The following essay is intended to inform rather than influence and is my best effort to relay the factual content of these candidates views. With this I do not intend to promote any candidate or point of view, nor do I intend to show support for one candidate over any of the others. Please research each candidate carefully before you cast your ballot, and most importantly, be sure to vote.

Additionally, I want to thank each of these candidates for making time in their very busy schedules to meet with me.

- Buddy

Over the past two months, I have had the opportunity to interview our city’s top four mayoral candidates regarding their views on commercial real estate and business issues. I limited the questions to those listed below to keep the sessions focused and the scope narrow.

I chose these four candidates as they were the front runners in fundraising at the time of the interviews. If there are any major shakeups in the race, I may add an interview or two.

I am not endorsing any of these candidates. My decision as to whom I will vote for will be based on many other issues besides commercial real estate, including a candidate’s positions on education and taxes, previous experience, political leanings and sense of humor.

For more information about these candidates, visit their websites noted below.

My questions for the candidates:

• If a new company were coming to town, what area of the city would you want to see it settle in and why? 
• If a new company were coming to town, how might your administration welcome it to St. Petersburg?
• What is your position on attracting employers to St. Petersburg, and would you be inclined to give these employers tax cuts? Also, would you be inclined to fast-track any building or development projects for these employers?

• What is your position on these issues for existing St. Petersburg employers? 
• The City of St. Petersburg has acquired a reputation for being difficult to work with among developers and small businesses. The requirements imposed on developers and small businesses have grown to the point that these entities often go to surrounding cities or the county to build and develop. Do you plan to address this issue and, if so, how?
• The new zoning ordinance for St. Petersburg has, as part of its vision, mixed use, live/work spaces and higher residential densities in and around the downtown areas. What are your opinions on this change in approach?

Bill Foster 6-23-2009  http://billfosterformayor.com/

Bill Foster is an attorney in St. Petersburg. We met in his offices on Street North.

Bill is a fan of the workforce housing programs, appreciating the need for affordable housing for our educators, policemen, firemen and others and believes that it is better for our community if these individuals own as opposed to rent.

Bill’s preferred growth corridor for the city begins downtown and moves west: from the water to 16^th Street between 22^nd Avenue South and 22^nd Avenue North.Bill is also a proponent of growing Uptown, the area near Tropicana Field along Central Avenue and the 1^st Avenues.

Like most candidates, Bill emphasizes retention of our current businesses as a priority over recruitment of new businesses. He would like to see more small businesses in St. Pete and thinks there is a space here for new service-type businesses.

Due to his legal background and longstanding involvement with the city, Bill is very familiar with the current zoning ordinances (LDRs) and their pros and cons. He did not seem to have any strong feelings about any particular aspect of the new zoning codes. His primary concern is to make them work for the businesses in St. Pete. I thought he had a very practical attitude toward zoning conflicts and issues.

Regarding the implementation of zoning and building code enforcement, Bill intends to apply a liberal dose of common sense and pragmatism. He does seem to have considerable experience resolving code and zoning issues in his role as an attorney.

Bill showed limited enthusiasm for using tax incentives to recruit medium and large businesses to St. Petersburg. His idea is that these incentives should have a payback period of about two years. The idea of a short payback period was a recurring theme in our conversation. He did leave room for exceptions, extraordinary circumstances and opportunities for the city.

Likewise, he is against any notion of corporate welfare and would be inclined to make large concessions to recruit businesses only in extraordinary cases.

Bill also displayed good knowledge of the players within the city’s zoning, codes, development and fire departments and may prove effective in helping these departments work together for the good of our citizens.

Kathleen Ford 7-09-2009  http://www.kathleenford.com/

Kathleen and I met in her law office in downtown St. Petersburg and had a pleasant conversation about reale state and a few other issues. The issues of public safety and Pinellas County’s high taxes flavored all of her views regarding commercial real estate and small business.

Kathleen would like to see newly arriving companies locate in downtown St. Pete and the Central Avenue corridor west toward 34^th Street, but she realizes that some businesses would prefer to locate in the Carillon area because of concerns over crime rates in downtown St. Petersburg.

Kathleen acknowledges that we have a very high tax rate here and is proposing a ½% cutin the current city tax rate.

The current zoning ordinances in St. Pete call for a significant increase in live/workspace in the downtown area. While Kathleen favors this approach for the reduced carbon footprint and sense of community it can bring, she doesn’t believe it is realistic or that our citizens really embrace this on a practical level. Considering it a nice idea that is not realistic right now, she is of the opinion that the people crossing the bridges every day will continue in this pattern for the foreseeable future. I do not expect her to support this aspect of the current zoning.

In general, Kathleen sees the current zoning (LDRs) as unrealistic and cites the Comprehensive Plan as an indication that we already have too much commercial real estate.

In a similar way, she is not a fan of the new TBARTA public transportation plan, considering it unrealistic and unjustified considering the costs (however, she is in favor of a rail line from downtown St. Pete to Tampa International Airport).

If elected mayor, Kathleen plans to staff personnel to welcome new businesses and employers and help them find their way in our city. She believes it is the mayor’s place to oversee this effort; unfortunately, Kathleen is not very familiar with the current city processes new businesses must navigate, and therefore will have a learning curve in front of her on this issue. She is in favor of a one-stop shopping solution for new businesses and development, but also thinks we already have one.

Like most of the candidates, Kathleen will prioritize support for existing businesses over recruitment of new ones. The business segments she is interested in attracting are tech and medical, and she envisions a collection of new businesses that can have symbiotic relationships as opposed to competitive relationships.

For business recruitment purposes, Kathleen is in favor of using the existing tax breaks, but will want to understand their impact clearly before offering them.

Deveron Gibbons  7-13-09  http://www.gibbonsformayor.com/

Deveron and I met mid-morning at the Banyan Tree (good coffee shop at the 700 block of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Street North) and had a nice visit over coffee.

Deveron has sharply different ideas than the other candidates regarding the direction of growth for the city. He would like to see us grow the number of small businesses spread around the different neighborhoods to decentralize the retail and service sectors. His argument: if we scatter the businesses throughout the city, they will help to revitalize the various neighborhoods. Along with this,  he emphasizes having a greater number of smaller commercial spaces to gain more effective use of the spaces. Additionally, this approach helps the dollars that are spent in St. Petersburg remain in St. Petersburg.

Deveron remains sensitive to the plight of the existing (vacant) retail space along the Central Avenue corridor, but will not focus on growth in that area.

He believes that new businesses considering coming to St. Pete should receive a warm welcome; have one individual who can walk them through the permitting process, etc.; and that the people responsible for this welcome should be directly accountable to the mayor. In a nod to me, he characterized the commercial real estate brokerage community as the salesmen for St. Pete and believes the city should work more closely with this community for growth.

Regarding incentive packages for new businesses, Deveron again deviated from the crowd, holding the position that the money for this should come from the state: “The city should work to make state funds available for these new businesses. The money is there. We just need to go and get it.”

While giving preference to our existing businesses, Deveron expressed a clear vision for the types of clean and green businesses he wants to see land here. Furthering the development of medical businesses to create what Deveron called a “Medical Magnet Corridor” is first on his list. To this he adds the myriad medical research firms to support our existing medical community (Deveron was a rep forGenentech, part of big pharma).

In addition to the medical industry, Deveron favors more institutions along the lines of SRI, the new local marine research facility.

Regarding the zoning and code issues, Deveron aims to make them more customer-friendly and responsive, beginning with a survey of the “customers” and fixing what he describes as a broken culture surrounding these departments. He would like to see the current zoning redone with more community involvement, particularly from the smaller businesses.

Scott Wagmann 7-13-2009  http://scottwagman.com/

Scott was kind enough to take a couple of hours to meet me at the Atlanta Bread Company the Monday of the week mail-in ballots went out, a hectic time for all the candidates.

Scott has no favorite areas of town to direct new employers and businesses, instead taking the approach of matching the user to the building and making practical decisions to support them. In general, he sees a future St. Pete with more low-rise offices going out the Central Avenue corridor, similar to the Whittner and Sembler buildings (between 49^th Street and 60^th Street).

Scott is mindful of the parking issues we face both in downtown and out the Central Avenue corridor and would work to solve this potential growth impediment.

Like all of the other candidates, he considers support to the existing St. Pete businesses a priority over recruiting new businesses and employers.

Scott is a fan of the Job Corp organization in the Dome District, believing it will be good for the city.

When it comes to recruitment, he is a fan of targeted tax abatements (a solution he believes the public can be sold on), but does not favor other tax incentives.

A role for the mayor he believes in is “Salesman in Charge.” The Mayor should work closely with select commercial brokers to sell our city to carefully targeted businesses and employers -- in other words, go and find small companies that would be a good fit for our community and invite them to come do business here.

There are organizations in our community that might serve the citizens better if they learned to work together. Among those Scott identified are the city and the county and their respective economic development departments.

Scott and I discussed the LDRs (new zoning ordinances) and he is in favor of a complete review, revising the ordinances to be more user-friendly and more easily understood and to better understand what people can do where.