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Talk of the bay: Job loss tough to swallow for 100 at plant

By Times Staff
Published January 18, 2008

About 100 workers have lost their jobs at the Catalent Pharma Solutions plant in St. Petersburg. The facility off Roosevelt Boulevard was part of Cardinal Health until its sale in April to the Blackstone Group for $3.3-billion. Now part of Catalent, which has 10,000 employees at 30 locations, the St. Petersburg operation is the primary North American facility for making soft-gel capsules for drugs like Advil. A Catalent spokesman attributed the cuts to an unanticipated drop in demand for certain products. Before the cuts, the St. Petersburg plant had 600 employees.

Bank makes splash with Tampa arrival

Credit crunch, schmedit crunch. M&I Bank, which arrived in the Tampa Bay area in 2006 with the purchase of Gold Bank, announced plans Thursday to gobble market share from its competitors. First step in M&I's plans for domination: open a regional headquarters on the ninth floor of the 20-story tower at 501 E Kennedy Blvd. in Tampa. The building's new name is M&I Bank Plaza. M&I inherited 11 branches from Gold and is in a hunt for new locations all over southwest Florida. It plans to hire at least 50 people.

Out on a limb to fight Progress

Call him Larry "Butterfly" Tackett. An Orlando man threatened to camp out in a sycamore on his property to keep Progress Energy from cutting it down. The St. Petersburg-based utility has been conducting "vegetation management" programs along its transmission corridors, utility spokesman C.J. Drake said. Trees that grow too high or too close to the line can sag into the lines, causing a fire, or fall on the lines in severe weather, disrupting service, he said. "We don't cut down trees for the sake of cutting down trees. We're doing this to ensure reliability." Tackett built a platform in the tree and threatened to camp out there if utility workers returned with chain saws. It's a method made famous by California's Julia "Butterfly" Hill, who sat in a centuries-old redwood for more than two years. Reached by phone Thursday, Tackett said he hopes to preserve three trees, in exchange for an agreement to keep them well trimmed. Cutting them down would decrease the value of the home he and his wife bought less than two years ago. The publicity got Progress Energy's attention, and he has a meeting with officials Monday morning, he said. The platform in his tree remains untenanted, and Tackett said he's sleeping snugly in his own bed until then.

[Last modified January 17, 2008, 22:58:46]