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By CARRIE JOHNSON, Times Staff WriterAs an initiative begins to bring more commerce to the area, a few call it insulting, even detrimental.
ST. PETERSBURG - From her pink concrete-block house, Willie Mae Davenport has watched the bulldozers and construction crews across the street erecting the skeleton of a grocery store.
Where there was once bare dirt, there is now a parking lot and buildings covered with scaffolding at the corner of 18th Ave. S and 22nd Street.
With only about two months before the opening of Sweetbay Supermarket, the only chain grocery store in central Midtown, Davenport said she can hardly wait until she can walk across the street to buy paper towels, juice and fresh vegetables.
"It will be so much more convenient," said Davenport, 46. "It's really what this community needs. You get more businesses here, it will improve the area."
But not everyone in Midtown, the 5.5-square mile area mostly south of Central Ave., shares Davenport's view. And now the project has become an issue in the race for the District 6 City Council seat.
While city officials proudly point to the supermarket and a new SunTrust bank as signs of progress in the economically struggling area, two candidates have publicly proclaimed the development a detriment to the community.
Dwight "Chimurenga" Waller, president of the International People's Democratic Uhuru movement, and Maria Scruggs-Weston, a former state law enforcement officer, have both criticized the supermarket and the bank.
Waller called the projects "insubstantial" and said they won't financially benefit African-Americans. Scruggs-Weston agreed, calling the projects "insulting, shameful and critical" at a recent candidate forum.
There are five people running for the seat in District 6, which includes part of downtown, Coquina Key, Old Southeast as well as Midtown. In addition to Waller and Scruggs-Weston, they are Earnest Williams, the incumbent; Darden Rice, a Sierra Club organizer; and Cassandra Jackson, a former Pinellas County Housing Authority board member.
To the city officials who helped launch the development, the criticism is surprising. Deputy Mayor Goliath Davis III, who is in charge of Midtown and helped bring both the bank and the supermarket to the area, said Midtown residents insisted they wanted those basic services.
"We asked the community what they wanted," Davis said. "I didn't just wake up one morning and decide that Midtown needed a grocery store and a bank."
At the request of Mayor Rick Baker, Davis conducted a series of meetings in 2002 with Midtown residents, asking them how they would define economic development in their neighborhoods.
They demanded basic services. There was only one grocery store within Midtown's boundaries, a Winn-Dixie on the northern edge. There was no full-service post office and no bank.
The lack of amenities is even more inconvenient considering many in Midtown don't own cars and are forced to take a bus or a taxi for their most basic errands.
But it wasn't easy to entice business to Midtown. Lower income levels made traditional development projects unworkable, and city officials couldn't interest grocery chains without offering economic incentives.
In October 2003, after the city bought 3.7 acres for development, Baker and Davis announced a deal to bring a $4.9-million shopping center anchored by a Kash n' Karry grocery store to the northeast corner of 18th Ave. S and 22nd Street. Kash n' Karry later shifted its focus and renamed itself Sweetbay Supermarkets.
In February, more than 300 people showed up to watch the groundbreaking of Tangerine Plaza Shopping Center.
But Waller argued the project represents the increasing gentrification of Midtown that redirects money out of the community. He called it "capitalist extraction."
"The policy of the city is to bring white businesses closer to us, give them our money and let them walk away rich," Waller said. "They keep taking capital out in the form of our wages and our money and then nothing goes back in. We are not circulating that money in the African community because that money goes to white banks."
Waller said he's not opposed to having a chain grocery store and a bank in Midtown, but he wants them to be owned by members of the community.
Davis noted that the company developing Tangerine Plaza, Urban Development Solutions, is black-owned. The U.S. Postal Service also leases the property for the new post office at 1750 16th St. S from a black-owned company.
Scruggs-Weston said she doesn't think the city has gone far enough to spur economic revitalization in south St. Petersburg.
"I don't think that one grocery store, one post office and one bank is economic development," Scruggs-Weston said at a candidates forum at the Enoch Davis Center Thursday night.
But other candidates disagree.
Rice said she has gone door to door and talked to people during her campaign. She found almost unanimous support for the new development.
"It would be great if it was a black-owned bank," Rice said, "but until we get to that point, this development offers citizens the convenience they most definitely want."
Williams said Tangerine Plaza is just one part of a larger movement toward revitalizing the area. He points to the new James Weldon Johnson Branch Library, the refurbished Manhattan Casino and the new Johnnie Ruth Clarke Health Center as other examples of progress in Midtown.
In all, more than $100-million in federal, state and local money was spent in Midtown over the past four years, Williams said.
If internal polling conducted by Mayor Baker's re-election campaign is correct, Scruggs-Weston and Waller's message may not be connecting with voters. The poll found overwhelming support for the steps the city has made to help Midtown. More than 80 percent of minority voters and two-thirds of all voters think Baker has done a good job there.
Count Ali Oliver among the supporters.
Oliver, 47, is the manager of the Blue Nile Food Store, 1600 18th Ave. S. While it's likely Sweetbay may steal some of their customers, Oliver said the development will ultimately help the entire area.
"We really need something here," Oliver said. "It will be good when people don't have to drive out of their neighborhood for basic things. It will give them more respect for their home."
Carrie Johnson can be reached at 727 892-2273 or cjohnson@sptimes.com