Most of his financial tangle involves the renovation of a Temple Terrace apartment complex.
By STEVE HUETTEL and JEFF TESTERMAN
Published November 6, 2003
TAMPA - Gladstone A. Cooper is one of five Tampa Port Authority commissioners who this year will direct the use of more than $150-million in public funds.
But the 51-year-old owner and manager of low-income apartments has run into a thicket of problems over his personal and business finances.
Last month, a lender sued Cooper in Hillsborough County civil court to foreclose on his Temple Terrace home for failing to make payments on a line of credit. A credit card company won a court judgment last year seeking payment for nearly $2,800 in debts.
A half dozen creditors also have judgments or liens over money they claim they is owed for goods and services provided at a Temple Terrace apartment complex owned by one of Cooper's companies, Beresford Associates.
Beresford received approval for a $700,000 federal loan to rehabilitate Willow Oaks at Temple Terrace. But Hillsborough County, which administers the loan, has stopped making payments until a lien filed against Beresford last month is resolved.
Cooper says most of the debts stem from a cash crunch between the time Beresford bought the 116-apartment complex in 2000 and the county's approval of the loan last December. The project is on track, he said, and he and his companies do not have ongoing financial problems.
"We're working through issues that typically come up in business," Cooper said. "I made personal sacrifices that were difficult at the time and ... chewed up a significant amount of personal capital. The important thing is no one will go unpaid."
Gov. Jeb Bush appointed Cooper to the port board in 2001. A member of the Tampa Bay Black Republican Club, Cooper replaced the first African-American to serve as a port commissioner, Fassil Gabremariam, a Democrat.
Cooper has been one of the board's most vocal members. After he complained the port authority wasn't trying hard enough to give minority contractors a fair shake in bidding for contracts, the agency revamped its policies. More recently, Cooper blasted port tenants who criticized port authority officials for not listening to their concerns.
He also has grown as a local political player. Tampa mayoral candidate Frank Sanchez named Cooper last year as his campaign's finance co-chairman.
Cooper and his companies contributed more than $14,000 last year to state and local candidates and Republican organizations. That included $5,500 to the Republican Party of Florida. He and his companies also gave $1,500 to Hillsborough County Commissioner Pat Frank and $1,000 to Commissioner Thomas Scott, both Democrats.
Cooper moved to the Tampa Bay area from Miami in 1991. He took a job with the Tampa Housing Authority managing information systems, writing training manuals and grant applications.
The next year, he started his own company, Searchwell Thorne & Associates, to rehabilitate and manage low-income apartment complexes. The company's work on a church-affiliated complex in St. Petersburg drew the attention of federal housing investigators.
A report in 1997 by an inspector general for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development cited numerous technical problems with the management of Citrus Grove Apartments, particularly construction oversight fees charged by Searchwell Thorne. HUD ordered the company to pay back $120,454 it wasn't entitled to - or show how it was entitled to the money.
Searchwell appealed the findings. According to a HUD memo, Cooper threated to sue the agency and "meet with his congressman." HUD eventually withdrew the reimbursement request.
In 2000, Cooper and two partners created Beresford Associates and purchased the Temple Terrace complex, then called Ashley Club Apartments. The company applied to Hillsborough County for a 15-year federally funded loan to rehabilitate the apartments.
Beresford agreed to rent 90 percent of the apartments to low-income residents. Principal on the $700,000 loan would be due upon maturity, and interest - zero percent for five years and 3 percent annually thereafter - would be deferred until the 11th year.
County commissioners approved the loan in June 2001, and Beresford gave the county a schedule that called for completing renovations by the end of the year. But 15 months later, work hadn't begun.
Cooper says "a myriad of things" held up the project, including extensive requests for documentation among Beresford, the county and Beresford's original mortgage lender. County commissioners agreed to a new loan contract last December that expires Nov. 30.
But several creditors have surfaced claiming they were owed money for goods and services provided as much as 21/2 years ago. They include:
- General Electric, which claimed Beresford didn't pay for 20 refrigerators, 13 ranges and nine dishwashers delivered from March through June 2001. A judge granted a final judgment against Beresford for $15,833 in May.
- Century Maintenance, a supplier of apartment hardware and maintenance supplies. Century said it hadn't been paid by Beresford since July 2001 and won a final judgment of $7,443 against the company last month.
- Ard Distributors, an appliance distributor based in Miami. The company got a final judgment against Beresford for $4,106 in Miami-Dade County circuit court in December 2000.
Other companies filed liens, including Young Pest Control of Tampa. The company treated the apartments from January to April 2002, then canceled its contract because Beresford didn't pay a dime, said Gerald Travis, an official of the company.
Beresford paid $1,288 in August, he said. But that didn't cover the interest on the bill, the lien fee and contract cancellation penalty amounting to about $1,400. Cooper says Beresford doesn't owe anything to Young.
A lien filed Oct. 20 by a roofing subcontractor led the county to halt payments to Beresford. Suncoast Roofers Supply claimed it hadn't been paid $32,066 by Beresford or the prime roofing contractor, Quality Roofing of Florida.
Suncoast and Quality have since written the county that they were paid, said Frank Turano, fiscal services manager for the county's housing and community code enforcement department. But Suncoast won't remove the lien until its check clears, he said.
The county has paid Beresford about $250,000 of the loan, including all $164,966 for roofing the apartment buildings. But a $167,000 request and further payments are frozen until the dispute is settled, Turano said.
Cooper and a friend, Eva F. Josephs, were sued last month by Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems for missing payments on a loan since July 15. The two owe $60,139 in principal, plus interest and charges, according to the company, acting for Household Financial Services. It is asking a judge to foreclose on a Temple Terrace house jointly owned by Cooper and Johnson that is security on the loan.
Cooper disputes the amount due but said he's willing to pay off the entire amount once Household provides a corrected bill.
"I was very much aware the loan, but it just got away from me," he said. "All I'm going to do is pay it off."
