© St. Petersburg Times, published June 19, 2002
Victor Crist walks with joy through the halls he helped build. He opens doors to reveal classes of little kids learning to read, to paint, to play music. Here is the gym, the weight room, the locker rooms, the theater stage, the dance studio.
We are touring the University Area Community Center Complex, a sparkling, 50,000-square-foot building on 22nd Street in north Tampa, north of Fletcher Avenue. The center's dedication ceremony starts at 10 a.m. Saturday. Call (813) 558-5212 for details.
Although a lot of people helped, and a lot gave money, this center is Crist's brainchild, his creation. His own original drawings for how he wanted the building to look -- two great wings, meeting at a tower in the center -- hang in the business office.
"We needed an identity," Crist says, "for a community that had none."
For the past 22 years, long before he was elected to the Legislature a decade ago, Crist has been involved in this area of north Tampa often called "Suitcase City." It was transient, low-rent, with high crime and low employment.
Crist began his activism as a student, organizing tenants against landlords. His group eventually merged with seven others into a single community association in the area of the University of South Florida. Their early battles were for street lights, better public services and government crime-fighting grants.
It should be said here that Crist is not some big-government liberal Democrat, but a conservative Republican in our state Senate. He is arch-conservative, actually, especially on the subject of punishing career criminals.
Name the law, Crist has sponsored or supported it: 10-20-Life, three strikes and you're out, more time served by inmates, a drastic death penalty "reform" act to cut down on appeals (thrown out by the courts). Crist once made an offhand comment about using the guillotine, which, given his reputation, lots of people were willing to believe he meant.
Yet his political strength has been less his ideology than his home base. He always turned back all challengers to his re-election in a Democratic-leaning, progressive House district. Two years ago he won his current Senate seat in a nasty (on both sides) campaign against Democrat Kathy Castor.
The center is run by a nonprofit, founded by Crist, that does not provide services itself, but lines up and serves as the host for other agencies. There are Head Start classes, a special-needs day school and instruction in arts, crafts, music and dance. There is adult and GED education, vocational training, immunization and social services.
One program called Prodigy teaches about 1,800 kids in the performing arts -- about half of them juvenile offenders sent by the courts. (Of 22 students who took part in a public St. Petersburg production of The Nutcracker last year, 12 were young felons.)
Crist says the center cost $9-million to build, of which a little over $5-million was public money and the rest came from private and corporate donations. The annual operating costs of about $1.3-million are split between public and private dollars.
I asked him: What's the difference between old-style, liberal, Democrat, save-the-world programs and this?
"This is a combination of Democratic heart and soul and Republican practical common sense," he answered. The center will keep the programs that work and end the ones that don't, he said. Much of the center's support comes from the private sector. In the long run, Crist hopes to create a public-private redevelopment of all of 22nd Street between Bearss and Fletcher avenues, creating business, revenues for the center, and jobs.
To be honest, as we stood in the lobby at the end, and Crist was talking about the symbolism of the number of columns and the circle they formed and using words like "mystic," I thought, this man is completely obsessed. Considering that 2,000 people a day are using the place already, I am not saying that is a bad thing, either.
-- You can reach Howard Troxler at (727) 893-8505 or at troxler@sptimes.com.