Cafe's reopening renews questions regarding deal

TAMPA -- The reopening of Cafe Beinget in Centennial Park has reignited a 5-year-old controversy over whether local restaurateur Phil Alessi -- known for his chumminess with Mayor Dick Greco -- got a plum deal on the use of city land.

Greco angrily denounces the suggestion that he did Alessi any special favors in giving him a nine-year lease on the pavilion at the edge of city-owned Centennial Park in 1996. Although the city spent taxpayer dollars to build restrooms that would be accessible by Alessi's customers, Greco says the restrooms were needed for parkgoers and would have been built anyway.

Alessi's cafe, in its first incarnation, was short-lived. Customers didn't come, and Alessi said he was losing $25,000 to $30,000 a month by the time it closed in June 1998.

In recent weeks Alessi has reopened the cafe and hopes, with the help of local partner, to make it a combination New Orleans-Italian cafe. The city was poised, last week, to extend Alessi's lease on the property for another 10 years at $1,500 a month -- a little more than what his current lease costs.

The city scuttled the new lease when it became clear that, by law, it had to allow other restaurateurs to bid on the project. Alessi, who has four years left on his current lease, told the St. Petersburg Times he wanted an extended lease to make the property attractive to potential partners.

"I've been looking for a good partner ever since we closed," Alessi said. "I've already invested a million dollars in (the cafe). I've been paying the lease on it ever since I closed it up."

Still, critics question whether Mayor Dick Greco did an end run around other restaurateurs in granting Alessi the first lease. Before Greco became mayor, Alessi told him of his ambition to open a cafe on the site during a snook-fishing trip. Alessi did not think the mayor at the time, Sandy Freedman, would be receptive to the idea.

"He's absolutely right," Freedman told the Times. "I would not have done it for anybody. I would have put it out for bids and got the city a good deal."

The city never aggressively pursued other potential developers, though it requested proposals for the park in the local weekly La Gaceta. That fulfilled the letter of the city code and cleared the way to give Alessi the lease.

"We would have advertised it widely," Freedman said. "People called me at the time and said, "Why didn't we know about this?' There are a lot of restaurateurs who would have coveted the property."

Freedman believes Greco, animated by friendship, steered the project to Alessi. "There can be no other explanation that I can figure," she said.

- Christopher Goffard can be reached at 226-3337 or goffard@sptimes.com

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