Up from the ashes

On May 19, 2000, Ybor City had a once-in-a-century fire. But the area has recovered, and lasting effects are few.

[Times photo: Skip O'Rourke] Now called Camden Ybor City, the apartment complex (shown burning to the ground in photo below) is near complete, and 12 people already live there. The project is considered pivotal to Ybor City's revitalization.

[Times files: 2000]

By ANGELA MOORE

© St. Petersburg Times, published May 13, 2001

TAMPA -- Only a keen eye would notice the blackened trunks of the palm trees in the median, the only visible remnants along Palm Avenue of the massive fire last year that deferred the dreams of a residential Ybor City.

The $40-million apartment complex the fire destroyed is nearly rebuilt, and a dozen people are living there. An empty lot remains where a post office once stood, but mail delivery for the 44 routes affected is back to normal.

Nearby businesses damaged by the heat have recovered.

The fire of the century, it turned out, was nothing more than a speed bump on the road to Ybor City's revitalization.

May 19 a year ago "was a very frightening day for a lot of reasons," said Annette DeLisle, Ybor's chamber of commerce president. "We didn't know what was going to happen. We had put all our hopes on this one development. . . . But we bounced back pretty well.

"It's like we're on a roll and you can't stop it," DeLisle said. "The momentum is there. This happened, and we just keep moving on."

Revitalization

The day of the fire, things looked bleak.

"It was almost hard to comprehend," Tampa Fire Rescue Capt. Jim Gary said. "It was almost biblical, to see so much destruction at one time."

The only thing left of a 454-unit apartment complex less than two months from opening were concrete slabs, the metal frame of a parking garage and the wooden shell of the few surviving units on the southeast corner, spared by the wind's direction.

[Times photo: Thomas M. Goethe] On March 23, Nick Verzi became the first resident to move into the rebuilt complex. "Everything I need is here," said Verzi.

Camden Ybor City, as the development is now called (it was called The Park at Ybor City before the fire), is considered the linchpin of Ybor City's redevelopment.

There were fears the developer, Houston-based Camden Development Inc., would pull up stakes. But within 24 hours, company officials vowed to rebuild. Abandoning the project, Camden officials said recently, "never even entered anybody's mind."

David Kubin, Camden's vice president of development, said insurance covered the financial losses.

"But it was a psychological blow," Kubin said. "A lot of people had been working a long while on this project and were really bummed out to see it in ashes." Still, he said, "We were not going to give up."

The day of the fire, officials estimated construction would be delayed a year. Instead, the project is slightly ahead of that schedule. The first resident, an Ybor business owner named Nick Verzi, moved in March 23.

Verzi's office is less than a mile away in Palmetto Beach, so he sold his car the week he moved in and now rides an electric scooter to work.

"Everything I need is here," said Verzi, 53. "There are places to go out to eat, drink, shop. My apartment came with a washer and dryer. Everything is self-contained right here . . . I'm kind of like somebody who lives in the middle of New York City right now."

Knowing that people are finally moving in makes DeLisle breathe easier.

"We've been waiting for the residential part of the equation in Ybor City for some time now," she said. "Now we're getting tourist groups of senior citizens and families out walking with strollers in the evening. That used to be unheard of in Ybor."

The streetcars that by next year will link Ybor City to downtown and to the cruise ship terminals will add to that feeling, DeLisle said.

Verzi is equally excited about his new neighborhood.

"With everything coming, you won't even recognize this place in another five years," he said. "It'll be a whole different Ybor."

Finding fault

Construction worker Jose N. Chirino drove the forklift that severed the power line that windy Friday morning and sparked the largest fire in Tampa in almost 100 years.

The Occupational Safety and Health Administration determined Camden and two companies hired to build the complex had failed to provide the required forklift training and that drivers had violated safety rules by operating near power lines.

OSHA fined Chirino $24,500 and Camden $28,000. It fined Texican Construction of Houston $22,400 and J&W Construction of Madisonville, Texas, $19,600.

Texican negotiated a lower fine and paid $13,500. Camden negotiated a $7,000 payment. J&W continues to contest its fine. Chirino, 27, who never spoke publicly about the fire, left town without paying and hasn't been heard from since. Officials think he returned to his native Mexico.

Postal delays

Between the new apartment complex and Interstate 4 lies what remains of Ybor City's post office. The building's tin roof absorbed enough residual heat from the 1,200-degree fire to spark another fire. The 12-year-old, $3-million building had no fire sprinklers and burned to the ground.

Since then, the postal routes in ZIP codes 33605 and 33619 serviced by the office have been moved to nearby offices. Double-wide trailers in the old office's parking lot hold post office boxes and provide other retail services.

A few feet away, enclosed by a chain-link fence that has fallen in spots, is the weedy, charred area where the old post office stood. The lot is the only place in Ybor City affected by the fire that hasn't changed since then. Globes on the decorative lampposts are melted. Burned trees still stand.

Despite the glaring inactivity, postal officials insist the post office is committed to rebuilding.

"One of the reasons it's taking so long is that we've just in the last month received the settlement from the insurance company," post office spokeswoman Bridget Robertson said.

Had the building not burned, Robertson said, the planned expansion of I-4 probably would have forced it to be torn down anyway. The U.S. Postal Service is looking for another site in Ybor to house the mail sorters and carriers, while the retail side will be rebuilt on the older, but smaller, site. Architects are planning both buildings now, but Robertson said construction won't start before 2002.

"We're definitely staying in Ybor," she said.

Residual effects

Paul Messina, the sales director for the Ybor City Brewing Co. on N 20th Street, within yards of where the fire started, said the heat from the fire, and the water poured on his building to save it, caused $170,000 in damage.

"They poured 200,000 gallons of water in our building trying to keep it from catching fire," Messina said. "It cost $85,000 just to dry it out."

Windows on the south and west sides of the building had to be replaced, and a hospitality suite had to be refurbished. All the beer sitting in the tanks that day had to be drained and the tanks cleaned, a process that took 15 days and set back production.

"We're just grateful no one was hurt," Messina said. "If this building had gone up, it would have blown up everything all the way to 19th Street . . . I don't think even the fire department realized how much alcohol was in the building until we told them."

South of the complex, the damage at Oliva Tobacco on N 18th Street was estimated at $200,000. The heat melted the building's vinyl siding and the water damaged some of the tobacco inside.

Elsewhere, the U-Haul center on N 18th Street lost $100,000 in heat damage to its trucks and building, and Our Lady of Perpetual Hope church sustained $40,000 in damage.

Since the fire, Tampa Fire Rescue spokesman Bill Wade said, the department has purchased new radios, has installed a high-tech dispatch center and is equipping firetrucks with computers so dispatchers can track every truck in field.

But the changes, he said, are not a direct result of the Ybor fire. You can't possibly plan for "an aberration," he said.

"We'll have at least one three-alarm fire per year, we'll maybe have a four-alarmer, but this was six alarms," Wade said. "It's once a century."

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