By ROBERT TRIGAUX, Times Business Columnist
Published July 15, 2005
""King Corona is a dazzling weekly crime drama full of Florida scenery and local Mafia history that does for the Tampa Bay area what Miami Vice did for South Florida in the 1980s. Only better."
Imagine a top TV critic writing such a glowing review of a new TV drama series filmed on location right here in the Tampa Bay area and in a newly renovated TV studio complex in West Tampa.
That's the bold and not-so-farfetched dream of George Cornelius, chief executive of a media production company called Tampa Digital Studios.
Cornelius is behind a plan to develop a fictional television series - one working title is King Corona - about organized crime in Tampa and has teamed up with local Cigar City Mafia author Scott Deitche to lend ideas and local history to the project.
Cornelius also is behind a push to acquire and convert the historic and vacant 80,000-square-foot Fort Homer Hesterly Armory building in West Tampa into an A-to-Z film production studio. The armory, built in 1941, is where Elvis Presley played in 1956 and former President John F. Kennedy spoke in 1963, four days before he was shot in Dallas.
The goal is to turn the armory into a studio facility that woul d anchor the metro area's eager but decentralized film industry.
It's one of more than a dozen proposed uses for the armory that range from an ice skating rink or community center to retail stores or - what else? - condos. The city of Tampa will formally review the various proposals on behalf of the National Guard, which owns the property. A final choice will be picked by a committee this year or in early 2006.
"Why us? Because our plan would create jobs," Cornelius said during a recent tour of the armory. "Tampa has a large creative industry here and a need to keep it growing."
Cornelius also wants Tampa, never sharply in focus to most of America, to gain a better national identity. He thinks a dramatic TV show based here would help.
Hey, if the popular CSI TV crime drama can boost Las Vegas the way Miami Vice once defined Miami, why not Tampa?
Tampa Digital Studios is not alone in its quest. Its pursuit of the armory has the blessing of other businesses in the film production industry here. And the company is supported by Krista Soroka, Hillsborough County's film commissioner, and Jennifer Parramore, film commissioner for Pinellas County.
"Any time you can grow the film infrastructure in this area, the industry will benefit," Soroka says. She is encouraged by the Legislature's decision this spring to quadruple to $10-million the state economic incentives available to moviemakers filming in Florida.
Parramore, county film commissioner since the early 1990s, agrees. The landmark, 64-year-old armory could act as a magnet for a film industry spread across the Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater metro area.
"What George envisions (at the armory) is room for his business to grow, studios to rent and space for editing and recording, digital design and audio, Internet development, a lab for schools and one central place for costumes and makeup and lighting and grips," Parramore said.
"To get all those related services in one central location is cool and a very positive thing."
Case in point. When the movie The Punisher was being shot in Tampa in 2003, one scene of a dingy apartment was shot in Cruise Terminal 6 near the Port of Tampa. Because the building's ceiling was too low, the director was limited in shooting scenes.
In the middle of the Fort Homer Hesterly Armory is a cavernous, 25,000-square-foot room complete with a 35-foot ceiling that could be carved up for studio space. Parramore said this metro region could support one or two large film studios and one or two smaller studios.
Cindy Miller, Tampa's director of business and housing development, expects a formal proposal soliciting the best use for the armory to come out this fall. The coordination of the armory with the National Guard is slow, she says, because there are different parts of the property with different roles, and because the National Guard is focused heavily on its commitments in Iraq.
Whatever the armory becomes, it will require extensive renovation.
Tampa Digital Studios' bread-and-butter work ranges from making clever ads for such clients as Medical Hair Restoration in Maitland to producing the hip video that recently helped convince the NFL to bring the Super Bowl back to the bay area in 2009.
The company is taking a leadership role in an effort to make the film and media industry a more potent piece of the area economy.
Cornelius, 55 and a Vietnam veteran, worked for Union Carbide in New York making safety and training films. He came to Tampa in 1984. Cypress Productions, a production company he ran, was acquired by another local firm.
Cornelius took the CEO reins at the private, five-employee Tampa Digital Studios in 1996. The company now has 30 full-time employees - considered large in the media production industry here - and vastly expanded its range of media skills. The business is profitable, Cornelius says.
While movies like The (underwhelming) Punisher typically draw the most media attention, the vast bulk of film and media business in the Tampa Bay area is made up of business advertising and infomercials.
A few specialty cable shows, including Truck Universe and Two Guys Garage on the Speed Channel, are produced locally.
Still, the area has its share of film credits. Tampa was used extensively in 1992 in the filming of Burt Reynolds' Cop and a Half. A few films including K-19: The Widowmaker and Carlito's Way filmed minor scenes in Tampa. St. Petersburg appeared prominently in the 1985 movie Cocoon. The 1996 TV drama, Second Noah, was about a Tampa family.
Tampa Digital Studios thinks the consistent popularity of crime-related TV dramas and Tampa's colorful Mafia past could make a winner of King Corona. The show's chief character is a law enforcement officer. Project consultant Deitche, the Cigar City Mafia author who works days as an environmental scientist for Pinellas County, likes the show's working title.
"King Corona is a type of cigar, and King is one of the major characters," Deitche says. "And it is the name of a cigar store in Tampa."
Deitche's book details the rise of the Tampa Mafia from the days of the popular gambling game bolita played by cigar factory workers and the power of the Trafficante family to the more modern tales of area corruption.
To say the least, Tampa boasts a rich trove of possible plot lines and colorful locations for a fictional crime drama. Ever since Tampa Digital Studios said it would make a Mafia series in Tampa, the company has been barraged by local people - judges, lawyers, bankers, Mafia figures and family members - eager to share their tales.
Cornelius says his company has no illusions about selling a crime drama on its own, or about acquiring the armory without a convincing sales pitch to the city. Tampa Digital Studios is searching for the right partner to help market the show, one Cornelius stresses is not like The Sopranos, to network television or a cable station. And the company is lining up industry partners to bolster its armory proposal.
Surely Cornelius can make some offers they can't refuse.
