Southpinellas: Artists bringing life back to house in Old Southeast

Artists bringing life back to house in Old Southeast

Robert Stackhouse and Carol Mickett want to open their new Old Southeast home to artists seeking work space.

By JON WILSON, Times Staff Writer

ST. PETERSBURG -- This can happen when you suddenly own a virtual castle:

It rains hard in the wee hours. A backyard section floods. Perhaps the water will seep into your new abode. Carol Mickett knew what she wanted to do.

"It's the first building she has owned," said Mickett's husband, Robert Stackhouse. "She wanted to go to Home Depot at 2 a.m. to get boots and shovels. She wanted to dig a trench."

Luckily, the waters didn't rage. But Mickett and Stackhouse, who in December bought a 25,000-square-foot, long-abandoned building on Lassing Park's lip in the Old Southeast, have plenty of other work.

For starters: Taking apart stoves and cleaning them. Scraping. Painting. Reglazing windows.

"We bought a bed and camped out," Mickett said.

The couple are taking the first steps toward what they -- and their neighbors -- believe will be a transformative project at 1499 Beach Drive SE, a Salt Creek marine district address most recently home to a Bama Seafood office building.

They'll live in the building and produce artwork there. Eventually, they hope to lease some of the space to other artists.

"We just see it as a real hub," Mickett said. "A sort of an art hub."

Stackhouse, 60, is a nationally known painter and sculptor with strong roots hereabouts.

"I think he's always felt very close to the area," said Peter Foe, collection curator at the University of South Florida Contemporary Art Museum.

Stackhouse is a distinguished alumnus of USF, and an archive of his prints is housed at the museum. He is finishing a stint at the University of Georgia, where he holds the Lamar Dodd Chair at the Lamar Dodd School of Art.

Mickett, 50, a former college professor, has a doctorate in philosophy. She said she reinvented herself as an artist, first acting, then writing and producing theater for women. She conducted an art-oriented radio show in Kansas City, Mo., where she also edited an art history journal. A foundation hired her to do a documentary movie about Stackhouse -- and that's when the couple met.

They married in 2000 aboard their sailboat Pet, a 38-footer moored in the Harborage.

They talked about living in New York but decided to look around their nautical neighborhood.

"We were gone maybe three minutes and we see this building," Mickett said.

The press of careers delayed making a deal. But the couple finally bought it in December. They paid $547,000, according to county records.

Neighbors like the prospect of life returning to a big, empty building. And plans for it seem to fit well with the Old Southeast's view of itself.

"Any time you can a take a (25,000-)square-foot building on the waterfront and bring artists into the neighborhood, that's a great thing," Old Southeast president Karl Nurse said.

"Our neighborhood has a feeling or an atmosphere, and our neighborhood is a prety artistic neighborhood, and so this just reinforces that." Nurse said.

Artist Lance Rodgers lives there as does playwright Bob Devin Jones. Thomas Wilkins, the former Florida Orchestra resident conductor, was known as "the people's maestro" for his warm relationship with the community. He lived in the Old Southeast until he became resident conductor for the Detroit Symphony last year.

Stackhouse and Mickett held an open house, inviting many neighbors. Others they met on walks.

Said Mickett: "We know everyone in the Old Southeast . . . ."

". . . and all their dogs' names," finished Stackhouse. The couple have two mixed-breed dogs, Salvadorina Dali and Hedy -- as in Lamarr.

The building's upstairs looks almost hotel-like, with rooms off a corridor. Downstairs is a cavernous area with more rooms, some of which are carpeted, and plenty of work space.

Besides serving as a seafood firm's office building, the building once was a corset factory and, word has it, a parachute factory during the World War II era.

The entryway has a ceiling at least 20 feet high. Stackhouse plans vertical paintings on the walls. There is a winding staircase.

"We sort of joked when it was a corset factory, the models must have sashayed down in their high heels," Stackhouse said.

The couple's plans do not require a zoning change. They do need an okay for an additional use in the current marine district designation. The city Planning Commission approved it earlier this year. The City Council is expected to grant final approval Thursday.