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Miracle on 4th Street
By SHARON L. BOND, Neighborhood Times Business Editor
ST. PETERSBURG -- Grant Gaul is 79 and has lived near the intersection of Fourth Street N and Ninth Avenue for 30 years. Since 2000, his view has changed drastically. There used to be a Watson's Food Town with customers who liked to loiter. In its place now stands a gold and white CVS drugstore. Across the street, the site of an abandoned service station and taxi stand has been cleared and is getting a new building with Art Deco accents. Starbucks will open a coffee shop there in mid December, and there is room for two more tenants. Business at the intersection is up. Gaul is a tea drinker by virtue of his birth in Canada, he says, but he welcomes the popular coffeehouse because there now are more younger people in the neighborhood. He's not a CVS customer very often, preferring to get prescriptions filled at Albertsons when he buys groceries. "As far as I'm concerned, I am glad to see legitimate businesses move in," Gaul said. On the site north of Starbucks stands the two-story structure with diamond patterns above a deep amethyst base color. The Davenport Building has undergone extensive remodeling, but it stood for months with the bottom floor open to the elements. Owner Felix D. Fudge said he was waiting for tenants before building out the bottom. Tijuana Flats Tex-Mex restaurant took a chunk of the bottom floor. Offices decorated with hardwood floors, plaster walls, granite and mosaic tiles are upstairs. "Right now it's better than it has been in the last 15 to 20 years," said Gaul, who has been to Tijuana Flats twice. "This is not what I would call an upscale neighborhood. The houses are older. Mine was built in 1927." When his mother moved to the house in which he now lives in 1960, the neighborhood was genteel, Gaul said. Men wore suits, shoes and hats; ladies completed their outfits with gloves. That was when most of the houses were occupied by their owners. Then came a time of absentee landlords and renters who would drink and fight in the streets, he said. The typical dress was cutoff jeans, no shoes or shirt. Some of the businesses looked ragged, too. Gaul said a turn for the better began five or six years ago when new owners began fixing up some of the Ninth Avenue houses close to the businesses on Fourth Street N. "The neighborhood was not really an asset as it was," Gaul said. As the commercial corners are being rebuilt, the intersection of Fourth Street N and Ninth Avenue literally has changed color, starting with the Davenport Building at 944 Fourth St. N. From Fifth Avenue up to Ninth, the buildings are mostly white and gray. But at the northwest and southeast corners, there is lollypop red and pale yellow (Starbucks at 900 Fourth St. N), orange-gold with blue and green accents (CVS at 845 Fourth St. N) and then the Davenport. It is deep amethyst with taupe and cameo accents. Most people just call it purple. "Bright colors highlight the corner," said Bob Jeffrey, St. Petersburg's manager of urban design and historic preservation. He said that as more renovation occurs in the neighborhood, perhaps more subdued colors will become the norm. Even though two of the buildings are new, they blend in with the look of the older neighborhood, Jeffrey said. "It was just an old, nasty gas station that wasn't a gas station anymore. This is a vast improvement for that neighborhood," Jeffrey said. The way the new buildings sit very close to the street with parking in the back creates something of a buffer for houses right behind the businesses and gives the intersection better definition, Jeffrey said. The fact that the changes are being made with private investments also is appealing, Jeffrey said. "When areas turn for the better, it starts with rehabilitation of buildings like the purple one. Then new construction ... and then you have a great little district," he said. It is difficult to get an exact total of how much money has been spent at the intersection. Fudge bought and rehabilitated the Davenport and is building the new one that will hold Starbucks. He said he paid just under $280,000 for the Davenport and its land but says he does not know how much he has spent on the renovation. He paid $225,000 for the land where the Starbucks building is being built. The building probably will cost $450,000 when it is finished, Fudge said. Then Starbucks will do the interior buildout, as will the tenants who take the other spaces. CVS will not say what it paid for the Watson's Food Town site or how much it spent building the drugstore, which opened last year. Pinellas County property records show a $3.8-million transaction at 845 Fourth St. N in March. CVS spokesman Mike DeAngelis did say the Fourth Street CVS is performing ahead of expectations. "We're very happy to be there," DeAngelis said. Exxon and Dairy Queen are in the building at the northeast corner of the intersection. Manager Barbara Russell has been there 19 years. "It's quite a change. It's a lot better," Russell said of the intersection. She is not worried about Starbucks' arrival. The people who stop for her coffee are on their way to work and in a hurry, she said. She hopes the renovation continues farther south on Fourth Street. "These are real positive changes," agreed Diane Schmidt, manager of the South Pinellas branch of the Tampa Bay chapter of the American Red Cross. The Red Cross has the southwest corner of the intersection, which includes its building built in 1954 and a parcel of vacant land. "It's essentially made the neighborhood safer. The appearance of the neighborhood is getting better and better," Schmidt said.
 © 2006 • All Rights Reserved • St. Petersburg Times
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