Does your building offer this?

By JAMES THORNER
Published November 26, 2006

After pumping dumbbells, shower up and grab a cup of Starbucks at the coffee bar. Before heading back to work, tuck in a tomato mozzarella Angus burger at a cafe hung with big-screen TVs.

Just another 9-to-5 grind at Tampa's Renaissance Park, a Henderson Road office complex.

It's more buttoned down at Park Tower in downtown Tampa. Wood paneling befitting the Brady Bunch's den adorns the lobby. The health club with the penthouse view shut long ago. It has a deli on the ground floor and a barber on the sixth, but you can't take Latin dance classes over lunch.

Welcome to a short course in newer "class A" office buildings vs. older "class B" buildings.

I'm here not to bury Park Tower but to praise Renaissance Park. (My building's biggest perk is a Coke machine that snatches quarters like a Reno slot machine.)

Working at Renaissance places you atop the pamper pyramid. Tennis, basketball and racquetball courts vie with walking trails tracing the 71-acre campus. Baristas sling gourmet coffee beside a game room with pool tables and air hockey. In a health club, Holly, Liz and Nakreshia lead cardio kickboxing.

If it's any consolation to Park Tower, its tenants probably have fewer distractions, if you discount the views from its 35 stories. And the Marie Antoinette treatment doesn't come cheap. Renaissance charges about $25 a square foot vs. Park's $18.50.

Park Tower owners plan to strip the wood paneling as part of renovations that include scouring bird droppings from its upper stories. Yet, even the fowls appear less foul at Renaissance. One of the first signs that greets visitors to the park: "Duck Crossing."

Even Daffy goes first class.

[Last modified November 25, 2006, 20:49:08]