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Sembler's gift
By LENNIE BENNETT © St. Petersburg Times, published November 12, 2000 ST. PETERSBURG -- "A sense of place," says Mel Sembler. He sweeps his arms in a broad arc toward the cluster of Mediterranean Revival-style buildings that will be BayWalk. "That's what we're creating." Sembler, 70, has created a formidable place for himself in this community during more than three decades as a business and civic leader. In a matter of days, BayWalk opens. It is the development like no other he has ever done or, he says, will ever do again. He considers it a legacy and a gift to the community that has waited almost 20 years to see such a project completed. BayWalk was born from the ashes of Bay Plaza, the grandiose, doomed project of, among others, the J.C. Nichols Co. and Neil Elsey. Bay Plaza was to stretch from the downtown waterfront to the stadium now called Tropicana Field, with costs projected as high as $160-million. The plan counted on several upscale department stores signing up as anchor tenants. Sembler, whom Elsey called on as an adviser, told the less experienced developer he did not think Bay Plaza could succeed. "I told Neil that 10 years ago," he says. "I told (Mayor David) Fischer. What they conceived was too large for this community to absorb," he said in an interview in October. "I don't think you ever could have convinced a department store to come back downtown. They were all leaving downtowns. Why? Because there was no parking. It is too easy to park at a mall. I told them that. I felt bad for Neil. Maybe if they had taken a small piece of it and let it grow, it could have been done." Elsey never landed a major tenant. Sembler ultimately would take a small piece of the idea and let it grow. * * * A major element in Mel Sembler's success seems to be timing. In 1962, 10 years after graduating from Northwestern University, Sembler was working for his father-in-law, a retailer, in western Tennessee. "I didn't like the retail business," he says, "but I learned it. On the side, I built some apartment buildings and a commercial building. A new trend had started in the 1950s: the shopping center. I convinced my family to invest in our building one. I started my first one in 1962 in Dyersburg, Tenn., and opened it in 1965." He realized, in the early 1960s, that shopping centers would become the destination of choice for a growing population of affluent suburban women. He built several more in Tennessee, "then ran out of places there. So we moved to Florida." He and his wife, Betty -- they had three young sons -- chose St. Petersburg "because it was small and so beautiful." Themed restaurants were becoming popular, and Sembler and partners started up Wagon Ho, a fast-food restaurant resembling a Conestoga wagon. "I thought there had to be an easier way to make money than shopping centers," he says. They sold the concept to a number of franchisees, but he and his partners split up over business differences. "I decided to return to what I knew," Sembler says. For more than three decades, he has enjoyed success in an industry famous for bankrupting even the most seasoned, building his fortunes on long-term, lucrative relationships with Eckerd Corp., Publix Super Markets Inc., JByron's and Target stores. "Retailers need experienced developers," Sembler says. "Shopping centers are not easy to develop." His success led him to leadership positions in such national organizations as the International Council of Shopping Centers, as well as contacts in very high places. A chance encounter with a Republican presidential hopeful in 1979 launched him on a new path. * * * "George Bush came by looking to rent a campaign office from us in St. Petersburg," Sembler says, "when he was running for the nomination." Ronald Reagan wound up being the presidential nominee, and Bush would be his vice president. Sembler campaigned hard for the winning ticket and became friends with both the Bushes and Reagans. Those new relationships found a common cause in drug awareness for young people. The Semblers became alarmed at the prevalence of drug use in their teenage sons' peer group. They started a drug treatment program, called Straight, one of the first "tough love" approaches to rehabilitation in the country. The Semblers, especially Betty, became influential drug prevention advocates. Their contacts at the White House precipitated a visit to a Straight facility by first lady Nancy Reagan. Impressed, she tapped into the Semblers' expertise when she adopted her Just Say No campaign. Straight, whose policies and techniques sometimes attracted critical attention, closed in 1993, but Betty Sembler still is recognized as a crusader, often sharing a national stage with such speakers as William Bennett and lobbying for drug-prevention programs and against relaxed penalties for drug use. During the Bush presidency, Mel Sembler became a major Republican fundraiser, a position interrupted by a four-year tour as ambassador to Australia. When he returned in 1993, he ascended to chairman of the GOP's national finance committee. For the 2000 campaign, he helped raise a record $220-million. Despite their far-reaching lives, the Semblers continue to live in their house of 30 years, they are active in their temple and in local social and civic events, and Mel Sembler goes to his office at at 5858 Central Ave. every day he is in town. Always on the lookout for the next big thing, Sembler has dabbled in developing outlet malls and large regional malls, "but we always go back to our classic development." * * * BayWalk is an exception. Sembler, who as chairman of the board has left day-to-day business to his sons Brent and Greg and company president Craig Sher, looked after this project personally. "BayWalk is so complicated," says Sembler. "I could open seven shopping centers with the resources we've spent on it." "His enthusiasm was the driving force," says Mayor David Fischer. "I knew they were very serious and very capable." Sembler had been following an emerging trend in development: malls anchored by "entertainment" rather than retail stores. "This was not something I had conceived of originally," Sembler says. "I thought for a long time it had to be department store-based. This is not typical. It's cutting-edge, new, innovative." Sembler says he studied CocoWalk, a development in Miami's Coconut Grove, "to see if it would work. We came to realize that if we could get a movieplex -- 20 screens, which was new in 1997 -- it could succeed in our downtown." This new upward trend was running parallel to a downward trend in the entertainment industry, Sembler says. "The change is seismic. Almost every day it seems like a theater is going bankrupt. The concept of small multiscreens is gone." The issue, according to Sembler, was the older slope-floor theaters versus the new, stadium seating that stacks an audience up in cushy seats for a better view of a larger screen. "Once you sit in a stadium-seat theater, you'll never go back to slope floors," he says. The Sembler Co. had become a partner in a new entertainment mall in Tampa, Centro Ybor, "in the second-fiddle position, not the primary developer. We learned a lot from Ybor," which had a Muvico megaplex as its main draw. "We wanted to make sure it couldn't fail," he says. Convinced, he signed on Muvico as BayWalk's anchor tenant. The Sembler team then hired an outside leasing company, something Sembler had never done before, to help lure new tenants to downtown St. Petersburg, because "this is very specialized. Where a restaurant is placed, when it will be open, for breakfast and lunch, or lunch and dinner. The mix of restaurants and shops." BayWalk, Sembler says, is unabashedly "women-oriented. They're the ones who shop repeatedly. So I want to make sure women are comfortable." A major concern from the beginning was parking. For BayWalk to go forward, the city agreed to spend almost $12-million on a new parking garage, connected to BayWalk by a palm-lined esplanade -- purposely left uncovered, Sembler says, "because it is the beginning of the experience we're creating of seeing and being seen." The problem with the garage, Sembler says, is, "Women don't like deck parking. But we're going to make this as attractive for them as we can. It's going to be bright and well-lit. A police substation is underneath it. You ride down a glass elevator and can see everything that's going on." Sembler says they turned down some tenants because they already had a presence in the area. "We had to have things that were new, interesting, challenging. We had to use our leverage to create this," he says, referring to personal calls he made to his industry contacts to attract business to BayWalk. Even in a presidential election year, he has lavished his time on this project. He chats with workers installing the slate flooring in a restaurant, with a painter working in the daiquiri bar, with the subcontractor finishing glass windows in the jewelry store. They all assure him that BayWalk will open on time. He points out the brickwork, the limestone stairs, the flourishes of Mediterranean architecture, the curves of the iron balconies, the mosaics, the murals, all part of an expensive visual feast. "This is a canvas," he says. "The developer creates it. We decided not to skimp. We decided to overexpenditure to make it beautiful. This is a hometown project, and its success is important to the community. This is not a profit-making venture." Still, the businessman believes BayWalk can turn a profit. "I tell people, "Don't admire it. Come shop here.' I want people to use it." Success or not, he says, this will be his last entertainment center. "I'm worn out with "Oh, wow!' stuff. Eventually these will become easier to do. But we won't do another one," Sembler says, "We wouldn't have done this one had it not been in our community." He has no plans to retire, but with BayWalk opening, with his assertion that he will step down as national finance chair for the Republican Party and with a return to business-as-usual at the Sembler Co., "maybe I can enjoy my grandchildren more. (He has 11.) And it's time for Betty and me to develop time to ourselves." Not yet, though. He takes a call from his wife on their private line -- the only call he takes during a brief visit to his office. Hours ago, when it was lunch time, a secretary put a sandwich on his desk. It remains untouched. "This has aged me 10 years," he says to a visitor. Then, "Have you seen it yet?" Mel Sembler collects his jacket, gives his secretary a few instructions, then strides out in the late afternoon for BayWalk -- his third visit that day. "I have to show you the new colors we've just chosen," he says. "Hold your breath."
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