The Big Story: Ybor City’s violence, trashiness kills restaurant
February 7, 2008 at 9:14 am by Wayne GarciaRight off the bat, let’s get the disclosure out of the way: as a political consultant in the late ’90s through about 2002, I represented the original developers of Centro Ybor. I remember vividly the big PR launch we did, with Ferdie Pacheco 
and then-Mayor Dick Greco in the old ballroom of the Centro building, a magnificent space with great history. We had to pipe in air conditioning from huge portable units to make the event possible in summer. The center had great promise. (Yes, taxpayer-subsidized promise.)
So it is with great sadness to see the passing of another of the original restuarants in Centro Ybor, the one that landed that beautiful ballroom space, Big City Tavern. It was a smart and classy place, steeped in history and floor to ceiling windows. Sure, it wasn’t a perfect restaurant, but it was a great addition to this area. Now, it’s gone, as Flashpoint reports:
Three days after shutting down his dream, Brian Cornacchia sounded tired, but upbeat- like a boxer who lost the fight but gave it his best shot. Cornacchia praises his staff. He says his landlord, M & J Wilcow couldn’t have been more supportive. He claims his bar and catering business were very successful. If there was a medical examiner’s report to identify the cause of death, it might read:  Financial asphyxiation due to repeated news accounts of beatings, stabbings, and shootings in Ybor City.
Cornacchia believes the negative associations people make with Ybor City were his undoing. “‘Dirty, dangerous, tattoos, kids.’ Those are the words people think of when you say, Ybor City. It’s never ’classy, historic, artistic.’” I asked him if that was just perception or reality. He believes the problems are real and complained that when people dine at Sideberns in South Tampa, they’ve got lots of places to go and things to do after dinner. His clientele, he says,  just isn’t interested in the loud and sometimes rowdy clubs and street scene.
One of the original problems in Ybor after the Centro project was built, I think in retrospect, was the attempt to quickly Disney-ize the historic district to make it appeal to tourists and well-heeled folks. Lots of the things that made Ybor great — its eclectic population, its collection of artists and creatives who could only afford lower rents — seemed driven out. The huge late-night crowds were knocked down from the tens of thousands who used to come to relative handfuls today. It seems to have left Ybor not crowded enough to be safe, the destination (largely) for locals who seek trouble. And the killings and muggings continued and seemed to increase.
Today, Ybor City is left to its own devices to find some kind of equilibrium between the type of people who want to eat at good restaurants and the “tattooed” crowd referred to above who want to club and party into the late night hours. Who knows if Ybor will reconcile its two sides, although it seems there is plenty of room for both if certain things could occur. First and foremost, wet zone the entire historic district and let folks wander from restaurant to bar to restaurant with a drink in their hands. Second, find a way to streamline the development process, especially in front of the historic-minded Architecture Review Commission. It’s one thing to preserve our past, but if there is not an economical way to reuse those historical buildings, they simply rot and decay and give nothing back to that neighborhood. Third, the city must immediately remove all the parking meters from the district and encourage people to come back for lunch and dinner. La Gaceta publisher Patrick Manteiga has railed for years about the bad impression that the parking enforcers give to the historic district, and he’s right.
Ybor City is worth saving. Again.
(Photo credit: Kathleen Conklin / Some Rights Reserved)
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February 7th, 2008 at 1:41 pm
Wayne, I just can’t agree more about the meter enforcement. There’s a guy I see all the time (who I’ve given a very, very nasty name) and by all accounts it seems like this guy’s purpose in life is to be a giant dick. Really. I promise that he enjoys his job, and stalks around in anticipation of it. There’s no other explanation for the shit-eating grin.
The garages have helped make it easier to find a place to park (for those who aren’t afraid to walk a block or three), and they are affordable (when an event isn’t going on and everyone decides that $20 is a fair price everywhere). The runs or marathons or whatever that seem to go on every month around Ybor make it impossible to get in or out and there isn’t a police officer anywhere who is going to help you with that. Signs would be helpful, advance notice would be even better.
It’s too bad though the owner of Big City is lumping tattoos in with ‘dirty’ and ‘dangerous’ without seeing the potential connection to artistic. That he’d just see ‘kids’ and not a potential youth movement.
I’ve been somewhere down in Ybor regularly since 1992. Whether it was at one time The Castle and Ybor Pizza and Subs or Moniques/1603 (where this artistic guy gets his tattoos) or having a bite at a thousand and one spots to now having pints and checking out a local band at New World. I love it, it’s really one of my favorite things about Tampa. My mother in law tells all sorts of stories about 7th from the 50s and 60s. I’ve even seen a few permutations of the area in my time.
Making it easier for people to get down there and hang out (whether it’s lunch, dinner or late night) should be a overriding priority. Making people feel welcome and wanted - which in no way means just serving one class of people. We could all stand to benefit from a bit more diversity and exposure to differences. That’s a major barrier I see this area struggling with more than many others.
Ybor’s history is rich with differences in cultures, races and walks of life. It belongs to everyone. It would be a crying shame if it’s future was any different.
February 7th, 2008 at 2:09 pm
Ybor needs to be saved, from Tampa.
The same thing happened in Channelside whereas a once interesting area was Disney-ized and cleaned up and sanitized until all of the original character and patina of the last 100 years was washed away. Perhaps there are just too many naive entrepreneurs and good ‘ol boys in this town? Imagine cleaning up and sanitizing what’s left of New Orleans, it would truly kill the place.
And the Architectural Review Board? [insert laugh track here] These guys are political appointees for the most part, with a few Preservation society housewives thrown in for good measure. Like Hyde Park and South Tampa, Ybor is just too precious to have anything in it that looks like it was designed with respect for its historic context, but is obviously a building designed in 2008!!!
How many new poorly built brick pseudo immigrant labor turn-of-the-century vernacular buildings does one need?
Here’s a tip, send the Architectural Review Board to Europe where buildings much older than ours sit next to buildings that are more sophisticated, and more Modern, than ours.
In the end, Centro Ybor, despite its incredible history, was just like any other MALL–malls are inherently canabalistic and thrive by putting some one else out of business. Only way to break the mall chain is to start designing places worth caring about, have a code that forces the creation of such places, have wise politicians and city leaders that push for this, and a citizenry that knows they are the ones that will make it all happen.
What are we waiting for?
February 7th, 2008 at 3:24 pm
My meter horror story: at the farewell party for Dawn Morgan, our distinguished former editorial assistant, I parked in a half-full lot behind 7th Avenue right on the railroad tracks. I overstayed my money in the meter, party was better than I thought it would be, and returned to find not one but TWO $50 parking tickets on the windshield, one for before midnight and another after midnight when it was legally another day. Mo-Fo’ers.
February 7th, 2008 at 6:58 pm
Don’t mislead, Wayne. The Centro Project is THE most significant contributor to the disney-fication of Ybor City - it did not begin afterward. That move alone forced Ybor Pizza & Subs to move (and eventually fail), and Angelica’s closed too along with plenty of other funky places. Rents started rising throughout the district, killing Speedy Brown’s, Three Birds, Blue Chair Music, and much, much more.
As for the parking meters, In the last 6 months, 3 of 4 JGLB band members have gotten parking tickets in Ybor City, usually when loading in or out. Meters are enforced until 3am. After loading the band equipment up after a gig at the Blue Shark, I got to my car to see a ticket that had been written at 2:54. We have our own name for Jenkins’ friend with the grin.
February 8th, 2008 at 7:39 am
I must say that I never dined at Big City… I barely even knew it existed and thought it closed years ago.
None of my friends ever talked about the food or the service - so they may not have dined there either.
Could the problem have been marketing?
February 8th, 2008 at 11:40 am
Hate to say it but parking meters, marketing, crime, historic gateways, are the details of the tail attached to the dog. The dog is that what has been BUILT post 1960s Urban Renewal in Ybor has been poorly planned and architecturally deficient (especially compared to the old stuff). The details mentioned above come out of this inabililty to (re)create the Ybor Sense of Place that’s been lost since Urban Renewal. Look at photos of Ybor pre Urban Renewal, that place has patina and character and charm, but the Federal Government destroyed it leaving Ybor dotted with vacant sand lots until the 1990s, and theyalso built the housing projects on the west side. We have not had the talent or expertise in planning or architecture (or frankly The Vision) down there since that can even begin to recreate that PLACE again. Local yokels simply don’t know how.
February 8th, 2008 at 12:31 pm
Jim: I actually did know about the place. I saw ads, and we had at least 3 functions relating to my work there (holiday parties, cast parties etc). It’s just not the kind of place I’d normally go out to eat at - which says nothing about the quality of the product or the place itself. It was a gorgeous room in a gorgeous building.
February 8th, 2008 at 12:52 pm
Being a “local yokel,” I’d like to address Bill Peak’s comment. Ybor was built by “local yokels.” The businesses that seem to want to rebuild Ybor from their own visions, are not locals, but nearly all from elsewhere. Ybor was Ybor, not New Orleans, and trying to turn it into one has been a thorn in our proverbial side. The trouble is that with things like parking troubles and shootings and stabbings and break-ins to vehicles all contribute to the feelings to stay away from Ybor at night. The problem is that law enforcement just can’t keep up with the trouble coming from the projects. Tear them down and move the residents away from Ybor and most of the problems will be solved.
February 8th, 2008 at 3:27 pm
Charles, I disagree, the dream team for Centro Ybor was both local and yokel: Dick Greco, who pitched the project in 1997, was born in Tampa. The main developer was Sembler Co. of St. Petersburg (Florida).
RE: http://sptimes.com/2004/01/08/Hillsborough/Taxpayers_to_keep_Cen.shtml
A co-developer (and planner), Columbus, Ohio based Steiner+Associates, doesn’t even have a link to Centro Ybor on their website http://www.steiner.com/?page=Projects but they are a decidedly third-tier planning and development firm.
At the turn of the century Ybor was indeed built by “local yokels†who just happened to have learned their craft in Europe, or the Caribbean. Unlike today’s white bread yokels, they’ve been north of Kennedy, and they’ve been across the county line too. From the photographs, early Ybor looks like an old European or Latin city because it was “designed†and built by Europeans and Latin’s.
My point is that if Urban Renewal had not occurred in 60s, and Centro Ybor had been designed by someone who had experience in urban infill (not building stand alone malls) then a secure (eyes on the street), pedestrian oriented, mixed-use, walkable, historically sensitive urban intervention could have been planned and built. Some cities, like Savannah and Charleston and Coral Gables, have urban areas that feel great to walk in because they were PLANNED that way. It’s not because their parking meters are fabulous or there isn’t a housing project in a five mile radius. Planning well is an Art, it is the framework for everything.
In general, if Tampa learned to spend more money on the front end by hiring the best planning teams they could find, it would be pay off in the long run by not creating boondoggle projects that need to be “rejuvenated†every 15 years.
Don’t get me started on today’s Centro Ybor, Channelside.
February 8th, 2008 at 6:11 pm
I ate & drank there a few times. It was ok but nothing out of the ordinary. It’s always easy to blame Ybor, but it’s really the restaurant didn’t meet customers needs. What about the other places in Ybor that do make it & have for years?
I guarantee if you put a Cheesecake Factory in the same space it will be a hit regardless of crime, parking tickets etc…
February 8th, 2008 at 7:36 pm
Charles, I have to disagree, the dream team for Centro Ybor was both local and yokel: Dick Greco, who pitched the project in 1997, was born in Tampa. The main developer was Sembler Co. of St. Petersburg (Florida).
RE: http://sptimes.com/2004/01/08/Hillsborough/Taxpayers_to_keep_Cen.shtml
A co-developer (and planner), Columbus, Ohio based Steiner+Associates, doesn’t even have a link to Centro Ybor on their website http://www.steiner.com/?page=Projects but they are a decidedly third-tier planning and development firm.
At the turn of the century Ybor was indeed built by “local yokels†who just happened to have learned their craft in Europe, or the Caribbean. Unlike today’s white bread yokels, they’ve been north of Kennedy, and they’ve been across the county line too. From the photographs, early Ybor looks like an old European or Latin city because it was “designed†and built by Europeans and Latinos.
My point is that if Urban Renewal had not occurred in 60s, and Centro Ybor had been designed by someone who had experience in urban infill (not building stand alone malls) then a secure (eyes on the street), pedestrian oriented, mixed-use, walkable, historically sensitive urban intervention could have been planned and built. Some cities, like Savannah and Charleston and Coral Gables, have urban areas that feel great to walk in because they were PLANNED that way. It’s not because their parking meters are fabulous or there isn’t a housing project in a five mile radius or they have a Cheesecake Factory. Planning well is an Art, it is the framework for everything.
In general, if Tampa learned to spend more money on the front end by hiring the best planning teams they could find, it would be pay off in the long run by not creating boondoggle projects that need to be “rejuvenated†every 15 years.
Don’t get me started on today’s Centro Ybor, Channelside.
February 9th, 2008 at 10:59 am
I’d never heard of Big City either, but I can tell you that growing up in Pinellas County, Ybor was always about the club scene. It was where you went to see a band or go dancing. I think what Ybor needs again is a good book and record store. Since I work in Tampa now, I go there occasionally for lunch. And lately it’s gotten better (or I’ve gotten smarter) but as a musician, it was at one point prohibitive to perform there because ANY money I made performing original music would go toward the parking ticket I got loading INTO the club.
February 11th, 2008 at 12:29 pm
Businesses’ success or failures are a direct result of the residential areas surrounding them.
I have seen so many great stores and restaurants come and go. I bought a NON HISTORIC house in a designated historic district…..one of the VERY FEW single family homes in Ybor large enough for people to want to own and occupy. A home that is not just a “house for now†but a HOME.
There is an amazingly complex bureaucratic system in place created to try and make things revert to 1920. Ybor has a major identity crisis. All these buildings are deemed “historic” and “valuable” but they sit empty and rotting because no one can figure out a way to make the numbers work for a new occupant. If they are so important to the city and to so many people, then why are they not repaired? Too much trouble and no incentive to build here.
No developer in their right mind would even dare tackle the historic crazies that decide what, where and how your project will look, when they can go and develop somewhere they are actually embraced and encouraged to rehab or develop a property, rather than denied and shut down.
Those governing people, most who live in S Tampa, should be doing everything in their power to ASSIST developers rather than doing everything possible to leave some sort of legacy or get their bust in centennial park. In order to make rules for Ybor, you should have to live here. I dont care if you or your family USED TO live here…you should have to live here now if you are governing what is and is not developed here.
Funny thing is, the residents and families that lived here back in the 20’s moved. I wonder why? Maybe because of tiny wooden houses and industrial complexes built next to their homes? Maybe because of the lack of infrastructure improvements in the area, i.e. roads, sidewalks etc? Maybe because the City built ALL THE LOW INCOME COMPLEXES ALL AROUND YBOR….wonder why there are no government housing complexes in S Tampa? Wonder if the violence, drug dealing and robberies have anything to do with people being dirt poor in the areas surrounding Ybor?
Most of the people that tout this “historic preservationist line” don’t even live here, nor would they dare even walk down the street even in the daytime. They will drive their Escalades and BMWs through and make rules though.
The problems in Ybor have to do with the types of housing offered in Ybor. South Tampa works and those businesses thrive BECAUSE THERE ARE PEOPLE LIVING THERE not just renting till they find a real house. There are homes worth making your permanent home there, not a rental or a flipped house. Go west of Ybor to Tampa Heights and there you will find homes of a size worth restoring and LIVING IN rather than renting out.
As long as we keep trying to revert Ybor to the 20’s and saving 2 bedroom 1 bath. 700 sq ft rental houses and approving more and more rentals and duplexes, while chasing away projects and developers of residential, SINGLE FAMILY HOMES, Ybor will still be seen by outsiders as a great place to party, piss, and puke but never a place to call your home….unless you have some big cahones! VIVA YBOR!
February 11th, 2008 at 1:37 pm
I would have loved to have had my rebuttal printed here { } regarding Charles’s previous remark, but it looks like my in-depth reply is being censored(?). I should have known better than to mention Dick Greco.
Thanks Wayne.
So much for the power of the internet.
February 11th, 2008 at 1:58 pm
Ok, my previous response to Charles is back on line, sorry about the previous remark Wayne.
“Businesses’ success or failures are a direct result of the residential areas surrounding them.â€
This is true to some extent, but Savannah is partly surrounded by “the hood†and it appears to be thriving.
Ybor should not be having an identity crisis, it was well planned as the latin area of the city in the 1890s, to ignore this formidable history (which still exists) would be foolish. It’s an asset.
I am not saying the place needs to be a museum like Hyde Park, but any new building down there should respect the Ybor historic context in some way. Personally, I favor the European of “tipping the hat†to adjoining historic architecture without trying to ape it.
The problem is that the pool of developers in Tampa, in Florida, who are sophisticated enough to hire a good architect that will respect the historic context, is extremely small. Finding an architect with enough sophistication to pull off such a respectful historically based design is difficult as well—I know of two architects in Tampa that can do it. And THEN there’s the prospect of getting such a sophisticated design by the provincial Architectural Review Board who only look at photographs circa 1910 and say “make your building look like thisâ€. Duh.
The problem is one of sophistication.
Regarding Ybor’s history, it seems like nonsense to me to ignore such an incredible asset and pretend like you’re designing in the former wetlands of Nuevo Tampa.
Oh, and you can thank the Federal Government for both urban renewal and the surrounding housing projects. Both are movements whose time has come and gone.
I agree Ybor needs to be mixed-use, catering to rich and poor, pedestrian oriented, medium density, like a real urban area, kind of like it was in the 1920s. ïŠ
February 11th, 2008 at 2:06 pm
One more item—
“Funny thing is, the residents and families that lived here back in the 20’s moved. I wonder why? Maybe because of tiny wooden houses and industrial complexes built next to their homes?”
Frank Urso in his seminal book “A Stranger In The Barrio: Memoir of a Tampa Sicilian” clearly documents that the reason the folks who lived in Ybor in the 1920s moved out was the same reason the suburbs burgeoned in the 1950s, that is, the influx of other minorities and “white flight”.
February 12th, 2008 at 1:43 am
Wayne, I have to ask, where were your scruples when you were involved in the Centro Ybor project? Did you honestly think it was a good idea or was the money just too good? And was it you who thought up those clever promotional billboards around town that read: “No Tattoos Required” and “More Culture, Less Subculture” (that’s a hoot!)? I think there was another one that said something about soccer moms being welcome. (Disclaimer: I have nothing against soccer moms) If Ybor City has become a shady, dangerous place with a stale, phony, plastic atmosphere, I blame all those slimy developers that had all those dollar signs in their eyes. Their short-sightedness is responsible for the failings we see now.
Gary Mormino once said: “Every generation deserves an Ybor City and every generation gets the Ybor City it deserves.
February 12th, 2008 at 12:41 pm
Kombat –
To answer your questions:
– My scruples were fully intact. I still believe in what that project set out to do, which was to provide a quality entertainment destination in Ybor City that would expand the interest in the place from just the crowds that were filling the streets on weekends.
– I honestly thought it was, and still is, a good idea. The buildings that were torn down to make room for it were nondescript, and only 1 interesting business was displaced, Anjelicas, which relocated to Seminole Heights where it had even more interesting space than it had in Ybor. So it was an improvement physically in the area, and it restored the old Centro building and preserved it with the Improv in the old theater area. that is great space and watching a comedian there is a lot of fun. I thought there was room for all kinds of people in Ybor, soccer moms, rockers, mods, mockers, punks, all ethnicities, those who wanted restaurants and those who wanted to disco all night long, those who wanted tatts and those who wanted to buy a good book.
Where Centro went wrong was deciding that its economic driver would be the movie theaters. That was an old mall model and it didn’t work; plus, the attitude of the folks who managed Centro (who I had nothing to do with once it launched) was terrible, and they ran kids and anyone who looked different off the property. Greco didn’t help, either, by not figuring out the right kind of public safety that Ybor called for, something that would allow people to be loud and party and have fun and still keep the district safe from shootings and stabbings.
– I had nothing to do with the advertising campaign. It was insipid.
I won’t tell you Centro had nothing to do with the current decline of Ybor. It no doubt kept property owners’ expectations high, too high, along with their property values. But Ybor has the same problem that North Franklin Street downtown has — longtime property owners who are waiting for the big cash-out and in the meantime let their properties sit vacant and rundown. That is the larger problem.
Centro didn’t make Ybor into the ghost town it is today; it just didn’t do much to stop it from becoming one.
March 4th, 2008 at 3:28 pm
I’m just coming across this posting now, and it’s a bit sad, but not terribly surprising. I lived in Tampa for many years — I grew up in and around the Tampa Bay area — but for the last five I’ve been living in the San Francisco Bay area. I remember Big City Tavern, mostly favorably.
Here’s something I was wondering about when Centro Ybor first got going, and since you were involved around that time, maybe you have some insight. As I recall, the Channelside project got underway about the same time. The Centro got finished earlier, as I recall, but both projects were approved in roughly the same time frame. And here’s the thing: wasn’t going ahead with two projects which were pretty similar in spirit (i.e., big renovations of near-downtown areas with movie theatres and shops and restaurants) at about the same time and within just a few miles of one another absolutely nuts?
Before either one opened, I figured there were only two realistic outcomes: One would succeed at the near-complete expense of the other, or both of them would struggle. But it just didn’t strike me as possible that both of them could become wild successes. My impression when I left Tampa was that Centro Ybor wasn’t bringing in the crowds it was expecting, but that Channelside was an unmitigated disaster. On return visits to Tampa I’ve visited Centro Ybor and it still looked, well, pretty empty; I haven’t been back to Channelside, but I’d be surprised if it’s become a boomtown in the succeeding years.
Was the thinking in Tampa’s political circles that both really *could* succeed?
March 4th, 2008 at 5:14 pm
I don’t know of anyone who favored having both of them, but what you had was competing governments — city of Tampa doing Centro Ybor and the Port Authority owning the land for Channelside. It was foolish to have both, but they were envisioned somewhat differently from each other: Centro as a retail movie destination for locals, and Channelside with lots of retail and smaller restaurants to attract the cruise ship crowds coming and going. Neither ended up like that, and Channelside has bigger crowds because it went to a nearly all-restaurant format and attracted unique venues (Splitsville) and old standbys (Hooters) while the movies and the restaurant choices at Centro never caught on