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Developer floats Tampa-St. Pete ferry idea

By Times Staff
Published June 7, 2005

Buyers of Seaboard Square condos might get a perk beyond the health club and granite counter tops: a fast boat to carry them across Tampa Bay.

Roger Gatewood, developer of the project in Tampa's Channel District, has hired a marketing communications firm to study business prospects for a high-speed ferry connecting downtown Tampa and St. Petersburg.

People want to live in the emerging neighborhood so they can work and play without the grind of driving, he said. The service would use a catamaran able to hit speeds up to 40 mph and make the trip in 35 to 45 minutes, said Jeff Morrow, a senior account executive who is overseeing the study for St. Petersburg's Glasure Group.

The firm is conducting surveys to figure out the potential market for the cross-bay ferry. When that's finished in three to six months, Gatewood says, the firm will put a pencil to operating costs and recommend a course of action.

Plans call for Seaboard Square, formerly called Channelside Village, to have condos ranging from the high $200,000s to the high $400,000s, plus retail and office space and a 120-room hotel.

Shoppers with little children might have noticed a change at the supermarket recently: The powdered baby formula has been locked up.

The high-priced item has long been an attractive target for shoplifters, who typically resell it on the black market at a reduced price or use it to cut drugs.

Putting formula under lock and key "probably is a good deterrent, but it doesn't make the consumers very happy because it costs them extra time," said Mardi Mountford, executive director for the International Formula Council, an association of infant formula manufacturers.

Powdered formula typically costs $10 to $30 a can, depending on size and brand, and $75 and up for a case.

GET PAID TO GOOGLE: Google Inc., the most-used Internet search engine, is hiring temporary workers around the world to help the company refine search results. Google is looking for "quality raters" who will work from home and be employed by temporary staffing companies ABE Services and Kelly Services Inc., according to job listings appearing today on the company's Web site.

HARVARD DEAN GOES TO IDAHO: Harvard Business School dean Kim Clark was named Monday as president of Brigham Young University-Idaho. Clark, 56, will step down from his post at Harvard on July 31 to assume the leadership of the church-owned university in Rexburg, Idaho.

--Information from Times staff writer Steve Huettel, the Associated Press and Bloomberg News was used in this report.

[Last modified June 7, 2005, 02:15:48]