Columns

Design Tampa wants results, not just ideas

This summer, Forbes hit Tampa's hipsters where it hurts. It ranked 40 metro areas by their appeal to young professionals, and placed Tampa dead last.

By Christina Rexrode, Times Staff Writer
Published October 7, 2007

This summer, Forbes hit Tampa's hipsters where it hurts. It ranked 40 metro areas by their appeal to young professionals, and placed Tampa dead last.

Michael Peters, president of a small branding agency here called SPARK, didn't like how his hometown's cool factor had been bested by the likes of Norfolk, Va. So in short order, he helped launch Design Tampa (www.designtampa.com) to gather local creative classers and take a collective hack at the area's reputation as a repository for old people.

He's not the first person to realize that keeping and attracting young, educated workers is vital to the area's long-term economy. Creative TampaBay was formed in 2003 for exactly that reason. The next year, the chamber launched a young professionals group called Emerge Tampa. Similar groups have sprung up across the bay area.

Peters applauds those efforts.

"But that," he said, "is not what this is all about."

This week, from SPARK's sweet digs on Swann Avenue, Peters explained what Design Tampa is about: end results.

He doesn't want a gazillion members because the world isn't changed by committee. This isn't a networking group, or a forum for debate or a portal for publicizing fun events.

Rather, it's action-oriented, a to-do list of projects that will improve the quality of life here. Meetings won't be held, Peters said, unless there's a specific task to be accomplished. The group's first undertaking: helping city officials dream bigger for the Tampa Riverwalk - and convincing them that they should.

Peters said he wants the Riverwalk, on Hillsborough River, to be more than just the world's longest sidewalk. So Design Tampa created sketches for a media park there, with outdoor movies, food vendors, boat docks and Wi-Fi.

That's more extensive than what the city had planned, but Peters points to the Museum of Art as proof that city leaders can change their minds: Two years ago, when the mayor wanted to move the museum to the federal courthouse, the public disagreed and the idea was killed.

Peters, who worked in New York until 2001, fought stereotypes there that Tampa was nothing but strip clubs. Job recruits often tell him that they just don't want to move to Tampa.

So he keeps working. Design Tampa's go-getters have a few more ideas already.

[Last modified October 5, 2007, 23:03:40]