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Plates are full for trio in the spotlight

By ROBERT TRIGAUX, Times Business Editor
Published December 2, 2007

Everybody has their own Big 3.

Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin. Tinker, Evers and Chance. Britney, Paris and Lindsay.

Well, here's our current Big 3 of Florida folks who find themselves confronting three business challenges.

Meet Kalt, Sink and Allen.

Most of you are not yet familiar with Michael Kalt, but it's a name we'll hear more about in the coming months.

Formally, Kalt is the Tampa Bay Rays' senior vice president of development and business affairs. Informally, he's the Ivy Leaguer/Harvard Law degree guy with New York City roots the Rays chose to lead their efforts both for a new downtown St. Petersburg baseball stadium and a redevelopment of the Tropicana Field acreage into new stores, housing - and a new source of city taxes to help pay for a Rays waterfront relocation.

Kalt brings Big Apple experience as a scrapper for sports stadiums and redevelopment. You know the Sinatra tune - if he can make it there, he'll make it anywhere. When New York City and Tampa Bay were vying to become host city of the 2012 Olympics, Kalt was an economic developer for New York's mayor.

Back then, plans called for new stadiums for the New York Jets in Manhattan and the New York Mets in Queens, and a Brooklyn arena for the New Jersey Nets.

"This is uncharted territory for us," Kalt said at the time, noting how long it was since a stadium had been built in New York City.

Now watch Kalt leverage those years of packaging redevelopment and new stadiums as the complex Rays deal unfolds.

Sink - the second name of the trio - is Florida Chief Financial Officer Alex Sink. A former banker, Sink oddly finds herself protecting public funds from a nasty bank run.

A state-managed fund for local government deposits is in trouble. Its "depositors" Florida counties and cities are spooked by reports that some of what the fund itself invested in, namely mortgage- and housing-related securities, have soured. Depositors want their money back all at once. The fund can't deliver. So the state has frozen withdrawals until it can figure out a fix.

Imagine Alex Sink as banker Jimmy Stewart confronting that bank run in the movie It's a Wonderful Life.

No. 3 in the trio: James Allen, chief executive of the Seminole Indian Tribe's vast gambling operations, including the recent $985-million deal for Hard Rock International. That purchase, and a new agreement with the state of Florida, sets the stage for Allen to prepare the Seminoles' already insanely profitable casino business for blast-off.

Despite diversification, the Seminoles still get 90 percent of their revenues from gambling.

Kalt, Sink and Allen. Maybe not Winston Churchill's tier, but our Big 3 have their hands full.

Robert Trigaux can be reached at trigaux@sptimes.com or (727) 893-8405.

[Last modified November 30, 2007, 22:22:50]