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Olympic leader seeks results
By WAYNE WASHINGTON © St. Petersburg Times, published January 3, 2001
Mom didn't help him load the family station wagon and drive him around the neighborhood. Instead, MacKinnon put the papers in a sack and rode his bike from house to house. Detroit readers were a picky lot. Cold and wind and snow were not acceptable excuses to miss a day, even if the delivery boy was only 10 years old. "It teaches you an awful lot at a young age," MacKinnon said. The most enduring lesson, he said, was the simplest: When you say you're going to do something, do it. Friends say MacKinnon has lived by that creed, and it's earned him respect in Tampa's business community. That respect has, in turn, led the local group bidding for the Olympic games, Florida 2012, to ask MacKinnon to chair its board of directors. MacKinnon, 60, was Florida 2012's treasurer. As chairman, he will replace John Sykes, the local businessman and philanthropist whose generosity is as well documented as his company's recent struggles. Sykes stepped down two weeks ago. Florida 2012 officials expect to have several board chairs in the years before learning whether their bid to host the games is accepted by the US Olympic Committee, which will make its decision in 2002, and by the International Olympic Committee, which will make the final choice three years later. In the next year, Florida 2012's leadership is key. That, Florida 2012 president Ed Turanchik said, is why having MacKinnon on board is a good idea. "There are a lot of people who say they're going to do something," Turanchik said. "But when Sandy says he's going to do something, he does it." MacKinnon has been involved in sports business ventures before. He was chairman of the Tampa Sports Authority during the stadium saga. He pushed for the sales tax that funded the construction of the stadium, and he helped craft the deal to keep the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in town to play in it. A significant number of Hillsborough residents did not want their tax money to be used for a stadium the Bucs would profit from, but MacKinnon saw it as a down payment on local prestige and unity you can't buy. He points to the strong support the team enjoys and the charitable actions of players such as Warrick Dunn and Derrick Brooks as proof that working to keep the team in town was a good idea."There were a lot of winners in that," he said. Politicians of every stripe have lined up behind the Olympic effort. Initially, however, the idea of bringing the games to Central Florida was nothing short of laughable. Laugh, in fact, is just what Tampa Mayor Dick Greco did when MacKinnon and Turanchik first explained the idea of bidding for the games. "He just about fell off his chair laughing," MacKinnon said. MacKinnon might have taken a more prominent role in Florida 2012 from the outset if not for the health problems of his wife, Ardis, who was battling breast cancer. The MacKinnons learned about the diagnosis shortly after returning from a trip to Bermuda, where they had celebrated their 30th wedding anniversary. Ardis MacKinnon had the same cancer that killed her husband's sister. After a long, painful fight, Ardis MacKinnon died in July 1998. MacKinnon says the slow pace of progress in fighting the disease is hard to take. "I'm still kind of angry about this," he said last week. Ardis MacKinnon's death was the third such blow her husband had endured over the years. In addition to the loss of her and his sister, there had been the loss ofhis father to a fatal heart attack at age 49 when MacKinnon was 18. "We never really got to develop that adult father-son bond that I'm sure would have been there," he said. MacKinnon's father had stressed to his children the importance of being involved in the community. He had worked his way up from selling pharmaceutical and surgical supplies to owning a company that sold such supplies. And he served on various community boards. MacKinnon started his own, similar path at Hillsdale College in Michigan. After graduating, he began a career at Yale Industrial Trucks, a Philadelphia company that sold, rented and repaired forklift trucks. He worked hard and traveled often, and became national sales manager for Yale. But during the 1982 recession, MacKinnon saw an opportunity in Tampa. With his own savings, he bought a struggling Yale operations center in Tampa. "I couldn't get any bank financing or anything," he said. He and Ardis vacuumed the floors. The company then employed 15 people and had annual sales of $1.8-million. Today, it employs 117 people and has annual sales of more than $30-million. MacKinnon has expanded Yale's presence to include distributorships in Orlando and Jacksonville and satellite offices in Ft. Myers, Port Charlotte, Tallahassee, Ocala and Daytona Beach. The success allowed the MacKinnons to prosper. They bought the Davis Islands home of Sam Wyche, the former Bucs coach. re than $30-million. MacKinnon has expanded Yale's presence to include distributorships in Orlando and Jacksonville and satellite offices in Ft. Myers, Port Charlotte, Tallahassee, Ocala and Daytona Beach. The success allowed the MacKinnons to prosper. They bought the Davis Islands home of Sam Wyche, the former Bucs coach. "He wanted to leave town and we put a deal together," MacKinnon said. MacKinnon, meanwhile, followed his father's example by immersing himself in community affairs. He became a member of the Brandon Rotary Club and served on Humana Hospital's board of trustees. He became a director of Fort Brooke Bank and a member of the Brandon Chamber of Commerce. In 1995, he was asked to join the Tampa Sports Authority. "He was always there," said Sue House, who served with MacKinnon on the Tampa Sports Authority. "He's not like one of these people who sits on a board just to have their name associated with it." MacKinnon said he likes the challenge of keeping several balls in the air at once. "I love being busy," he said. "It's kind of like a race car. A race car running at 190 mph is running at its peak performance. If you throttle it back to 120, it's not really running as well." Recent coverageJohn Sykes leaves Olympic post (December 16, 2000)
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