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White collar wave hitting Ybor

About 300 employees of two civil engineering firms, Heidt & Associates and WilsonMiller, will join a white-collar wave.

By JAMES THORNER
Published January 24, 2006

	[Times photo: Joseph Garnett Jr.]
	WilsonMiller will leave its Tampa office on Channelside Drive for renovated digs in the former Ybor City Brewing Co., boxed by 20th and 21st streets and 11th and 12th avenues. "Everybody's happy to be in an urban, mixed-use neighborhood," says Mike English, a WilsonMiller manager.

TAMPA - Ybor City's known as a great place to get a mixed drink, a Cuban sandwich and a tattoo, but the historic neighborhood is broadening its portfolio as a workplace for white-collar professionals.

Two of the region's biggest civil engineering firms are moving to Ybor with about 300 employees to fill some of the district's most conspicuously vacant properties.

WilsonMiller will shut down its main Tampa office on Channelside Drive for new digs in the former Ybor City Brewing Co. building, largely inactive since the microbrewer moved operations to Melbourne in 2003.

WilsonMiller's rival, Heidt & Associates, plans to build a $12-million, 55,000-square-foot office complex from the ground up at 15th Street and Fifth Avenue, razing two small buildings in the process.

If construction ends in December as scheduled, Heidt will shift its 175 employees to Ybor from offices at Swann and Howard avenues.

The edgy neighborhood of restaurants, nightclubs and small cigar shops suits Heidt's business plans and the tastes of its employees, company president Bill Bahlke said.

When Heidt learned its Swann Avenue location was being sold to make room for housing, city officials lobbied the company not to decamp to the suburbs. Bahlke was glad to comply.

"We were looking for a location that would allow us to stay in the city and bring us to an area we feel is being revitalized," Bahlke said.

"Our employees are aggressive, young professionals who would not fit in very well on a plot somewhere near U.S. 301."

Similar concerns are pulling WilsonMiller farther north into the Cuban-flavored quarter from the Channelside district.

The company is spending about $3-million refurbishing the 35,000-square-foot old brewery in time for the May move-in. Also known as the Seidenberg Cigar Factory, it's a 111-year-old, three-story brick structure between 20th and 21st streets and 11th and 12th avenues.

With its surveying trucks racing to and fro and clients dropping by frequently, WilsonMiller preferred a low-rise building with great access to Interstate 4 about a block away. The company signed a 10-year lease with brewer Humberto Perez.

"Everybody's happy to be in an urban, mixed-use neighborhood," said Mike English, a WilsonMiller manager.

Law firms, advertising agencies and architects have been trickling into the neighborhood largely built on the back of the 19th and early 20th-century cigar industry.

Ybor's modern reputation has suffered from its raucous nightlife marked by sporadic but well-publicized brawls, stabbings and shootings. It's that reputation Ybor boosters hope to dispel with the flood of new office workers from prestigious firms.

Deanne Roberts, who moved her advertising and public relations operation to Ybor in March, vouches for an improvement in the area. It's not just the offices but the new apartments and townhomes that let professionals walk to work.

"It's about keeping the creative staff happy and stimulated, and the environment has definitely done that for us," said Roberts, being paid by the city to help spread the message.

The engineering firms are the second wave of office workers washing into Ybor.

Kforce, a professional staffing firm, brought hundreds of employees to its headquarters on Palm Avenue, built in 2000. Perched on the western edge of Ybor near Nebraska Avenue, Kforce offices look like a compound awash in low-income, subsidized housing.

Kforce's "inner-city campus approach" from an earlier era of redevelopment has given way to Heidt's and WilsonMiller's immersion in the neighborhood, said Tom Keating, president of the Ybor City Chamber of Commerce.

Heidt employees will use the city's 15th Street parking garage directly across the street. WilsonMiller benefits from the brewery's 130 parking spaces behind a wrought-iron fence.

"The engineering firms want the access on the street and want to be engaged in the community," Keating said.

Both companies have thrived in the most recent real estate boom, laying out several thousand-home subdivisions, designing shopping malls and scoring urban planning contracts.

Such is the demand for its services, WilsonMiller's local office has grown from 43 to 125 employees since 2002.

English suggests his employees should pour tens of thousands of dollars a year into Ybor's restaurant row. As for the company's impact on the district's rowdy nightlife, English is hedging his bets.

"Maybe our younger employees," he said.

--James Thorner can be reached at thorner@sptimes.com or 813 226-3313.

[Last modified January 24, 2006, 00:55:20]