Sit down, civic leaders. Class is in session.
Here is a list of developments and institutions finished or created in the last decade for which most of you would gladly claim responsibility: Raymond James Stadium, Centro Ybor, the Ice Palace, The Florida Aquarium, Channelside, Tropicana Field, the Devil Rays, BayWalk, International Plaza and the housing booms of New Tampa and Pasco County.
But none of these will help position the Tampa Bay area as one this country's premier 21st-century regions. We need a thriving gay community, a kick-ass local music scene, human rights ordinances, tax breaks for creative types, and enough artists and writers to send Bible-beating conservatives packing for the Georgia border.
Welcome, class, to Richard Florida 101.
Since its printing in May, The Rise of the Creative Class: And How It's Transforming Work, Leisure, Community and Everyday Life has turned Richard Florida into something of a liberal prophet and a media darling — or punching bag — depending on whom you read. A professor of regional economic development at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Florida espouses theories that run in opposition to nearly 50 years of ideology and practice.
Forget privately owned sports teams playing in publicly funded stadiums, he said. The city of tomorrow must have the "creative class" — artists, writers, lawyers, engineers, computer programmers and other brainpower workers — walking its street. The "it" industries of information technology and biosciences and whatever else the media dub the Next Big Thing are not attracted to Super Bowl-winning teams and their beer-guzzling fans. If cities want the Ciscos and Microsofts of tomorrow, Florida believes, they will need a tolerant, well-educated community, large research universities and one hell of an affluent gay community.
The New York Times fawned over Florida's theories, which would create a "Bridget Jones Economy," as The Economist put it, in a rare reference to pop culture. Don Hazen, executive editor of alternative wire service AlterNet, called Florida's work the new "it" book.
Even locally, Florida has already garnered press — albeit from snippy St. Petersburg Times south Tampa columnist Sandra Thompson, who discussed the book in her trademark pedestrian prose that would make readers wonder if she understood Florida's ideas or just had a deadline looming and an original press release on her desk. "Yes, bohos and gays mean money! Get the word out," Thompson wrote in a humorous attempt at wit.
The media attention, good and bad, has placed Florida among the ranks of our-New-Economy-changes-everything theorists such as Joel Kotkin (The New Geography: How the Digital Revolution Is Reshaping the American Landscape) and former Al Gore speechwriter Daniel Pink (Free Agent Nation).
All the while, Florida's star has been rising on a speaking circuit that pays him $10,000 a stop. Orlando brought him down on June 26 to give a pep talk to city leaders interested in moving from a tourism-based service economy with minimum-wage workers to a dynamic marketplace with an emphasis on technology and salaried innovators.
Florida has his critics. Mark Zandi of economy.com believes he praises gays and artists for regional economic activity generated by public and private investments in universities. But his theories are at least ambitious, especially for our mid-size, mildly conservative region.
How can we attract the so-called creative class? Here are five lessons:
Lesson 1: The Chicken Comes Before the Egg
Civic leaders across the Bay area have followed a regional economic development plan that, while unsuccessful, is duplicated by cities from Portland, Me., to Portland, Ore.: stadium, convention center, restaurants, chains.
Daily newspapers, eager to increase circulation with expanded sports coverage, and money-hungry team owners campaign for — and usually win — new sports stadiums. Every 10 years, cities build a new convention center not because the old one is run-down or too small, but because the city down the road just built one. Then, as local entrepreneurs strive to open shops, bars and restaurants, cities cut huge checks in the form of a tax breaks to Wal-Mart and Chili's to entice them into the city limits.
"Hard Rock Cafes and Planet Hollywoods — you're just like everyone else," Florida said of middle-market cities during an interview in Orlando with Weekly Planet.
According to Florida, America's cities are missing the point: The companies they ultimately want to attract — the Hewlett-Packards, the Intels, the Citibanks — could give a damn about Wal-Marts and tax breaks. They need talent, human capital, and they'll move to any city with brainpower to spare. In essence, mid-size cities lay eggs without chickens to incubate them.
It's no different in the Tampa Bay area. According to Joe Wieand, director of the Center for Economic Development Research at the University of South Florida, our growth has nothing to do with The Florida Aquarium or new entertainment complexes such as BayWalk.
People move here, Wieand believes, because it's cheap. "When the city gets to the point when the cost of living rises to the national average, the growth will cease," said Wieand, who added that our largely working-class population won't be able to help the area compete with the Bostons of the country unless our people become more cosmopolitan by the time Pasco County and New Tampa are built out.
The answer, according to Florida, is to stop large-scale public projects and allow for organic growth. Use public money to attract people — from within the United States as well as from across the globe.
When we have chickens, they'll lay eggs.
That's what happened in downtown St. Petersburg, according to local architect and developer Tim Clemmons. "The baseball analogy is to hit a bunch of singles, not two home runs," Clemmons said of how governments should foster growth. "In St. Pete, this happened despite us, not because of us. At some point we developed this synergistic relationship between the businesses, the services and the residences. If all of sudden it becomes a more desirable place, it just keeps going around in a circle like that."
Lesson 2: Man the Gaydar
While immigration and ethnic diversity are among the most important factors in building Florida's 21st-century city, the gay community is arguably the most important. "To a certain extent, homosexuality represents the last frontier of diversity in our society, and thus a place that welcomes the gay community welcomes all kinds of people," Florida wrote in Creative Class.
When Florida studied America's regions, he found that the cities with large high-tech sectors, which were the fastest-growing areas in the country, also had large gay communities. San Francisco, Austin, Boston and Seattle all have thriving gay communities that receive little flack from the cities' other communities.
Essentially, gays are the canaries in Silicon Somewhere.
But San Francisco and Austin didn't attract their gay communities by accident. Those cities invited homosexuals by passing human rights ordinances that protected them against discrimination and offered benefits for unmarried partners.
In the Tampa Bay area, we haven't mailed our invitations yet. Of the area's cities, St. Petersburg and Tampa are the only ones with human rights ordinances. The St. Pete ordinance, adopted just seven months ago, does not cover transsexual and transgender people. In Tampa, the City Council adopted a human rights ordinance that was shot down by a 1992 referendum. The Supreme Court in October 1993 then forced Tampa to enforce the ordinance after it ruled that the petition to put the measure on the ballot did not have enough valid signatures.
None of the area's cities offers benefits for unmarried partners.
Despite this, St. Petersburg's recent success as the area's new hip city is due in part to the activities of the gay community over the last decade. When residents fled the city for the western suburbs in the 1960s and 1970s, the gay community first moved into Old Northeast and renovated homes. Today, the neighborhood near the bay is among the city's most exclusive. A similar transition began in Historic Kenwood in the mid-1990s, when homosexuals purchased property in the then-rundown section of the city as yuppies flooded the rejuvenated downtown.
"I think we are the first ones to move into an at-risk neighborhood," said Brian Longstreth, a St. Pete Realtor and member of Equality Florida, a gay-rights organization. "Then the straight folks follow."
What's more, companies look for homosexuals because they tend to be better educated and more mobile than average Americans. Want proof? Honeywell, Tech Data and Raymond James, three of the area's largest employers, all offer partnership benefits.
Lesson 3: Build It and They Will Not Come
Large public investments in sports stadiums do not generate enough economic impact to pay for themselves. No, really. Despite all the voodoo-math studies that quantify how the $5 beer you buy at a Bucs game rolls over and over and generates thousands of dollars in economic impact, it just ain't true.
"A football team isn't worth any more in economic impact than a shopping center," said Phil Porter, a USF economics professor.
Porter, director of USF's Center for Economic Policy Analysis, studied the economic impacts of Raymond James Stadium and the 2000 Super Bowl it attracted. The results? The Super Bowl actually hurt the local economy by filling hotel beds that would have already been occupied by Canadian snowbirds, who headed elsewhere to avoid the circus.
The $200-million Tampa invested to replace a perfectly good stadium will never be recouped — no matter how many Super Bowl rings Jon "Chucky" Gruden can fit on his fingers, toes and other appendages.
"There's the idea that having an NFL team makes you big time, a big city," said Porter. "Jacksonville ain't a whole lot bigger because of the Jaguars. It's still just Jacksonville."
Studies of stadiums in other cities concur with Porter's results. In researching his book Home Team: Professional Sports and the American Metropolis, Michael N. Danielson found few stadiums contribute to economic growth. The Astrodome in Houston and Rich Stadium in Buffalo both failed to live up to expectations.
But city leaders could argue that economic impacts are too subtle to gauge in bean-counting studies because sports stadiums offer a consumption activity, not an investment activity. Just as St. Petersburg leaders could argue that people come and stay in this area because of the Pinellas Trail, Hillsborough County leaders could cite similar impacts for Raymond James Stadium.
Unfortunately, while Florida agrees that the Pinellas Trail offers such economic impacts, he doesn't agree that investments in Raymond James Stadium are necessarily good for the community. "Previous studies have shown that stadiums don't add any public value, but I found something else: Creative people don't want a stadium," Florida said. "" In the list of city attributes they're looking for, stadiums come very, very low."
Additionally, mid-size cities will never compete with the big boys. Said Florida: "The problem for the Tampas and the Pittsburghs and the Clevelands and the Baltimores and the Charlottes is that owners come to them and say, 'If you want us, pay.' Look at New York, where the Yankees play — a stadium my father used to go to. In Pittsburgh, we've built three, four stadiums in that period. Boston's Red Sox still play at Fenway."
What would Florida have Tampa build instead of a stadium? Parks, museums, bike trails, a vibrant street scene and an area for extreme sports and Frisbee contests. That's right, Frisbee.
"We're taking government money to support people's thrills, not their needs," Porter said of Tampa's stadium investment. "Is Los Angeles any less of a city because it doesn't have an NFL team?"
Lesson 4: Life Has a Soundtrack
Earlier this year, the city of St. Petersburg put on a waterfront concert known as Bay Fest — the type of event likely to attract members of what Florida considers the creative class. One problem: Journey headlined the show.
"They don't get it," said Planet Music Critic Scott Harrell.
But they, as in city leaders, should. In addition to a link between large gay communities, Florida found a link between music scenes and high-tech growth. In Austin, Seattle, Boston, New York City, San Francisco, Madison, Wis., and even tiny Santa Fe, N.M., the local music scene has thrived alongside — symbiotically, Florida would argue — the well-paying technology sector. Of course, the tired example here is Austin, where the economy has grown with each year bringing another South by Southwest Music and Film Festival.
"There is a sound and flavor that Austin generates," said Dave Hundley, a local concert promoter and co-owner of State Theatre in St. Petersburg and The Orpheum in Ybor City.
Austin's success, at least musically, wasn't an accident. Recognizing that their local music scene was garnering national attention, city leaders made every attempt to foster it without dictating its direction. In fact, when Vignette, an Austin company that creates content-management applications, moved into a downtown building, the city brokered a deal that required the company to create a $1-million fund to support the local music scene.
As municipal policies go, that was radical — even for the progressive Texas capital.
But local musicians toiling in the area's clubs will admit that Tampa Bay is no Austin, and support for the local music scene is at best limited. "We're blue collar," Hundley said, as if to explain how Journey can headline a public concert without causing an uproar at City Hall. Austin residents would have likely stormed the Capitol.
In Tampa and St. Petersburg, municipal leaders have attacked the music scene. Both cities have noise ordinances silencing outside music at 11 p.m. on weekdays and midnight on weekends.
"They want highbrow. They want name value," Hundley said of St. Pete's attitude toward concerts. "Before you get the big guys, you've got to nurture the small guys. Could I get any help from the city to bring the Warped Tour to Vinoy Park? Nope."
Music scenes are important because the creative class sets life to music. "Music regularly soundtracks our search for ourselves and for spaces in which we can feel at home," Florida wrote in Creative Class. "… And it is for this reason that frequently I tell city leaders that finding ways to help support a local music scene can be just as important as investing in high-tech businesses and far more effective than building a downtown mall."
Lesson 5: All Hail … Canada?
Time is running out. Florida is about to be shuttled from the Rosen Centre Hotel to downtown Orlando for a one-on-one with Mayor Glenda Hood. The city liaison in the background keeps looking at her watch. That leaves room for one more question: What's the city of tomorrow?
Toronto.
Toronto?
"Look, the World Trade Center towers aren't going back up," Florida said, leaning forward and half-whispering the way people do these days when they have something unpopular to say about Sept. 11. "Toronto is the place to watch, particularly post-9-11. People no longer think we're going to make it big by the time we're 35 and generate all these stock options. Toronto is a place where people can live balanced lives."
Canada's economic, media and technological hub, Toronto already incorporates many of the theories Florida promotes in Creative Class. Fifty percent of its population is foreign-born, and the city's neighborhoods are divided along distinct ethnic lines. Toronto, whose leaders call it "the mosaic society," has created a dynamic market economy in a densely populated city that came up a political second to Beijing for the 2008 Olympic bid.
"Toronto allows people to have their ethnic identity and a Canadian identity," Florida said. "In the United States, we always assimilate people in the name of the melting pot. You cast off your ethnic characteristics. But Toronto says you can do both."
Time to go.
Wait. One more question: What can Tampa Bay do to be the next Toronto?
"Here's my crazy idea: All these cities are having people paint cows and dogs and gorillas and dinosaurs," responded Florida. "I want one city to take on the challenge of having their artists redo buildings. And so " where there might be some older buildings in a certain part of downtown, they should give them to artists. They should say, 'OK, we're going to donate 15, 20, 50 buildings.' These artists will remake the buildings, whatever their vision is. People like us would help on the weekends, take our screwdrivers and hammers and help out. We know artists and musicians are the kinds of people who will live in inner-city neighborhoods. Cities need to get past the same economic development package: stadium, convention center, restaurants, chains."
So the final question, then, goes to our civic leaders: Aren't we ready for this type of change?
Contact Staff Writer Trevor Aaronson at 813-248-8888, ext. 134, or trevor.aaronson@weeklyplanet.com.P>
Florida's Cultural Milquetoast
Think Sarasota is the Gulf Coast's arts capital? Some of the artists who live here — make that, lived here — say think again.
By Natasha Del Toro
Sarasota is a gold medal Betty Crocker recipe for a vibrant community, with a small town feel to boot, no?
Just read the promotional brochures. An internationally recognized museum, galleries, a symphony and ballet, theaters, outdoor cafes, festivals, a renowned art school, a liberal university, white sandy beaches and near perfect weather year round.
Delightful. The Sarasota Convention and Visitors Bureau banked on these attractive amenities six years ago when it coined the slogan "Florida's Cultural Coast" for the city.
The Sarasota Arts Council ensures this bold claim by trying "to create an environment where the arts flourish."
Or so the mission statement goes. The arts council doles out a decent portion of the tourist development tax to about 30 hungry arts organizations. The amount this year hovered around $900,000.
Certainly, the emphasis on the arts distinguishes Sarasota from other similar-size beach towns, such as Daytona Beach, Clearwater and Fort Myers. The city's efforts received two thumbs up from Money magazine, which named Sarasota the best small city to live in two years in a row because of its green space, culture and accessibility to the town center.
Yet, something doesn't smell right in artsy-fartsy-ville. Where is the energy characteristic of an artistic center? Why is this alleged magnet for the arts driving away some of its most progressive artists and thinkers, to Tampa and beyond?
Richard Florida's recent The Rise of the Creative Class: And How It's Transforming Work, Leisure, Community and Everyday Life argues that economically booming cities are and will be the ones that attract and cater to smart, talented people. This rising "creative class" makes money and likes to spend it.
Sarasota almost has the kind of qualities Richard Florida describes and encourages city leadership to develop: a city with quaint historic districts, a vibrant arts and music scene, diverse nightlife, reputable institutions of higher learning, bike lanes and pedestrian walkways. But the pulse is weak. And it ain't because of the blue-haired folks.
Museum, Mausoleum, Same Difference
"This town does not have dynamic energy and I lay this to blame on the leadership of the town, and specifically of the arts institutions," said Gene Ray, former curator at the Ringling Museum. "They have not understood the problems and addressed them in a way that catalyzes the potential that is here."
Ray and his wife, photographer Gaby Ray, bit the Culture Coast hook and moved to Sarasota from Berlin in 1998. Mark Ormond, then senior curator and deputy director of collections at the Ringling, now sits on the arts council. He convinced Ray to join him at the museum. He spotted Ray's talent and enthusiasm when they worked together at Miami Art Museum.
Ray jumped onboard, and together they brought an installation of interactive contemporary art, something new and fresh, to Ringling. People remember the Joseph Beuys and the follow-up Blurring the Boundaries exhibitions, even if they hated them.
The shows focused on contexts and connections, a shift from the traditional holier-than-thou notion that a work of art is above the spectator, hanging in timelessness. "To put back living people into the exhibition, to bring it back to life with real discourse, real concerns," Ray said of the contemporary exhibitions' possibilities.
When Museum Director David Ebitz said, "I happen to think that contemporary art, the art of the moment, is necessary to keep this place alive and vital," things sounded too good to be true. They were.
The exciting prospects toppled swiftly when Ormond was suddenly let go, due to budgetary concerns. Gene Ray resigned shortly thereafter, in protest, when the Ringling cut his contemporary arts program. Even Ebitz eventually felt the guillotine.
Some influential members of the Ringling Museum prefer the Old Masters, and don't see the need to compromise room for contemporary art. One of the main galleries housing 20th century art was turned into a gift shop. Ray said this was a metaphor for the museum's priorities.
According to Ina Schnell, who volunteered as a docent at the museum, the West galleries were intended to display contemporary art. Schnell is now the chairwoman for the On the Edge Festival. She sat on the Sarasota Arts Council for four years but recently rotated out.
"The Ringling Museum needs to have shows of contemporary art if its going to be a living museum," says Schnell. "It could be the most exciting place. If you want a visual arts precedence in Sarasota, you need more than Selby Gallery."
Ray was less hopeful. "Ringling Museum and other institutions in this town have failed by cravenly following the reactionary tastes in art of the donor class," he said. "Admittedly, I have an ax to grind, but Ringling Museum doesn't want curators. They want courtiers."
With that, he and his wife Gaby plan to pack their unwieldy talents and move back to Berlin, where they can contribute something to a more open-minded arts scene.
Money Talks
The people on the boards have either very conservative tastes or very little art education, said both Ray and Schnell. The boards dictate the art scene in Sarasota.
"In order to harness creativity for economic ends, you need to harness creativity in all its forms," says Florida. In addition to technological and economic creativity, he includes cultural and artistic creativity, "the ability to invent new ways of thinking about things, new art forms, new designs, new photos, new concepts" as an essential ingredient for economic growth.
Old John Ringling understood that culture attracts money like death attracts vultures. The social class he drew still lingers and funds the arts in Sarasota — sometimes for the good of all, but usually not.
How many people in the community can really benefit from another $250-a-head black-tie function, with catering by Michael's on East? Obviously, enough money circulates to keep the facade intact, but the arts scene needs to secure new sources of funding, for when these patrons are pushing up daisies.
Sarasota's conservative culture class is armed with money and good intentions, but it's the artists who create art. And a good handful of Sarasota's visual artists are leaving by the palette full.
Jeff Whipple, Sabrina Smalls, Gene and Gaby Ray, and Jaia Chen are major assets for what could have been Sarasota's own distinctive and important contemporary art scene. But they are moving to different cities, where art does more than just match the expensive couch.
Other Sarasota artists, such as nationally recognized sculptor Bill Tarr — who created the piece in front of the county administration building, and Rob Giordano — can barely make it in this town with art alone.
Giordano, who was the director of Art Center Sarasota for two years, said the arts council doesn't want to put the money it raises on behalf of art into the hands of the artists. "Sarasota is the antithesis of Florida's book. People that come here have so much money that they don't need creativity," said Giordano.
The Ringling, the arts organizations and the galleries downtown reflect this attitude by not showing cutting-edge stuff.
Growling at the Alley Cat
During a recent roundtable discussion at the Alley Cat Cafe in Sarasota, Whipple echoed Giordano's frustration.
"The buyers don't want stuff that makes them think," said Whipple. "The Sarasota Arts Council has totally failed in that there is no critical feedback about the artists' work."
Almost all of the visual artists in attendance expressed some level of disappointment about Sarasota's arts organizations and institutions.
Patricia Caswell, executive director of the arts council, admitted that "the visual arts in Sarasota need new emphasis." But Caswell, who has directed the council for about 16 years, said: "I look in the long term, not just snapshots of today. Sometimes visual arts is the top dog, sometimes performance."
To rectify the problem, the arts council's plans include the funding of artist services, gallery space for artists, and a Web site with information and resources for artists, such as health care, jobs, grants, and insurance. Caswell also emphasized a desire to expand public art.
The arts council's big project, however, is unveiling a four-acre beachfront retreat in Englewood called The Hermitage to attract artists working in all media.
A cloister for creativity, the Hermitage sounds idyllic but isolated. Artists need to live and breathe among us. Maybe using the money for a contemporary arts center, or for individual artist grants would have a more visible impact in the community.
Hip neighborhoods with artists and bohemians lure other creative people and business, asserts Florida. Look at what was starting to happen in the Rosemary Arts District, Sarasota's miniature SoHo. A few artists moved in, started cleaning up warehouse space, and then businesses began cropping up on that edge of town.
Too bad landlords, excited by the ritzy Renaissance condominiums nearby and prospects of neighborhood growth, jacked up the rents beyond the means of many artists. The rent for artist Jeff Whipple's studio space doubled.
The budding artsy neighborhood received its final blow with the Salvation Army's plan to build a 250-bed facility on the corner of Tenth Street and Central Avenue. The artists who lived at the Florida Avenue studios evacuated to make room for Salvation Army storage.
Cutting Edge Edged Out
Natasha Gerhart is director of Art Focus Guild, a regional association of professional visual artists and art consultants. Gerhart said a "a high-caliber alternative space for projects and installations and a center for contemporary art with exhibitions of work by leading national and international artists" is needed to make Sarasota more culturally exciting.
Allyn Gallup operates Mira Mar Gallery, the only serious contemporary art gallery in Sarasota. "Artists need a venue to help them be successful," Gallup said. "Frequent exhibits of contemporary art by non-sales venues" would improve the scene, he added.
Gallup was careful not to point a finger at any local arts organization. He knows the way they operate quite well. He sat on the arts council for six years and the Ringling Museum's member council for three years.
"There is an audience for contemporary art, just no venue," said Ina Schnell, the former Ringling docent and now On the Edge Festival chair.
Despite what Ringling board members think, people are interested.
Joseph Patrick Arnegger, a cutting-edge artist in town, had a show last year called Behind the Blue Door. About 500 people came. Arnegger has his own studio to exhibit his work, unlike most of the others.
A group of cutting edge artists, including the Rays, Smalls, Arnegger, and Chen, put together the Pure Samples exhibition featuring their work at the old State Street Gallery in April. The show drew 700 or so people. No frills, no silent auction. Just art.
The cost of doing such shows, however, is too much for these artists to shoulder regularly.
It's a shame if Pure Samples is the last exhibition of that kind for a while, seeing that many of the artists in that show are the ones leaving.
"It will hurt the scene in Sarasota," Gallup said of the exodus. "They are all quality. They should have been more strongly encouraged here. It will make the scene less deep."
And less cool. Maybe Sarasota doesn't want to be cool and doesn't want to lure creative types. Maybe Sarasota wants to keep things small. Things really aren't so bad. After all, there's the opera. There's the Ritz.
"Organizations are afraid to do edgy things because it is a financial risk," Caswell said.
But the city and the leadership of arts institutions must have the vision and confidence to do what is best for the vibrancy of the community — and to foster the talent in Sarasota. Otherwise, Sarasota will not be able to change its image and will remain, as Giordano said, "a great place to die."
Contact Staff Writer Natasha Del Toro at 941-906-7476 or natasha.deltoro@weeklyplanet.com.
This article appears in Aug 7-13, 2002.
