Weather | Sports | Forums | Comics | Classifieds | Calendar | Movies
By permitting drink and package sales, the Tampa City Council has given the landmark bar a new life.
By DAVID KARP, Times Staff Writer
© St. Petersburg Times, published April 19, 2002
TAMPA -- When they talk about protecting Tampa's landmarks, City Council members usually discuss old homes, train stations and brick streets.
But on Thursday, the city's elected officials waxed nostalgic about a corner bar on Florida Avenue and Zack Street where a red neon sign has lit up nights for more than 50 years.
"We lost the Chatterbox," City Council member Bob Buckhorn said about a Hyde Park bar that closed. "We can't afford to lose the Hub."
To save the Hub, which first opened in 1949, the council voted Thursday to allow it to serve alcohol at a new downtown location on Franklin Street about a block from its old home.
The council gave the Hub approval for a year on the condition that its alcohol sales don't hurt its neighbor, the city-owned Tampa Theatre. After a year, the council will review the issue.
Besides serving drinks, the bar also sells packaged liquor.
As much as he loved getting a drink at the Hub, Tampa Theatre director John Bell said he was worried the bar would attract vagrants. He was especially worried about the Hub selling packaged alcohol.
"We are constantly fighting a battle to keep our patrons from being hassled," Bell said.
Several business owners, including Bell, told council members the Hub has always worked to keep problems to a minimum. The bar hires off-duty police officers on weekends and doesn't sell packaged alcohol to the homeless, lawyer Mark Bentley said.
Most of its package sales come from downtown hotels and hotel guests, Bentley said.
The Tampa Police Department also didn't object to the approval, noting that police have gotten relatively few calls of trouble at the bar.
"They have proven for 50 years that they know how to control the (problem)," Bentley said.
City Council member Rose Ferlita said the Tampa Theatre should welcome its new neighbor on an empty strip of downtown.
"The Tampa Theatre -- they have nothing there," Ferlita said. "It is its own little baby ghost town."
The Hub may convert the second story of its space into a banquet room that people could rent out for parties, Bentley said. The theater needs some banquet space and might use the bar, he noted.
The Hub must move because its landowner, the First Presbyterian Church, plans to build a church parking lot on its property on Florida Avenue.
-- David Karp can be reached at 226-3376 or karp@sptimes.com.