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Pasco is not yet Starbucks' cup of teaBy JENNIFER GOLDBLAT © St. Petersburg Times, published February 19, 2001 I recently asked a Starbucks Coffee executive about the company's prospects in Pasco County. "Pasco? Love it," he said. "Great Greek salads. Have one every time I go to our new store up there." Hmmmmm. Greek salads? I politely said that the salads and store he covets are both in Tarpon Springs, in northern Pinellas County. Turns out he wasn't even sure what a Pasco was. While local business leaders would like nothing better than to see a blurring of the Pasco-Pinellas county line, particularly in the eyes of one of America's hottest corporations, the executive's blunder only reflected the assertion of local real estate brokers: that this phenomenon hasn't happened yet. There wasn't exactly a stampede of name-brand, upscale eateries and stores into Pasco in anticipation of the Suncoast Parkway opening. Certainly nothing like the stampede of housing developers who have applied for tens and thousands of building permits. They bet that once that 42-mile ribbon of toll road opened, putting the airport and all of Tampa Bay's amenities within a 30-minute drive, people would seek a more affordable quality of life up here. That's not to say that the retail world's marquee names won't get here eventually. If the old credo "retail follows the rooftops" holds true, the Starbucks and Barnes & Nobles of the world will arrive once the younger, wealthier crowd unpacks its bags. It's just going to take some time, experts say, for the first upscale retailer to arrive. It was just two years ago that Saks Fifth Avenue landed in Tampa. The arrival of an upscale retailer makes a statement about what local people like and can afford. Perhaps that statement is just as important to creating an image of a place as changing demographics are. Some business leaders in my former hometown, where there was an active debate about whether or not there were enough locals to support a Nordstrom, sheepishly admitted way off the record that they lived in a "Sears kind of town." They alternately called it (in a whisper) a "hot-dog-and-hamburger kind of town." The region also had one of the largest per capita concentrations of Hooters in the chain. You get the idea. According to the National Automobile Dealers Association, Florida is an Oldsmobile kind of town. Turns out more of the soon-to-be-extinct cars are sold here every year than in any other state. With all due respect to my boss (a very spry Olds owner), Oldsmobile customers apparently tend to be, among other things, old. An image can be a hard thing to shake -- and important in the eyes of large retailers who are risking their bottoms and bottom lines by making an investment in an area. Legend has it that McDonald's spends gazillions each year researching where to put its stores, and that Wendy's just waits until McDonald's has made that decision and sets up across the street. The moral of the story is that some retailers have big coattails. If a blue-chip name decides to take a step out onto the edge, to take a chance on a demographic, its competitors are likely to follow, either because they want to soak up some of the drive-by traffic, or because they just want to keep up with the Joneses, er, the McDonald's. Pasco didn't become a chain-restaurant kind of town until 1976, when Red Lobster stepped onto the edge of U.S. 19. Bob Gomez, one of the developers who brought a Wal-Mart supercenter to Pasco, said that when he first considered bringing Blockbuster Video stores to the county in the mid '80s, Pasco seemed, well, like it was full of Oldsmobile owners. That has changed, and now the county has a handful of them. Simon Property Group, the world's largest shopping center developer, recently sank $9-million into renovating Gulf View Square and getting hip retailers like the Gap and Pacific Sunwear to set up shop there. A handful of mall developers are sniffing around the county for a place to put Pasco's second regional mall, but the local real estate brokers who say that's the case say it's too early to utter their names. It's still too early for Starbucks as well. After I explained to the Starbucks exec that Pasco wasn't a new generation of frappucino, that this toll road was about to open, the population expected to boom and grow younger, his interest was piqued. Starbucks is going to focus on Hillsborough and Pinellas counties for now, because "that's where Starbucks customers are telling us that we need to be," he said, but as the company grows, he admitted, "Pasco would at some point be a logical place for us to go."
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