Hillsborough: Still into politics; Ybor's ride into glor

Still into politics; Ybor's ride into glory

By MICHAEL CANNING, Times Staff Writer

Liz Alpert could watch today's Gasparilla parade from her balcony perch 17 floors above Bayshore Boulevard. But she says she'll go downstairs. She'd rather be right down in it.

Same for the local political scene, which Alpert has been largely out of for a couple of years. She tried unsuccessfully to win a state House seat in 1996 and 1998. Later in 1998 she was soundly beaten by incumbent Charlie Miranda for a Tampa City Council seat.

In 1999 Alpert oversaw a project by the League of Women Voters, the Children's Board of Hillsborough County and the 13th Judicial Circuit to find volunteers to help judges handle child abuse caseloads. The project has since stalled because of changes in the family law division.

For two years Alpert also has chaired the city's Architectural Review Commission. Her term is about to end. She keeps busy exercising at Harbour Island Athletic Club, cooking vegetarian cuisine and going out for the odd night of dancing.

A mother of three daughters, she also occasionally visits her two grandchildren in Sarasota. She says she is currently separated from her husband, attorney Jonathan Alpert.

Alpert, 52, hasn't totally refrained from politicking. "I'm very proud to say that Sara Romeo was a candidate I recruited last year," she says. Romeo won the District 60 state House race.

She hasn't ruled out public office. "There are a lot of openings this year," Alpert says -- the County Commission, City Council, the possibility of an open supervisor of elections post. Law school also is in her thoughts.

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Harris Mullen can't wait to ride the streetcar again. As a youth growing up in South Tampa's Golfview neighborhood, he would ride the city's yellow trolleys down to the Ballast Point pier to fish.

Now he feels a revival of the line that ceased service in 1946 will be the "crowning glory" of Ybor City, a district he spent a good amount of his life and money trying to resurrect.

Mullen, 77 and retired, bought the one-time V.M. Ybor Cigar Factory in 1972 and converted it into Ybor Square, a retail marketplace. The 1886 vintage building takes up most of a city block and was a keystone in Tampa's cigar industry. But Mullen once admitted, "I never was a red-hot retailer," and the square's collection of restaurants and shops endured a lackluster 25 years as a minimall. Mullen sold his remaining interest in the building just before it was converted almost entirely to office space in 2000.

Mullen doesn't regret that his stewardship of Ybor Square ended not long before Ybor boomed: "I love old buildings. Every corner of that building had a story. I just ate it up."

A former owner of Florida Grower and Florida Trend magazines, Mullen still is publishing. He runs his Highwater Press out of his Ballast Point townhouse, and has used it to realize three books that exercise his passion for Civil War history: Ten Incredible Mistakes at Gettysburg, Confederate Generals at Gettysburg and God Bless General Early. The latter is a novel that explores what might have happened if the Confederacy had won the Battle of Gettysburg. "And it kind of gets into romance."

Mullen lives with his wife, Kay, and has four children and seven grandchildren. He vacations on mountain property in Blowing Rock, N.C., that his family has owned since 1908.

Though he has had Parkinson's disease for 10 years, he says, "I don't hold it up as a great detriment." Between his writing, weekly visits to Ybor City, lunching with friends and his involvement with the Tampa and Ybor City Street Railway Society, Mullen says, "I had a lot more time when I was working than I have now."

- Michael Canning can be reached at (813) 226-3408 or canning@sptimes.com.