What do Chris Scott and Tommy Ortiz want from former Tampa City Councilwoman Rose Ferlita?
Scott and Ortiz are the owners of Whiskey Park bar in the SoHo area of Tampa, and campaign finance reports on file with the Hillsborough Supervisor of Elections show the pair bundled more than $6,000 in contributions for Ferlita in her successful campaign for the Hillsborough County Commission. Most of the money was given on a single date in June.
At least one SoHo resident and chronicler, Bill Sharpe, is suggesting the donations may be connected to a "wet zoning" request pending in front of the Tampa City Council for three buildings at the corner of Howard and Azeele in SoHo, which includes the current Dubliner pub and Sangria's restaurant, among others. The approval would allow Scott and Ortiz to buy the buildings from owner Frank Kane and serve alcoholic beverages on the entire block. The current zoning limits the various businesses to wine and beer sales only, or liquor sales incidental to a restaurant use. The new wet zoning would allow unlimited liquor sales on the entire 14,000-square-foot parcel.
Sharpe first posted news of the contributions on his SohoTampa.com website last week, linking to CL's recently published "Money Men," a Top 10 list of the biggest local race contributors in Pinellas and Hillsborough counties. Scott and Ortiz's contributions would not have made the Top 10.
Some nearby residents fear the entire block could be reconstituted as a mega-nightclub (Ortiz also operates the large and successful Hyde Park Cafe on Platt Street). But Ortiz has said the new wet zoning designation is not a precursor to a mega-club. It instead would give patrons of the various buildings on the site the ability to barhop from one pub to another restaurant or a planned upstairs cigar bar. He told City Council members on Nov. 16:
"We want to be able to allow the guests to go from one location to the other location without having to pour their drink out between the locations. By having one complete wet zoning, it allows for them to be able to do so."
While a few neighbors oppose the wet zoning, citing parking concerns, others spoke in favor of the plan. One recounted how Ortiz's Hyde Park Cafe project cleaned up a dilapidated building and helped the nearby neighborhood.
The biggest champion at the first public hearing, however, was Ferlita, according to a closed-caption transcript of the Nov. 17 meeting at which she addressed her fellow council members:
"At this point I am very, very comfortable having known what I have known about them and seeing what they want to do that this is something that you should consider.
"Am I lobbying you?
"You're right. Because I think this is the [kind] of project we need. No offense to some of the other places, but I am delighted that after I get out of the theater, Performing Arts Center, I have some other choices as we go along. At this point it's either Bella's or the Pancake House.
"I am strongly in support of it."
Ten different corporations that list either Scott or Ortiz or both as directors gave to Ferlita, as did Ortiz and Scott themselves, another business partner, Peter Hannouche, and the project's lawyer, Dennis Manelli. Kane, the current landowner, also contributed. Most of the contributions came on the same date, June 22. The total: Nearly $6,500.
Neither Ortiz nor Scott could be reached for comment.
City Council members delayed a final vote on the wet zoning until their Dec. 7 meeting. Ironically, that means Ferlita will not get to make the final decision on the wet zoning. She has already left City Council and taken the oath to be a County Commissioner.
Ferlita would not discuss the matter at length last week, saying she was between appointments when reached by telephone at her Seminole Heights drug store. Additionally, City Council members are prohibited from discussing pending zoning matters outside of public meetings. But she did respond to Sharpe's findings by saying: "I've seen [the allegations made on Sharpe's SoHo site]. My record stands for itself. [Any money given] doesn't determine where I'm going on anything."
Disclosures: As a political consultant in the 1990s, the author represented Ferlita in her first Tampa City Council campaign in 1999. And Sharpe's website features advertising from some SoHo businesses that compete with Ortiz and Scott's bars. To comment on this story, go to tampa.creativeloafing.com.
This article appears in Nov 29 – Dec 5, 2006.