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A 'Frosty' welcome

This time the roly-poly man of snow didn't come to join children at play. No, he came to drive the vultures away.

By ALEXANDRA ZAYAS
Published December 16, 2005

	[Times photo: Ken Helle]
	A Florida turkey vulture doesn't seem detered by Frosty the Snowman as it lands on the closed Floridan Hotel in downtown Tampa. The attorney for the owner of the aging building says the snowman was put there to scare away the birds from roosting.

TAMPA - A familiar face appeared over downtown Tampa some time after Thanksgiving, high above Florida and Cass avenues, with a corncob pipe and a button nose and two eyes made out of coal.

Frosty the Snowman was a fairy tale they say, but it must have taken more than magic to strap two big, inflatable snowmen to the 19th-story windows of the historic Floridan Hotel, which has been boarded up since 1989.

From the steps of the Sam Gibbons Courthouse across the street, men and women on federal business stopped this week to ponder just what the jolly, happy soul was doing on the ledge of a dilapidated hotel.

"It looks a little psychotic hanging out of the window like that," said Jon Jordan, a lawyer visiting from Miami. It called to his mind a controversial bound and gagged Santa Claus lawn decoration in Miami Beach.

Letter carrier Mike Laredo passes by the building on his mail route every day, but had never seen the snowmen. His idea was a bit less twisted.

"They're working on that building now, and the workers must have put it up in one of the windows as a Christmas decoration," Laredo said. "Maybe that was their way of saying "Hey, this is our Christmas' or something, you know?"

The real story is neither of those:

"He's scaring birds away, that's all he's doing," said Lisa Shasteen, an attorney for Floridan owner and developer Antonios Markopoulos.

The Clearwater developer bought the deteriorating hotel for $6-million in April, determined to pull off an ambitious project that frustrated five development groups over the past 18 years. He plans to turn it into an upscale boutique hotel.

Shasteen said vultures had flocked to the building for years and covered the interior with heaps of droppings. They're drawn to downtown Tampa in the winter to perch on its tall buildings and ride its strong thermal waves of hot air.

So far, she said, the scare-snows have earned their keep. Although a few birds still perch along the building's ledges, just above the snowman's head, most have decided to ride the thermals in another part of downtown. Lucky SunTrust building.

Either way, when the building restoration finally begins, the birds won't be part of the plan.

"Hopefully, they'll be history," Shasteen said.

Times staff writer Brady Dennis contributed to this report. Alexandra Zayas can be reached at 813 226-3354 or at azayas@sptimes.com

[Last modified December 16, 2005, 00:53:08]