The August issue of Money Magazine Named Tampa as the best city to live in the Southeastern United States.
The criteria the magazine used in their search of 63 cities with populations in excess of 300,000 were international aspirations, future job growth, affordable home prices, availability of jobs, access to health care, culture, and open spaces.
Tampa, population of 352,000, and according to the magazine, a median home price of $121,000, average property tax of $1,800, unemployment running at 5.6 percent, plus the presence of three major league sports teams, two recent international film festivals -ok one of them was Bollywood, but what the heck - hosting the nearly flawless Republican National Convention in 2012, and open spaces and culture galore plus we are on the water.
We don't have beaches, but we are on the water - Tampa Bay -And if the city doesn't fix the drainage problem around here pretty fast, we might be under water for the entire rainy season next year.
We really don't count the annual Gasparilla Pirate Festival as a plus -at least not in this column - because it has not yet been determined in any meaningful way that the annual three-day drunken brawl does anything significant for the city except to bring millions of dollars in beer and rum and net stocking revenue which is about what it costs to repair the damage.
And we have building projects in the works, boy do we have building projects in the works.
Projects which will house all of those 12,000 millennial college grads whom Mayor Bob Buckhorn wants to lure to the city -the downtown population, according to the Downtown Tampa Partnership, is already 32 percent ages 25-34, and 18 percent ages 55-64 - and Mayor Buckhorn wants them to all move straight to the core urban area and live in all of those eight or nine new highrises and low rises listed as 'mixed-use' properties, i.e., apartments and businesses when they arent in their high powered jobs at one of the many 500 fortune companies the city is also trying to lure to Tampa so that all of those millennials will be able to make big bucks to pay for those apartments.
Well, as much as we hate to throw a widget into all of this positive thinking about Tampa being the new Belle of the Ball in the Southeastern United States, we need to ask a couple of questions, and to point out some tiny flaws, before we go all wild and start some goofy chant about' Hey, Hey, Tampa is here to stay!'
First question. Where are the other 50 percent of people in the downtown Tampa partnership head count? Or did they leave with the Gasparilla Pirates and the Ye Mystic Crewe who thunk them up?
Also what are all those people going to do in downtown Tampa when they get here?
That is if they have any money left over after paying more than half their salary for rent in those fabulous new buildings going up in the next few years, during which time, Harvard University's Center on Housing Studies says is exactly what is going to happen, To the Millennials and everybody else.
Those new 'mixed use' buildings are not going to be cheap. For instance, one of the projects, which was recently ixnayed by the neighbors was planning to require a minimum $100,000 annual salary to even get in the door, and if you think that anybody could live in those new high and low rises on half of a salary even a that of a very smart newly minted college grad who Mayor Buckhorn is so desperately trying to draw to downtown Tampa, re-do the math.
Then there's the downtown area itself. There's nothing to do in the downtown area after, oh, say 8 p.m. The downtown closes down after the last commuter has left on Kennedy Boulevard to go North or South or wherever hardworking people go, and then those few lucky affluent people who live in either the Element or the Sky Point have the entire area to themselves to walk their designer clothed dogs.
Mayor Buckhorn and his city planners need to re-tool some of their building plans to include downtown Tampa, before all of those thousands of people turn up here and realize they cannot afford an apartment and that in all of downtown Tampa after 8 p.m. there is no place to buy socks or underwear, a tie a bandaid, or some fresh basil.
The only place in downtown Tampa doing business at night is the Hub, the famous saloon which has been there for decades, but you if you are living in a downtown building and holding a job in a 500 Fortune company nearby, you probably should avoid that place for happy hour until the weekends, The bartender who has been there for decades pours the stiffest drink in the city.
Not good for early morning 500 Fortune company career moves.
Msmorganpowellmsmorganpowell@aol.com
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