Catalyst Asset Management is an impact investment management firm, organized as a public benefit corporation (B Corp), specializing in strategies that achieve attractive risk-adjusted investment returns, social impact, and environmental sustainability. Through a series of managed funds and public-private partnerships, we provide debt and equity capital to small business owners and mission-driven real estate developers, and develop affordable and workforce housing, charter schools, healthcare facilities and other community-focused projects in low-income and under-served communities nationwide.
Our mission is to promote economic growth and revitalize communities by providing flexible and innovative capital to mission-driven developers and small business owners, and developing projects that produce safe and affordable housing, promote environmentally sustainability, and provide high quality health care and education, primarily in low-income and under-served communities.
At the Annual Meeting and Luncheon, the Tampa Downtown Partnership inducts new leadership and celebrates the organization’s accomplishments with our members, stakeholders, and the community-at-large. Join us on June 19 as we welcome keynote speaker, Tim Tompkins, President & CEO of the Times Square Alliance.
This event includes a plated lunch and Keynote presentation. Check-In begins at 11am, program will begin promptly at Noon.
Register today!
Thank you to our sponsors:
Platinum
Hillsborough River Realty Corporation / The Jeffries Companies Tampa Bay Times Tampa General Hopsital
Gold
Tim Tompkins has been the President of the Times Square Alliance since 2002. The Alliance is a business improvement district that works to improve and promote Times Square – cultivating the creativity, energy and edge that have made the area an icon of entertainment, culture and urban life for over a century.
He is a board member of the NYC BID Association and the Immediate Past Chair of the International Downtown Association. Prior to joining the Alliance, he was the Founder and Director of Partnerships for Parks, which works to support New York City’s neighborhood parks and which won an Innovations in Government Award from the JFK School of Government at Harvard for its work to restore the Bronx River. He has also worked at New York City’s Economic Development Corporation, The New York City Charter Revision Commission, and was briefly the Nationals Editor at the Mexico City News, an English language newspaper in Mexico. He has an undergraduate degree from Yale and an M.B.A. from Wharton, and currently teaches “Transforming Cities” and “The Arts and Artist in Urban Revitalization” at the Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service. When not in the most urban and unnatural place on the planet, he enjoys being in New York’s natural areas, ideally sailing or practicing yoga.
Tampa Downtown Partnership is looking to fill the position of Operations Manager.
Position Overview
The operations manager ensures the delivery of high-quality service through development and implementation of efficient operational systems and quality assurance mechanisms and through effective leadership in managing staff and financial resources related to beautification, maintenance, litter abatement, and ambassador services in Downtown Tampa. The position supervises facilitation of landscaping and public space maintenance services, as well as supporting the execution of special projects related to public programming. The operations manager reports directly to the Senior Director of Public Programming & Operations.
Responsibilities
Required Skills and Competencies
Preferred Skills and Experience
Required Education and Experience
To apply for the position, please email a cover letter and resume to Shaun Drinkard. Please, no phone calls.
Tune in to the City of Tampa’s social media channels today, Monday, June 10th to learn all about the new signature event Mayor Jane Castor is planning for our community!
The development team behind the highly successful Virage Bayshore tower in Tampa revealed plans today for a new, 34-story luxury condominium tower called “Arris Tampa” in the heart of downtown Tampa.
Arris Tampa will rise just steps away from the city’s most vibrant restaurants, theaters and art museums, and feature a ground-floor restaurant, integrated parking, rooftop Residents Club with amenity deck and outdoor pool. Eighty residences will span 1,110 to 3,700 square feet and will be priced from $600,000 to $2 million and above.
“Downtown Tampa has a new level of excitement and vibrancy that people across the country are noticing,” said Jay Tallman, President and Partner of Ascentia Development Group, a joint venture partner in the tower with Batson-Cook Development Company. Arris Tampa will be a beautiful architectural statement that adds to the downtown skyline, and residents will have world-class art, restaurants and entertainment just steps from their front door.”
The tower will rise at the corner of Ashley Drive and Twiggs Street (507 N. Ashley Dr.) and will include just four residences or fewer per floor, with panoramic views of the city, Curtis Hixon Riverfront Park, the Hillsborough River and the minarets of the University of Tampa.
FYI: “Arris” is an architectural term pronounced “AIR-iss,” and refers to the angled edge formed by the meeting of two surfaces.
Starting at the ground level, the tower will feature a 5,000-square-foot restaurant space in the base, integrated parking above (fully meeting City requirements), then 24 floors of luxury condominiums, each with substantial balconies overlooking the city. Smith & Associates Real Estate is the exclusive listing agent for the Arris Tampa project.
The new tower will transform a space presently used as a surface parking lot. The tower was designed by the architecture firm of Rule Joy Trammell + Rubio LLC that designed the nearby “Nine15” building downtown. (High-resolution architectural renderings of Arris Tampa are available here: https://bit.ly/317TxI9.) Pending approvals from appropriate agencies, developers plan to break ground in Spring 2020.
Beyond the successful Virage project, Ascentia Development Group is also behind the upcoming condominium tower project in Sarasota called Auteur that will feature 56 luxury condominiums overlooking The Bay park project and Sarasota Bay. Those residences are priced from $2 million.
The new Arris Tampa tower will tap into the flourishing live, work, play atmosphere and walkable community in the heart of the city. Just steps away are major cultural institutions such as the David A. Straz Jr. Center for the Performing Arts, the Tampa Museum of Art, the Tampa Theatre, Curtis Hixon Riverfront Park, the Glazer Children’s Museum and the Florida Museum of Photographic Arts. The tower sits perfectly midway along the fully completed Riverwalk pathway that stretches from Waterworks Park on the north to Amalie Arena on the south.
Ascentia Development Group and Batson-Cook Development Company are the same team that developed the highly successful Virage Bayshore tower in Tampa. Virage broke ground in 2017 and recently celebrated its structural completion and topping out with just four unsold residences remaining. The success of Virage sparked a resurgence in luxury condominium projects in the region and helped highlight Tampa’s growing vibrancy.
“Tampa’s transformation is making headlines across the country,” said Litt Glover, President and Chief Executive Officer of BCDC. “We have been thrilled at the success of Virage, and we are honored to have the opportunity to bring another project to this community.”
A spokesperson for the seller of the property, attorney Harley Riedel of the prominent law firm of Stichter, Riedel, Blain & Postler, P.A., said “We were very selective about who we chose to develop the site. Since 1976, our law firm has had its offices in the century-old buildings that abut this site, and we were looking for a partner with a stellar reputation and an exciting vision for a high-quality project that will be our neighbor for many years to come. The Virage team and its vision met our requirements, and we congratulate them on their concept and design.”
Project Facts
Project website: http://arristampa.com/
507 N. Ashley Drive, at the southeast corner with East Twiggs Street.
34 stories
Rooftop pool and amenity deck
Ground-floor restaurant
Integrated parking deck with 189 spaces
24 floors of residential luxury condominiums
80 total residences, each with balconies
Priced $600,000 – $2,000,000+
High-resolution architectural renderings: https://bit.ly/317TxI9
New mayor. New goals. Familiar strategy.
Watch for Tampa Mayor Jane Castor to begin working in the next few weeks on some business-related goals she outlined as a candidate. Her first step will be to name study groups consisting of city staff and outside stakeholders to make recommendations in five areas: affordable housing, workforce development, transportation, construction support and services, and resiliency and sustainability.
As she prioritizes their work, Castor will get part-time volunteer help from Carole Wallace Post, a former aide to New York Mayors Rudy Giuliani and Michael Bloomberg. Post now works at the University of South Florida as chief administrative officer and assistant vice president at USF Health.
With affordable housing, a dominant issue during the campaign, Castor said she wants to know “what we can do as a city looking at codes and ordinances that may hamper or slow down the creation of affordable housing.” Then she wants the committee to look at ways to pay for more affordable housing and ways to assist buyers and renters.
When she ran, Castor also talked about looking at mom-and-pop hotels along N Nebraska Avenue as a potential spot for affordable micro-housing. That, she says, could be an entry-level option for younger prospective home buyers who cannot afford nearby Seminole Heights. The study group she’ll name soon could help look at the feasibility of that idea and determine whether it has a track record someplace else that the city should copy.
“The thought is to find someone who has done that in another area, potentially a builder, and see if they have an interest in replicating it in Tampa,” she said in an interview last week. “I’d like to have more than an idea when approaching some of the owners of those establishments.”
This is similar to what her predecessor, former Mayor Bob Buckhorn, did soon after winning office in 2011. He appointed an “economic competitiveness committee,” consisting of 17 land-use attorneys, engineers, builders or other development professionals, plus a City Council member and neighborhood representative. It recommended a series of changes to codes and ordinances, staff and organization and process and technology. For Buckhorn, it was a key step toward changing what he called the economic DNA of the city and setting the stage for eight years of robust growth.
It is an idea that has not gone out of style.
The construction services committee that Castor plans to appoint will have a similar task: To look for ways to make city permitting, including its Accela land-use website, more efficient and user-friendly, because “permitting and contracting is just going to grow,” she said.
The workforce development committee will consider possible city or School District efforts to increase apprenticeships in the skilled trades to help meet a growing demand for electricians, plumbers, pipe-fitters and others in construction. Castor also wants to partner with the private sector to convert a vacant city warehouse near N 30th Street and Hillsborough Avenue into a job-training center.
The resiliency and sustainability committee will look at, among other things, reducing the amount of paper used at City Hall.
“We’re going to be doing a lot more electronically to the degree that it can be done,” she said.
On the idea of raising the minimum wage to $15 an hour, Castor advocated a gradual approach as a candidate. As mayor, her first step has been to ask for a report on how many of City Hall’s full-time employees make less than that now. She does not think it’s a large number. Next she wants to put together a plan to address those workers’ pay on “a timeline that’s manageable for the city.” Only after that would she think about making the case more broadly.
“You can encourage people to do the right thing, but I have to be able to say we’re doing the right thing first,” she said.
One last thing that candidate Castor said she wanted to do as mayor was encourage innovation and the growth of Tampa’s entrepreneurial ecosystem.
On that, she started her first day on the job.
Hours after taking the oath of office on May 1, Castor stopped by a pitch competition being sponsored as part of the Rise of the Rest tour that came to the bay area to spotlight tech entrepreneurship. Taking the stage before a crowd of several hundred startup founders and supporters, she turned to the eight competitors vying for a $100,000 prize for the best business pitch. Then she shared some advice she once got in another kind of contest.
“When you’re on the dance floor, the spotlight only goes around so many times,” she said, “so when it lands on you, dance your a– off.”
“Jane Castor poised to name study groups for affordable housing, workforce development and more” – Tampa Bay Times (subscription required)
Oxford Exchange is planning to pop a champagne bar into its retail shop this fall, dedicating a portion of the boutique space to bubbly spirits.
The 400 square feet where the display of Aesop skin and hair products stood until mid-April — in the storefront along Kennedy Boulevard — will transition to a champagne bar this fall, with a targeted opening date of early October, said Jess Anderson, director of public relations and retail.
The champagne bar requires minimal construction; the back bar will have to be built out, Anderson said, but an antique French bar that’s been used as a retail display for years will transition to the champagne bar. Operational details, like the champagne bar’s hours, are still in the works. Construction will happen during September, which is traditionally the slowest month for Oxford Exchange.
Ideally, the café will drive retail sales. Anderson said Oxford Exchange is in talks with a Florida-based artist to design the menu and would then sell items — think prints and coasters — that play off of that design.
There will be seating near the windows, similar to the seating along Kennedy within the dining room.
“We’ve always wanted something in there that was café feeling,” Anderson said.
Oxford Design, a sister company to Oxford Exchange, has created an aesthetic for the champagne bar that’s a complete departure from the rest of Oxford Exchange — “patterns on patterns, lots of texture, feminine and exotic but not delicate, well-traveled, collected,” Anderson said.
“It’s going to be such a juxtaposition to the masculine nature in here,” she said.
The bar will have a very narrow focus, Anderson said; it will be champagne, sparkling rosé, champagne cocktails or beer.
“You’re not going to be able to get a gin and tonic or whiskey on the rocks.”
“Oxford Exchange plans to pop a champagne bar into its boutique space” – Tampa Bay Business Journal (subscription required)
Tampa General Hospital is expanding its reach by strengthening its partnership with the University of South Florida and launching a new line of urgent care clinics.
During a USF board of trustees meeting Thursday, the hospital’s CEO, John Couris, said he wants to help create a “medical district” in and around downtown Tampa with the help of USF Health and its Morsani College of Medicine.
In addition to Tampa General committing to a $20 million lease of 25,000 square feet of space inside the medical school’s new building downtown, Couris and USF medical school dean Dr. Charles Lockwood want to create a more seamless process for patients being treated by USF or Tampa General physicians.
The new joint venture would create a “management services organization” that would streamline services, from medical records to scheduling patients between appointments at USF, Tampa General and private practice physicians with privileges at both places.
“Fifty percent of our admissions come from private practice partners,” Couris said. “With this venture, we’ll be able to provide administrative services to those physicians and create a more integrated system for patients.”
The goal is to create one health care system that can be expanded in the future to include others, like Sarasota Memorial Hospital or health care offices in Lakeland, Couris said. He described the venture as based on “inclusiveness.”
“The goal isn’t to make the hospital bigger,” he said. “It’s to collaborate with more doctors and hospitals to improve quality and lower costs for patients. We don’t have to employ everybody for that to happen, but there needs to be a nucleus.”
For example, Couris said that even though Tampa General and USF Health partner in many ways already, they each operate their own appointment scheduling programs, which slows down the process for patients. This new venture would change that.
Couris and Lockwood will appear again before USF’s trustees in August to seek final approval.
As for the medical district, Couris said connecting the dots between health care specialties and partners across the region would help draw more doctors and researchers to Tampa Bay.
“Most great cities have medical districts, which are concentrations of health services and research, which attract great scientists,” he said. As examples, he cited Houston, Dallas and Boston — cities with academic and private partnerships to create research hubs and health care options for patients.
Tampa General’s presence in the new medical schooling building — which, when completed, will include an urgent care clinic, cardiovascular clinical space and other medical offices — is a piece of that.
The hospital is also opening a 200-bed acute care rehabilitation center near its campus, across the street from the Oxford Exchange. It would connect to a future freestanding emergency department in Tampa, the University of Tampa’s nursing program, the new USF medical school, and USF’s downtown medical training and simulation facility, known as CAMLS.
“We have all these pieces coming together that are beginning to take shape,” Couris said. “That concentration will only bring more medical talent to Tampa Bay.”
In addition, Tampa General announced Thursday that it is joining with Fast Track Urgent Care to operate 10 urgent care clinics in Tampa Bay, including two in Pinellas County. The 50-50 partnership marks the first time Tampa General has offered freestanding clinical care in Pinellas.
Fast Track operates eight clinics in the region, including in Seminole and St. Petersburg. Tampa General operates two urgent care clinics in Hillsborough County, but the new partnership will fold them all into one network known as “TGH Urgent Care powered by Fast Track.”
Couris said he hopes to expand to 15 to 20 centers in the next three-to-five years.
“I like the idea of partnering with someone who is already in this line of work and doing a great job,” he said. “We don’t have to reinvent the wheel.”
Fast Track was the first organization in the Tampa Bay area to be certified by the Urgent Care Association of America. Dr. Daron G. Diecidue, the founder and CEO of Fast Track Urgent Care, will continue to lead the business.
Overall, Tampa General’s health system includes 15 medical group locations, 14 imaging centers in partnership with Tower Radiology, the Brandon Healthplex, and the TGH Advanced Organ Disease and Transplantation Institute at Lee Health in Fort Myers.
Couris said the hospital also plans to build a stronger presence in neighboring Pasco, Pinellas, Polk and Manatee counties.
“Downtown Tampa needs a ‘medical district,’ hospital CEO says” – Tampa Bay Times (subscription required)
Your Downtown Calendar
The following is just a sample of upcoming events in Downtown Tampa. Visit the Downtown Tampa Events Calendar for a more comprehensive list including all the Father’s Day specials!
Heights Night Market
Wednesday, June 12, begins 6pm Armature Works A monthly evening market taking place on 7th Ave in front of Armature Works, feature a rotating cast of artisanal creators, makers, and artists selling handmade goods, jewelry, art, wood-work, gifts and so much more. Heights Night Market is free to attend, family-friendly, and features live music at each event. For more information, go to Heights Night Market.
Cabaret (The Musical)
Friday, June 14 to Saturday, June 22 The Portico In a Berlin nightclub, as the 1920’s draw to a close, a garish Master of Ceremonies welcomes the audience and assures them they will forget all their troubles at the Cabaret. With the MC’s bawdy songs as wry commentary, the show explores the dark, heady, and tumultuous life of Berlin’s natives and expatriates as Germany slowly yields to the emerging Third Reich. This is the 1998 version. For more information, go to Cabaret (The Musical).
Sixth Annual Richard’s Father’s Day Walk & Jog
Sunday, June 16, begins 8am Tampa Riverwalk This family-friendly Father’s Day event is non-timed with an option to run or walk either 5K or one mile. Participants receive a unisex dri-fit event shirt. One hundred percent of the proceeds will be donated to Moffitt Cancer Center, specifically this year as part of a $1 million pledge toward a brachytherapy suite there. The brachytherapy procedure, which uses more targeted internal radiation instead of external radiation, is highly effective on multiple cancer types, produces fewer side effects, and offers faster recovery times than other treatments. For more info, go to Sixth Annual Richard’s Father’s Day Walk & Jog.
Taking the Stage at the Straz Center
Rock of Ages: Tenth Anniversary Tour – Tuesday, June 11 to Sunday, June 16 mad Theatre presents Man of La Mancha – Through Sunday, June 23 Live & Local – Frankie Raye – Friday, June 14, 6pm to 9pm Patel Conservatory presents Junior Intensive – Friday, June 14, begins 4:30pm Live & Local – Jariah Higgins – Saturday, June 15, 6pm to 9pm
On the Marquee at Tampa Theatre
Rolling Thunder Revue: a Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese (2019) – Tuesday, June 11, 7:30pm to 10pm Non-Fiction (2019) – Friday, June 14 to Thursday, June 20 Jaws (1975) – Sunday, June 16, 3pm to 5pm
Monday Morning Memo –Monday Morning Memo is a weekly update of “insider downtown information” regarding developments, transportation, special opportunities and other useful information to help you make the most of downtown. Subscribe to receive this weekly newsletter.
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