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A state Senate committee has taken $1.5-million planned for a health clinic in University North and will use it to raze an old hospital.
By AMY HERDY
© St. Petersburg Times, published April 16, 2000
UNIVERSITY NORTH -- Since 1996, local and state officials planned a million-dollar health clinic to serve the poor in the neighborhoods near the University of South Florida.
But money earmarked for the project has been diverted by the state Senate to instead tear down an old hospital next to Legends Field that stands in the way of a hoped-for Olympic aquatic center and parking for the baseball complex and nearby Raymond James Stadium.
Last week, the tug of war over the public funds had local and state officials crying foul.
"Our community needs this clinic and has worked diligently to plan for a model program," County Commission Chair Pat Frank wrote to the state legislature in a letter dated April 10. "Please restore the funds to make this vision a reality."
State Rep. Victor Crist, R-New Tampa, was outraged.
"I find it extremely horrific that anybody would even consider taking away the funding," said Crist, who spearheaded the effort to build the clinic. "Four years' worth of hard work and planning has gone into this model."
Meanwhile, the driving force behind the Tampa area's Olympic bid said he regrets initially supporting the demolition of the W.T. Edwards Tuberculosis Hospital if it meant jeopardizing other plans for the community.
"I didn't know there was a competition going on" for the funds, said Ed Turanchik, president and CEO of Florida 2012, the organization trying to secure the 2012 Summer Olympics. "We're not interested in taking money from an indigent health clinic to tear down a building."
Hillsborough County Health Department director Dr. Douglas Holt said the proposed clinic would be a public-private partnership.
"We would use our dollars to operate the clinic with a network of local doctors" from University Community Hospital, he said.
The county agreed to give $300,000 in community-development block grant money for the 10,000- square-foot clinic, and the state health department agreed to use $1.75-million for construction. The money was sitting in a health department trust fund reserve.
The legislature became involved, Holt said, because the law says any time a public health building is built, it must have state approval.
That approval was received in 1999, Holt said.
Then the plan briefly stalled when Crist and members of the University Area Civic Association decided land near the Safe Haven and University Area Community Center, on N 22 and N 23rd streets, would be more suitable than land the county was going to donate.
A deal was negotiated with the property owners, Holt said, and then the bottom fell out of the funding. Last month, he said, state health officials told him the senate had placed $1.5-million of the clinic's money on a budget to demolish the old tuberculosis hospital.
The move, Holt said, took everyone by surprise.
"We don't know how it got in there," he said of the senate's budget item. "It's not a department of health agency request. It's not a department of health building."
The building belongs to the state and has housed offices for the Department of Children and Families. A spokesman for the DCF could not be reached for comment.
The head of the senate committee that shifted the funds, Rep. Ron Silver, D-N. Miami Beach, could not be reached for comment.
Turanchik said that when discussing plans for an aquatic center, he talked with representatives from Hillsborough Community College, the Yankees and the Westshore Alliance.
Although it was understood the old building stood in the way, he said, he did not ask any of his lobbyists, who include former Florida secretary of state Jim Smith and his associate, Brian Ballard, to go after the health clinic's money.
Both Ballard and Smith also work for the Yankees. Neither they nor team owner George Steinbrenner could be reached for comment Friday.
Holt said he hoped legislators would change their minds, he said, and let go of the health clinic's funds.
"We're hoping some sensible heads will prevail, but maybe that's too optimistic," he said.
-- Amy Herdy can be reached at (813) 226-3474 or herdy@sptimes.com.