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Profile: Christine Burdick
By FRED W. WRIGHT Jr. NEW POSITION: President, Tampa Downtown Partnership, Tampa PREVIOUS POSITION: Partner, Burdick & Associates, Chicago * * *
"I intend to walk or bike to work when weather permits," she said. Burdick is familiar with some of the highways and bikeways of the Tampa Bay area. With family in Dunedin and Palm Harbor, she often visits, and as an avid bike rider, she has peddled up and down the Pinellas Trail many times. Now she takes on a different type of challenge in the bay area. A nonprofit organization, the Tampa Downtown Partnership is a public-and-private initiative created to revitalize Tampa's center city area and to attract new businesses to the downtown area. Burdick has experience in the field. For the past three years, she has been a consultant in Chicago, providing consulting and advisory services to public-private organizations and city agencies. Prior to that, she served as State Street Special Project coordinator and assistant commissioner to Chicago Mayor Richard Daley for a year and a half. Burdick also directed the revitalization of Miami Beach's Lincoln Road Mall from 1993 to 1997. Burdick graduated in 1970 from Northeastern Illinois University in Chicago with a bachelor's degree in business. She began her career in retailing, "but as a volunteer, (I) started working on a Downtown Oak Park committee," she said. "It segued into a part-time job." Her role with revitalizing downtowns, Burdick said, is to bring public and private sectors together. "The cities that are most successful . . . are the places where the public sector and the private sector get together and work collaboratively, with the city taking responsibility for the physical aspects and the private sector really digging in and taking more responsibility for the way they managed and leased their properties," she said. "Thinking of those around them rather than thinking and acting autonomously. It's my sense that that exists in Tampa now." Burdick said she will bring to Tampa "some new plans and we need to be ready to capitalize on what presents itself and go out and find what's missing." Leading a public-private partnership appeals more to Burdick than the role of a consultant. "I found that working as a consultant, I never got to see a project to the end. I was the adviser. I never got to implement what I suggested," she said. "I really like the commitment and the ability to dig in on all levels." She is eager to relocate to Tampa, she said, and not just because of the more bike-friendly weather. "It's the ideal city for me," she said. "What really excites me about Tampa is what has happened for the last eight to 10 years. There's more to be done. "I think there have been real exciting developments around the immediate core of the downtown but there can be a lot more happening at the street level -- the work proposed on the Franklin Street Mall, more retail to serve the big working population downtown and to keep people downtown who come for sports and culture venues," she said. "That's Tampa downtown's next chapter." Burdick, 53, is a past chairwoman of the board of directors of the International Downtown Association. She has two children.
 © 2006 • All Rights Reserved • St. Petersburg Times
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From the Times Business report
From the AP
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