Think a bit before grabbing that pen
By SUE CARLTON
Published January 23, 2008
Admittedly, one of the least attractive spots in Tampa - and we have some contenders - has to be the clog of industrial ugliness south of those nice brick buildings that make up Ybor City, near the Crosstown Expressway and busy Adamo Drive.
That area - and Tampa in general - got a potential economic boost last year when the City Council voted 6-1 to welcome Swedish furniture giant Ikea, which plans to open a 350,000-square-foot store on a 29-acre site in 2009, bringing 400 jobs with it.
If Ikea still sounds like a cell phone company to you, think modern, sleek and utilitarian furniture, cheap prices and devoted fans. In November, people camped out in tents for the opening of an Orlando store. The average Ikea shop generates $100-million in yearly sales and brings in up to 25,000 people a day on weekends.
What's more, officials in other cities - Atlanta and Tempe, to name two - have said Ikea's arrival was good news for them, economics-wise. Around here, there's also a positive for those of us who prefer urban infilling to more malls built out in the 'burbs.
So overall, this was good news, right?
Well, about that 6-1 vote.
On the lonely end was Linda Saul-Sena, veteran council member and avowed greenie. While Saul-Sena has said she is a fan and an Ikea shopper, she also called the 1,615-space parking lot for the Tampa project "a sea of asphalt ... acres and acres and acres of heat-producing asphalt."
Still, leaders from nearby neighborhoods liked the idea of Ikea moving in. And Saul-Sena's fellow council members considered the overall good of the project and voted thusly.
Which of course, Saul-Sena took gracefully and moved on, right?
Uh, to use the vernacular of the 12-year-old she was apparently channeling when she recently penned a particular missive to Ikea: not.
Saul-Sena's letter, typed up on City Council stationery and dated last month, complains of the planned project's 1970s "cookie-cutter template," lack of shade and other issues.
"The structure is a big box, period," she wrote.
Okay, so she wanted to take one last shot, even though the project is, well, technically, already approved. Fine. She had to ask one more time for it to plant petunias in a pigpen, so to speak. And, hey, who's against greening up new buildings these days?
Then came the perplexing part, where a savvy and sophisticated longtime politician -one who deserves some props for her devotion to environmental and historic preservation causes over the years - showed the maturity of the aforementioned middle schooler.
"I will take this case to the public via YouTube videos of your site and embarrass you," the councilwoman vowed, "if you are unwilling to come up with a better plan."
Her threat was embarrassing enough to send the city's economic development guy scrambling with a followup letter assuring Ikea the already-approved project still has "our very strong and enthusiastic support."
A postscript: Saul-Sena has long been rumored to be a contender for mayor. If so, she might want to think about Tampa's image overall the next time she gets a whim to pick up a pen and write something with the potential to embarrass not just herself but her city as well.