eric: hello and welcome to the market minute, my name is eric odum, principal broker for roi commercial property brokerage in tampa, florida. today, we have with us patrick manteiga and we like to say, six weeks ago we interviewed patrick before the rnc (republic national convention). we promised we’d come back and interview him again for a recap of the rnc. for those who don’t know, patrick was the token democrat on the rnc host committee. he also runs la gaceta, which is the oldest minority newspaper in the country, as well as the only tri-lingual newspaper in the country. so welcome patrick! thanks so much again for joining us.
patrick: glad you came back and i survived.
eric: perfect.
patrick: and so did you.
eric: i survived too, absolutely, ok so let’s talk a little bit about economic development efforts with the convention. i know (florida governor) rick scott had planned on having a number of events and that never really seemed to materialize. let’s talk a little more about the economic development from a thirty thousand foot level, companies coming here and whatnot.
patrick: not only rick scott had planned, but i think there were some local plans from the chamber (greater tampa chamber of commerce) and others to really try to market ourselves. i think there were hopes by groups that we could market ourselves to media and get some tampa stories out. i think that from the broadest perspective…. and generally when you market, name recognition is one of the first things you want to have happen. i think tampa did a good job.
just having the convention here, tampa’s name was mentioned over and over again in national and international media. i think people now know better where we’re at on the map. i think they’re more familiar with our name.
as far as individual marketing efforts to bring company a to tampa, ….to have a good conversation with an executive about what is needed here or what we can offer them, i don’t think that happened. i think if it did happen, we didn’t have any good visuals to go with it. we weren’t offering a tampa that looked good, that felt good, that was active….that was exciting.
we offered a tampa that most of us don’t experience,… that was blockaded,… blocked off, …under tight security. you know, that’s not the tampa i know. it’s not the ybor city that i normally feel or the downtown i feel, the south howard district…. all had a different feel this time, so i don’t think we really made a good pitch.
and then of course our governor got very distracted by the real threat of a hurricane, and maybe what we did prove is that number 1 – near misses by hurricanes aren’t really a huge problem when it comes to the area. we can certainly absorb a little bit of rain and you can still have a party. you just have to move it from outside to inside.
so in some ways, having the near miss proves to some people that florida is not an unsafe place to have events. you actually have to get a direct hit by one of these things to have a real problem.
eric: so just in summary a little bit, you feel like we got great coverage, but probably didn’t do a great job of trying to control the message that was getting out.
patrick: i don’t know if we closed any deals. now we were out there, but i don’t know if the media captured any of the authentic side of our area. when you watch the coverage, the morning joe’s of the world, …. they were in kind of a created atmosphere, …an atmosphere that they made up, ….that they wanted, not one that was a reflective of tampa. they should have had it in la teresita. they should have had it at tropicana restaurant.
eric: west tampa sandwich shop.
patrick: yes, somewhere like that. instead they had it at channelside, ….at a place where in the morning, you would never go. regulars didn’t hang out; all these people were imported in. these weren’t people that go to any breakfast place early in the morning and talk trash about politics
eric: west tampa is the greatest trash talking place in town. let’s talk about the local businesses. obviously, the barricades sort of made a tampa green zone (similar to iraq) and it seemed to be difficult for the conventioneers to come back and forth between the convention and the city….actually touch people who were tampa natives and tampa restaurants and other activities.
patrick: i agree. and i also say that in some ways we were trying to market or hope to have walking traffic from a group that had no desire to just walk around tampa and experience it. the conventioneers are a group of people that looking to do things that are within the party. they are looking to go to the most lavish galas. they’re looking for the most exclusive venues. many of them are looking to collect the most cards to hang from there credentials as possible so they have the best party, the best pass. that’s the game they’re playing, so walking down to the local coffee shop is what would happen if you were a loser and couldn’t get a pass anywhere.
eric: (laughing) i had a perimeter pass and wasn’t a complete loser!!
patrick: that’s the reason why monday probably was one of the better days for local businesses because the threat of the storm. of course, the convention was cancelled after the first few minutes of the day and a lot of the parties were cancelled or changed or the times were reorganized. so all of a sudden people had free time, and you did see the best business days of ybor and downtown and the rest of tampa being monday.
because these people were now freed up and you weren’t putting 2,000 in one party and 3,000 at another party and doing that kind of stuff, so we finally got a little bit of what happened.
i think that when you look at north carolina, which seemed to have a lot more walking traffic, …..that might have been from the sheer numbers of difference between the democratic and republican convention. this is a smaller convention. you generally have the same parties for both conventions, so there was probably more democrats outside those parties, because you just can’t pack as many in. so, you probably had a lot more democrats that had free time walking around. here in tampa, you didn’t have republicans that had a lot of free time; the extra events could keep them busy.
eric: just contrast and compare charlotte which from an economic development standpoint is one of our primary competitors. how do you think they fared compared to tampa?
patrick: i think that generally there was a better view of it ….a better feel of it. but, also that could have been for the convention itself. most political pundits would tell you the democratic party was more upbeat, was more exciting, the stars performed better. so, that might have made the difference both inside the convention centers and the convention centers.
the republican convention was pretty downbeat,…. fairly negative, you had a storm looming. it was kind of gloom and doom for the first few days and that might have depressed the spirits of the area. it might have depressed the spirit of the party atmosphere.
eric: getting back to the economic development aspect of it,…. it seemed like the charlotte businesses were pretty happy because there was a lot of activity going on in the perimeter. our retail area was far north of the green zone off of north tampa street. there were tumble weeds blowing down the street. hardly anyone was there. most of the restaurants were vacant and howard restaurants, which i really thought would be hopping, with the exception of side bern’s and bern’s, everybody else was pretty quiet. i think a lot of locals fled and it ended up not materializing the way many locals thought it would materialize.
patrick: i absolutely agree and the other part that we had, that north carolina didn’t have, is that a majority of our delegates weren’t staying in our county. they were staying over in pinellas and there is a bridge to cross. this is a big bay to cross; it’s a long bus ride. so we had a long transportation, …long drive in,…. long drive out. for every hour they’re on the bus is an hour they’re not spending money.
so, i think it’s a lesson to be learned here. a lack of transportation has a serious cost to us. if we had that train between pinellas and tampa, those people wouldn’t have had to get on that bus, but that was their only transportation back. or what? a $50 cab ride? a $60 cab ride? so you either got on the bus or you got left behind in tampa. i think in north carolina you had some other options.
eric: what did we do well?
patrick: i think we had the best security money can buy. i think the times forum did an excellent job of setting itself up. i think the owner there, vinick, basically turned over that facility and made it what the republicans wanted. and, i think he should be congratulated for these efforts of trying to make it a success.
we saw the bay area cooperate very well. that was a good thing. you saw all of our agencies work together correctly. you saw our police be the most professional police force ever, with all of that extra security….. with all of that expectation of doom and gloom. our police force might have looked a lot tougher and meaner, but when they talked to you, they were kind, they were helpful and they were courteous. so, i think those were the good things here.
eric: fast forward three, four, five years ….they ask us to do it again. what’s tampa going to say?
patrick: if bob buckhorn is still mayor, probably would say, “heck no!” it’s probably like the pain of birth. if you remembered it, you would never have another child. he would remember it. maybe a new mayor would say, “yes.” would we do things differently? the major says. ” absolutely not!” i think we would probably make a few changes.
i think that you learn some stuff. first of all, i don’t think any money we spent on landscaping, ….road paving ….anything like that was worth it. you didn’t see it from the bus.
eric: they didn’t see bayshore blvd. they weren’t there.
patrick: $7 million dollars to repave bayshore blvd, ….complete waste. should we have a had another security plan? yes, i think you should have a couple of them. an a plan and a b plan maybe, even a c plan ….where you can ramp up or ramp down security based on what’s necessary.
some small changes that could have made a difference in downtown businesses. instead of feeding the police with caterers in one tent, give them a voucher to buy their own lunches at the subways downtown and the other restaurants downtown. we could have made sure those businesses stayed full and actually sold things. those businesses are the ones that hurt. if they didn’t get a contract to cater, they really did suffer tremendously.
eric: long term, there was a lot of discussion going on in to this that this event was going to be a big coup for the state of florida and for tampa? is there going to be any significant material development from the activities that took place?
patrick: at the end of the day there are probably hundreds of businesses whose bottom lines this year are better than what it would have been. there are a few businesses whose bottom line is not going to be better.
i am on the cuban club foundation and we had three parties that were very successful. we made a lot of money and we have already started making repairs to the club. our venue will be better because of it.
we have better infrastructure in downtown with communication, with cell phones and things like this. cell towers that will allow us to have some growth and allow us to host other big events. now, there is nothing somebody can say tampa can’t do. you might be able to argue someone can’t do it better. if we went after the olympics or whatever, we now have the ability to show we can handle long events. we can handle many days and this area can do it.
i think all of those things are good and have a long term residual effect. do we get five fortune 500 companies relocating? if that was our hope, i think we’re going to fail on that one. i just don’t think that’s going to happen, but i don’t know anybody that was really predicting that. some people were hoping.
some people wanted to take this event and make is something else. they wanted to really be able to talk to these people and get them to consider the bay area strongly. i think those plans were not the original plans designing the convention. i think these were after thoughts, and they were good afterthoughts; they just didn’t take place. it just wasn’t there.
eric: any other parting shots, you, the token democrat for the host committee that you would like to get out there?
patrick: no, i don’t want to take any parting shots; it’s an excellent event to second guess. i do think there were some heroes out there. i do think that al austin is somebody that this area owes a tremendous debt of gratitude to for bringing this here and for putting this together. he certainly had a tremendous amount of help, but i don’t think without this true belief that this area should have this; i don’t think anybody else would have fought for the number of years he did to get this here; we owe him a debt of gratitude.
i think the mayor is a democratic mayor, embraced this in a way that the republicans couldn’t have asked any other mayor to do so. he really got involved and did whatever he could to make them have a safe, successful event. i think that our police chief castor did a really good outreach and she kept her people from going overboard and having those negative images
i don’t have any parting shots. probably the biggest looser that came out of this is st. petersburg mayor, bill foster. he promised his community that his party wasn’t going to cost them anything, and it cost them some money.
eric: a big ticket!
patrick: now, he’s in a position of weaseling his way out of this, he looks very bad; city council is going to rake him over the coals. i think it actually could have the biggest cost to him politically. i don’t think anybody else pays a negative price for this, i think most of them get a positive
eric: patrick thanks again! we appreciate you so much for joining us. it’s terrific insight on the rnc and hopefully get a chance to speak with you again.
patrick: thank you. i enjoyed it.
eric: i am eric odum, principal real estate broker for Florida ROI Commercial Property Brokerage in tampa, florida and thank you for joining us.
i’m going to include a link to our web page which is www.roireal.estate.
join us next time for the market minute.
