant a number of special variances from city codes to create the six-block campus west of its sanctuary at Ninth Avenue N. and 38th Street in St. Petersburg. A new 11,000-square-foot building for children's services and a short-term disaster relief distribution center are part of the project.
The Salvation Army already operates two different children's programs in unmarked Central Oak Park buildings. The programs are good and very necessary, especially for the children who have nowhere else to go. Its expansion plans would create a unique setting where foster children would benefit from living next door to senior citizens, and vice versa.
Up until now, the Salvation Army has gotten along well with its neighbors. But the size of the campus plan and the possibility of future expansion has raised suspicions to a conspiracy-theory level. Salvation Army officials insist they've been upfront with the community and have no secret agenda.
"We're not sure we believe them," said Ken Garliepp, president of the Central Oak Park Neighborhood Association. "They have a history of being very secretive."
And while the Salvation Army has promised in meetings with the neighborhood and in writing not to relocate its drug or homeless services to the campus, it is not the only social services player in the area. Boley Centers for Behavioral Health Care Inc. owns or manages three social services-funded properties (with a total of 12 apartments) right across Seventh Avenue N. from the Salvation Army campus. Boley serves individuals with emotional, psychiatric and behavioral problems.
Along with the Salvation Army property, that adds up to a roughly eight-block, taxpayer-funded social services "village" in a neighborhood that already struggles to beat down drugs and prostitution. With so much of the Central Oak Park in transition and for sale, the neighborhood is ripe for targeting as a "halfway-house" mecca.
"It would seem that it might be," said Dan Spice, past president of the neighborhood association, "and that is the concern that we have."
Central Oak Park is changing for the better because of the home-sales boom hitting urban neighborhoods throughout Tampa Bay. It is just west of the hot St. Pete gentrification zone that is Kenwood. Roughly, Central Oak Park is bounded by 34th Street (and its pernicious hooker problem) on the east, 49th Street on the west, Ninth Avenue N. on the north and Fifth Avenue S. on the south.It is the kind of neighborhood where a home that sold for $89,000 in 2003 sells this year for $131,300. You can still find historic and affordable homes built in the 1930s, brick streets and octagonal-paver sidewalks. A St. Petersburg Times story last year called it "turnover central" because of the high number of home sales. It is on its way back up after a half-century of decline.
It is also the kind of neighborhood where you can live next door to a crack house and have a 9mm handgun flashed at you as you walk your dog in the morning, as W.J. Morris has experienced.
Morris is the loudest voice of dissent against the Salvation Army's campus plan. Not because he is against children or seniors or social services; he's not. He makes a forceful case that the Salvation Army hasn't been forthcoming in its presentation of the project and has been unwilling to alter its plans to better suit the area. He worries that the carte blanche of creating a unified campus opens the door for further services and buildings at that site in the future, regardless of any assurances given by the Salvation Army.
According to Morris, who lives two doors away, if the Salvation Army is allowed to redesignate its holdings as one big property they'll be able to build at will – "no matter what that letter says."
Morris is upset that the Salvation Army hasn't lived up to its commitment to build seven houses in its Children's Village, a set of group homes for hard-to-place foster kids. The Children's Village's large new homes have only improved the neighborhood, everyone agrees, but only four were finished.
Morris also questions whether city taxpayers really need to give up ownership of the streets in question to accommodate the Salvation Army's plans for a new 11,000-square-foot building.
On that count, city officials agree with Morris and on April 24 recommended against the request to close 39th Avenue N. to accommodate the project. Those officials also recommended 16 specific changes – including moving a new children's building to face onto busy Ninth Avenue N. – to the Salvation Army's plans before it could be approved. Salvation Army officials pulled their proposal from this month's Environment Development Commission agenda and say they're going to revamp the design and seek approval as early as July. They vow, however, to resist the city's desire to move the large building to Ninth Avenue, worried that children could dash out into traffic and be hurt.
Major Gary Elliott is the Salvation Army's area commander, and he seems genuinely surprised and upset by the questions and criticisms of the project."I'm sorry that there's 'two sides'," Elliott said. "We want to be good neighbors. Our program is the only safety net in south county."
In an interview with the Weekly Planet, Elliott reiterated that his organization has no plans to relocate other Salvation Army services to the family campus. No drug rehab programs. No corrections early-release programs. No homeless shelters.
"We've been accused of all kinds of conspiracies," Elliott said with more than a touch of exasperation. "That's been figments of their imagination. It's just unfounded speculation."
"We're very committed to children's programs on that campus," he said. "It fits well into that community."
Elliott also scoffed at the idea of the neighborhood becoming social services central and said, "We don't have any relationship with Boley."
Relationship, no. A link, yes.
One of Boley's directors is Martin Lott, senior vice president of George F. Young architects/engineering and longtime architect for the Salvation Army. He is designing the family campus project and the new children's building. Boley's president and CEO, Gary MacMath, wrote to the neighborhood association supporting the Salvation Army campus plan and assuring residents his company has no plans to develop more affordable housing in Central Oak Park "at this time."
Elliott said attributing impure motives to Lott's dual roles is "a giant stretch; most of my board are involved with other organizations" as well. And Lott has been clear about his role with the neighborhood.
"I couldn't even have told you what Boley did a month ago," Elliott said. "Since this has come up I've learned that they do housing, too."
All of this controversy tends to obscure the good work that the Salvation Army has done at this site. Its Children's Village replaced a nasty trailer park, and even the most vociferous critics of the family campus project acknowledge that those new homes have helped the neighborhood.
Then there's the dozens of hard-to-place foster children who have been helped at the Village.
"It's working; it's tremendous," Elliott said. "I'm thrilled with the changes that happen in their lives just by being in a family setting." The Children's Village is operated entirely with tax dollars under a pilot program of the Florida Legislature. The idea is for the Salvation Army to raise enough private money to operate the homes without tax dollars and then build the final three homes in the project, Elliott acknowledges that fundraising has lagged and he isn't able to do that yet.
To raise awareness of those services and muster support, Elliott has turned to some big names. The Salvation Army hired Jack Levine, the well-known former president of advocacy group Voices for Florida's Children, to sell the vision of the intergenerational campus. It is also hosting a luncheon to honor Circuit Judge Irene Sullivan as its Salvation Army Children's Justice Award winner. The guest speaker? St. Petersburg Times Editor, Chairman and CEO Paul Tash.
And the Salvation Army seems to be sensing the need to give neighbors details for the entire project. High on that list are plans to replace low-income and Section 8 public housing it owns on Eighth Avenue with its new concept for senior apartments, called Autumn Village. Some in the neighborhood blame the existing apartments for drug trade in the area.
Elliott said the plans are very important to the Salvation Army and should be important to the larger community. There are just too many children who need help not to add capacity, he said.
"We realize we've got to do it in such a way that is compatible with the neighborhood," Elliott added.
Morris and his neighbors say they just want some guarantees that Salvation Army won't substantially expand beyond its six blocks or bring in objectionable services. Even though the various nonprofits in the neighborhood aren't working together, Morris insists they constitute a "major project" that the city should evaluate as such and institute reasonable controls or guidelines.
Until some greater level of scrutiny is applied, Morris said, "we're not happy campers."
MEDIA WATCH: It's time for dueling headlines. Here's how we play: Keep your eyes peeled for headlines that contradict each other in the two major daily newspapers (for those in the growing numbers of non-mainstream-media readers, that would be the Tampa Tribune and the St. Petersburg Times). This week's entry comes from their May 3 editions:"Circulation Flat For State Newspapers" – Tribune
"Circulation drops at state's biggest papers" – Times
Perspective is all. Maybe because the Trib's own circulation was almost flat (a loss of only 0.1% over the six-month period), their headline was more kind than accurate: in fact, as the Times headline states, circulation in the state's biggest papers was down. But the Times headline also allowed the paper to make a self-congratulatory point: it is now the biggest newspaper in Florida because the rest of the papers lost readers faster than it did.
Send us your favorite dueling headlines in case we missed them. Write to headlines@weeklyplanet.com.
MEDIA WATCH PART 2: Writing the annual lovebug invasion story is truly one of the most wretched assignments at any daily newspaper, and I probably have one somewhere in my personal clip file that I'm glad to have forgotten. The Tribune's latest attempt to breathe life into the story was a feature piece on its May 6 Baylife front that urged readers to submit haiku poems about lovebugs to the paper. And it gave some examples, the first of which, unfortunately, wasn't a haiku, since it violated the Trib's mandated five syllable-seven-five structure. The second line of the Trib "haiku" ("Flitting around the air in love"), for the math-challenged among us, contains eight syllables, not seven. Ahh, nothing ruins
a bad premise so neatly
as screwing it up.
VEGAS MIKE VS. DOWNHOME BILL: Speaking of media, kudos to the Times' Anita Kumar for not only outing Congressman Mike Bilirakis (R-Tarpon Springs) for his excessive travel junkets to Las Vegas but getting him to admit that he goes there because he loves to gamble, particularly blackjack and dice. The Times reports Vegas Mike took 13 trips to the City of Lost Wages to the tune of almost $40,000 since 1997, all paid for by special interest groups. Meanwhile south of Bilirakis' congressional district, Republican Congressman C.W. "Bill" Young of St. Petersburg was being a good boy. According to an American Public Media/Marketplace website investigation of congressional travel, Young has taken just one travel junket since 2000: a $286.70 jaunt all the way to New York City in March 2004 to receive an award from the Marine Corps Law Enforcement Foundation. And the only gambling in NYC involves buying a ticket to see Christina Applegate in the revival of Sweet Charity.
Political Whore wonders why Sonny Corleone is now running a Vegas casino on NBC? The PoHo can be reached by e-mail at wayne.garcia@weeklyplanet.com or by telephone at 813-739-4805.
This article appears in May 12-18, 2005.