Out with the old
The 600 block of Central Avenue, relatively unchanged since its heyday, awaits major changes as eclectic shops are closed to make way for condos.
By MELANIE AVE
Published June 18, 2006
ST. PETERSBURG -- Betty Masar, queen of the block, waits for the rare customer inside a narrow storefront where hats line the walls on a downtown city street some call an eyesore.
Much of her kingdom, the 600 block of Central Avenue, has been conquered.
"Nothing's going on around here," she says. "I wish you could have seen it the way it was.''
Vacant stores flank her shop, Woodies Hat Box.
Customers have dwindled to just a few a day. When the sun goes down, the homeless take over the sidewalks and roofs.
The small, colorful shops on the eastern half of the block will be demolished to make way for shiny, new condominiums - part of downtown's westward-moving redevelopment. It's a scene played out in urban areas across the country as development takes hold and mom-and-pop shops give way to affluence.
Gentrification now rules.
The City Council approved much of the block's conversion to a 15-story retail and condominium project in April. The 108 units will sell for the high $200,000s to the mid $600,000s.
But the hat seller who doesn't wear hats and her neighbors say the project is killing the most character-laden block in the city, where in recent years, individually owned stores have sold bric-a-brac, antiques and secondhand goods.
Many of the stores from 601 to 659 Central have already relocated or gone out of business in anticipation of the $35-million project.
Not Betty. Not quite yet.
But the most veteran shop owner still open on Central Avenue will go soon and close what may be the city's last traditional hat store.
She's selling off all her hats and taking her jewelry on the weekends to the 49th Street flea market.
The life she's known for more than 50 years is ending. While she's not too happy about all this change, she wonders if this may be the best thing ever.
"I'm 73 years old,'' she says with a North Carolina accent. "I have diabetes. My ankles swell like gourds.''
***
For years, long before Central Plaza off 34th Street and then the Tyrone Square mall area became commerce king, downtown St. Petersburg was the place to shop. Central Avenue was the hub.
John Crislip's grandfather bought the corner property at Sixth Street in the 1920s and later built the Crislip Arcade just to the west.
Indeed the city report on the condominium project said the block "is nearly unchanged from the time when Central was the city's main shopping corridor."
"There was a hat shop, a dress shop, an optometrist, a bakery, a drugstore lunch counter," recalled Marion Minshall Lucciola, 79, whose family operated Minshall the Florist on the block from the 1930s to 2005.
"Saturday nights were really great. Everybody came down to do their grocery shopping at the Piggly Wiggly across the street. The green benches were full."
But most of the benches were removed. Shoppers went elsewhere, store owners retired or died, and the business culture changed on the 600 block.
Building rents declined. Resale stores took hold in the last 15 years.
Shoppers, including a celebrity or two like Courteney Cox, visited Central Avenue to pick up unusual items and furniture. Deal-hunting tourists made it a point to wander in and out of stores.
"I call them fiddlers," Masar said. "They'd fiddle in and fiddle out."
But the folksy stores with spotty hours stood in marked contrast to the crispness of BayWalk, the entertainment and retail complex that opened five years ago a few blocks to the northeast.
The complex kick started downtown's resurgence and brought millions of people downtown.
Condominiums rose along Beach Drive and began their march westward. Two projects, 1010 Central and the Arts Village, will be built just west of the 600 block.
Crislip, a 77-year-old urban planner in Tampa, put the 600 Central buildings he inherited on the market.
The roofs leaked like faucets. Termites ate away at the wood.
A common saying on the block is if the termites stopped holding hands, the buildings would fall down.
"The property has become more and more difficult to maintain," Crislip said. "When property is over 80 years old, it's really obsolete."
It was clear to many downtown observers, the 600 block was rising in value. The small stores seemed out of place.
When word of a pending sale between Crislip and his sister Marion Graves to the real estate development company Mount Laurel, N.J., Terra Enterprises leaked to the Central shop owners one year ago, few were surprised.
They had heard rumors for years.
"It's an evolutionary kind of thing,'' said Don Shea, director of the St. Petersburg Downtown Partnership. "The uses that evolved in that block in the last few years are not the highest and best."
***
One recent morning inside Woodies Hat Box, Rosa Jones shopped for a hat.
"I thought you were gone," the St. Petersburg woman told Betty Masar as she turned over a burgundy hat with puffy black netting on the front.
"Almost," Masar replied.
"How you been?" Jones asked.
"Emotionally drained," Masar said.
"Come to the big mirror honey," she said, helping Jones get a better view of the hat on her head.
Jones has shopped at Woodies for decades. She said Masar's mother, Hurlie "Woodie" Woodruff, taught her how to wear hats. She has so many she's not sure the exact count.
"Let me see what I can do on that one," Masar said as Jones looked for a price. "You know, I'm selling dirt cheap."
When she told Jones she'd sell it for $20, her mouth flew open.
"Oh my God!" Jones said.
Jones said she's not sure where she will buy her hats for church now.
"It's like she's supposed to be here forever," Jones told a visitor.
"What are we going to do without you?" she asked Masar.
"I don't know, honey," Masar said, resting her hands on the counter.
"I don't feel dressed without your hats."
Before Jones left, the two women, customer and store owner, hugged.
"Look," said Anna Hardwick, 60, who was visiting Masar. "You don't get that kind of service everywhere."
Hardwick owned Dixiana's clothing and gift store in the 600 block for about three years. She recently moved further east to 449 Central.
She misses the old block and wishes the buildings could have been renovated so the individual stores could remain.
"I think the charm of the little stores, even though they're old, supply comfort to the people here," she said. "New is good, but it's not the best.
"If you take the heart out of the city, it'll become dead, unattractive. Maybe I'm just getting older but I don't like when things change.''
***
The modern-looking condominiums will be called the Residences at 601 Central. At the city's request, they will have a row of retail shops on the bottom level with a large sidewalk overhang.
The building will also have an arcade area to replicate the existing Crislip Arcade that will be torn down.
"It's a good plan," said city zoning official John Hixenbaugh. "It's a balancing issue to try and keep the charm and balancing the new things as well."
Gerald Pacella, chairman of Terra Enterprises Florida, or TEF, said his company will purchase the eastern half of the block at the end of the month for an undisclosed amount.
He said efforts to buy three adjacent properties, including a row of shops owned by the Rutland family, and the State Theater were unsuccessful.
After the property exchanges hands, the few remaining tenants, like Betty Masar, will be given formal notice to vacate.
Pacella said construction drawings will then be completed, cost estimates nailed down, a sales office set up and units sold.
Once the city is assured the company has its financing in order, it will approve the permits. And demolition can begin.
Pacella hopes construction will start in a year.
He insists the condominiums are more than speculation.
"It's not a fringe project," he said. "It's too good a location and too good a project in too good a city.''
***
One morning last week, Joy McGhee, 45, sold hot dogs from her stand on the corner of 6th Street and Central Avenue, where she's been for about a decade. She recently put her house on the market and plans to move to Arizona to get away from what she believes is the Fort Lauderdale-like transformation of St. Petersburg.
"It's horrible,'' she said. "It's not a quaint little town anymore.''
She paused.
"Come on, squirrel," she said, grabbing peanuts from a can and walking toward the tree. "Here you go. Come on."
One squirrel inched down from the tree. That's Lucy, she said. The other one is Ricky.
While the condominiums will have retails shops on the bottom level, McGhee believes they will be occupied by frou-frou stores that won't appreciate the smell of garlic and onion from her hot dog stand.
"If I wanted a big city," McGhee said, "I could have moved to Miami. There's just not room for the little guy anymore."
***
Inside Woodies Hat Box, Betty Masar packed two full display cases of jewelry and hats into boxes. As she likes to say, the fur was flying.
She guesses she will close the store sometime in July.
The widow and grandmother has seen a lot of change out her two plate glass windows on Central. She doesn't count one more pricey condominium project as the proper development of downtown.
"If you want people downtown, go after the average people," Masar said. "They're the ones who spend the money."
Still, Masar, an optimist, looks forward to not coming to work every day. At the flea market, she'll sell her jewelry on the weekend with the help of her two daughters.
She'll miss her customers.
"I had a customer who started to cry when I told her I was closing," Masar said. "Another customer said if you close down, I'll spank you."
She laughed.
"I love this little shop," she said.
Another customer came in and stared inside the jewelry cases filled with silver necklaces, amber bracelets and turquoise earrings.
"You've got the most awesome jewelry," the shopper said.
"Well did you see the cutest thing in the shop that isn't for sale?" Masar asked, leading the woman to a tiny rabbit cage in the corner where her dog Daisy, a long-haired Chihuahua and rat terrier mix, reclined.
"She goes to work with me every day."
Masar pulled out a tiny rhinestone-encrusted tiara with holes for Daisy's ears to poke through.
Here in the 600 block of Central Avenue, royalty runs in the family.
Melanie Ave can be reached at 727 893-8813 or mave@sptimes.com.