Category: COMMUNITY

By JENNIFER NESSLAR
NNB Student Reporter

ST. PETERSBURG – Tomeka Oliver sells vegan-health smoothies at the Saturday Morning Market in downtown St. Petersburg and the Deuces Live Market in the Midtown area on Sundays.

She dreams of opening a storefront for her business, Performance Enhancing Smoothies, but she can’t afford the rent. Loans don’t seem like an option for her.

“I don’t try to get loans because I feel like I’m not going to qualify,” said Oliver, 41. Right now, her operating expenses exceed her profits. “I’m not even paying myself a salary yet.”

Access to loans is often difficult for entrepreneurs, according to Jessica Eilerman, the small-business liaison for the city of St. Petersburg. When starting business owners lack credit, banks deny their requests for loans.

“Businesses are not always bankable,” Eilerman said. “The folks who can get the loans are the ones who don’t need them.”

The city of St. Petersburg and the Tampa Bay Black Business Investment Corp. want to help entrepreneurs like Oliver because their businesses would help expand commerce in the neighborhoods of Midtown.

A business incubator is scheduled to open this fall at 1125 22nd Street S. It would help local entrepreneurs get services they need – meeting space, mail delivery locaton, phone answering service, software, counseling and loans of up to $5,000.

“It was something that we kind of proposed as our way of getting back involved” in the low-income, economically stagnant area around Midtown, said Albert Lee, president of the TBBBIC.

The incubator would give business owners the experience of securing loans and building their credit score.

“We’re doing it in a way that prepares them to be able to repay a loan,” said Nikki Gaskin-Capehart, the director of urban affairs for the city of St. Petersburg.

TBBBIC owns the building at 1125 22nd St. S, which is home to the Esquire Barber Shop and Nation Tax Services. When the third office space opened, Lee said, TBBBIC decided to create another business incubator rather than leasing the space to a small business. About 10 years ago, the entire building was a business incubator, but budget cuts forced the TBBBIC to pull out.

The project has faced setbacks. It was included in St. Petersburg’s 2020 Plan, which is intended to reduce poverty in the city by 30 percent by 2020. City officials requested $1.625 million from the state. The Legislature approved the appropriation, but Gov. Rick Scott vetoed it.

“The grant would certainly have gone a long way,” Lee said. “Nevertheless, we’ll move forward with it.”

The estimated completion time has been delayed until sometime this fall. Less money will be available from the city, but Gaskin-Capehart said the city is still committed to the project.

Most of the funding will now come from the TBBBIC, which relies on a capital fund supported by local financial institutions and private contributors. Lee said he is trying to raise more from corporate partners.

Entrepreneurs are ready for assistance. The Deuces Live Market is open on Sundays from 1 to 6 p.m. at Ninth Avenue and 22nd Street S, a once-bustling but now-struggling street known as “the Deuces.” It features the fare of local business owners like Oliver. (The market is closed for the summer and will reopen Sept. 14).

“We have an absolutely captive talent pool right now, because of the Deuces Market,” Gaskin-Capehart said. “They’ve already tested the market and are ready to grow.”

But not every entrepreneur believes that loans are the solution to the problems of the business community around Midtown.

Virginia Bautista, 70, has been an entrepreneur since she was in her 20s. She recently moved from San Antonio and is the seamstress at Elihu’s Consignment at 913 22nd St. S. She believes in starting with the resources she has, and working from there.

Taking a loan, she said, starts a process of owing others money, and she doesn’t think that is a good position for a new business owner. Starting slow and gradually building a client base is her business strategy.

“That’s the most logical thing to do,” Bautista said. “It’s worked for me.”

But Bautista is a firm believer in supporting small business in the area.

Tony Macon, the owner of Esquire Barber Shop and president of Deuces Live, a Florida Main Street organization working to restore 22 Street S, believes small businesses go beyond the Deuces and shape the community of St. Petersburg.

“I believe in not just 22nd or the Deuces,” Macon said. “I believe in building the whole community up.”

BY JAIMIE LUNA
NNB Student Reporter

ST. PETERSBURG – After a diving accident left him with serious hearing damage, Phil Kinsman had to give up a promising career as a bass-baritone in the Metropolitan Opera.

So in 1952 he bought the Belmark Restaurant at 1001 First Ave. N and turned it into one of the city’s most popular eateries.

Kinsman never lost his love of song, however. Every Sunday for 15 years, he sang to Belmark customers, according to the St. Petersburg Evening Independent. And in 1967, he performed at two one-man shows, singing “opera to pop,” at the Bayfront Center, predecessor to today’s Mahaffey Theater.

Since Kinsman sold the Belmark many years ago, it has had at least three more owners and one name change. It’s now called Café-Ten-o-One, and its owner since 1999 has been Frank Edgar.

Edgar, a graduate of the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, N.Y., doesn’t sing to the customers  like Kinsman did. But he bakes fine pastry, according to customers, and his restaurant caters meals to a client list that ranges from visiting teams at Tropicana Field to the recent Miss Florida pageant at the Mahaffey.

City Council member Jim Kennedy, a lawyer, has been a lunch-time regular since the Belmark days. “It’s great food and it’s within walking distance of my office,” he said, and Edgar is quite the pastry chef.

Edgar is modest about that. “I like to bake; I owned a cake company in my early 20s,” he said. “I learned early on you make more money catering than baking cakes. We make a lot of our own deserts, but to say I’m a pastry chef is a stretch.

“I just like doing it, and I do it well.”

Pictures of the restaurant in its Belmark days hang on the walls of Café-Ten-o-One, which serves breakfast and lunch – but not dinner – Monday through Saturday. The staff sees a lot of familiar faces.

“Fifty percent of our customer base is people that eat here all the time,” said Edgar.

When Café-Ten-o-One is closed, the catering side of the operation – called Creative Catering – is handling events around the bay area. It caters cocktail parties, weddings, housewarmings, corporate dinners and barbecues.

The menus of the café and catering operation stay fairly consistent, Edgar said.

“We’ll do some specials here and there; add to the menu what sells and take off what doesn’t,” he said.  “We change our menu semiannually.”

He said he hopes to start serving dinner a couple of nights a week.

BY KARLANA JUNE
NNB Student Reporter

ST. PETERSBURG – For half a century, Fannye Ayer Ponder was a stalwart of civic activism, education and high society in St. Petersburg’s black community.

She and her physician husband, who came to the city in 1925, lived in a regal, seven-bedroom home with a manicured lawn and cherry hedge, antique furniture and carved mantelpieces.

While he led the drive to build a hospital to serve black patients, she taught school at all-black Gibbs High School, attended club meetings around the country and, as a protégé of educator Mary McLeod Bethune, had tea at the White House with Eleanor Roosevelt, Bess Truman and Mamie Eisenhower.

In 1942, she founded a St. Petersburg chapter of the National Council of Negro Women, which Bethune had started seven years earlier to unify black women around the country. A few years later, the chapter bought a lot at 1935 Ninth Ave. S and moved a nearby building onto the site. Dedicated in 1947, it was the first council house in America.

“It was the place where women of distinction came to talk about things for the community, to broaden the horizon of the community, to be more visible in the community,” said Allene Gammage-Ahmed, who grew up in the neighborhood and now serves as a chapter officer.

“I remember watching the ladies gravitate to this particular property, with hats and furs and beautiful make-up,” said Gammage-Ahmed. “I’ll tell you what; I sure wanted to be like them.”
The modest structure, which still serves as the chapter house, is about to get a $100,000 renovation, thanks to the Legislature and Gov. Rick Scott.

The state appropriation will pay for new windows and flooring, a new roof and kitchen, and updated wiring. The house will be painted inside and out, and it will be brought into compliance with the Americans with Disabilities Act.

“A lot of historical sites in the local African-American community are gone. This is one that has been well-preserved and I think is a good, befitting tribute to Mrs. Ponder and the community,” said Watson Haynes II, president and CEO of the Pinellas County Urban League.

Planning to renovate the historical site began months ago, when the chapter put together a team to tackle the project if the state money was approved. Chapter president Angela Rouson said the team is working with the city’s historic preservation staff and Wannemacher Jensen Architects Inc., which specialize in historical preservations.

“To be able to envision having the same impact on my community that she (Ponder) did …. It gives me chills,” Rouson said. “Advocacy is a huge part of our organization’s history.”

The national council’s St. Petersburg chapter, which has 50 members and 12 youth members, is active in the community, just as it was in the early years under Ponder.

It is the principal sponsor of the annual Dr. MLK Breakfast at the Coliseum. It has a summer reading program for young people, an annual food drive, a wellness expo and health fair, and a “ladies night out” event to benefit working women in Tampa Bay.

The New Girls’ Network, the chapter’s group for young women between 11 and 18, volunteers throughout the community.

“We have had some girls come through here, graduate from high school, go on to college, become professionals, and they are back home now, waiting to do something with the girls now, to show them, ‘Hey, we made it and so can you,’” said Gammage-Ahmed.

When the Ponders moved from Ocala to St. Petersburg in 1925, it was a time of rigid segregation and discrimination in St. Petersburg. The city’s black residents could not live outside certain neighborhoods, and they were barred from the white community’s schools, restaurants, night spots and swimming pools.

They also had few places for their meetings and social gatherings.

Ponder, a graduate of Florida A&M University, was a civic and social leader in the black community. She sold thousands of war bonds during World War II, raised money for the American Cancer Society and a school for troubled girls, advised state officials about programs for disadvantaged youth, served the local Republican Party, and helped establish two community buildings, including the chapter house on Ninth Avenue S.

In the years before her death in 1982, the walls of one room in her home were filled with community service awards and certificates of appreciation.

The chapter house, which is named in her honor, was designated a city historic site in 1991.

At one time, the Pinellas Opportunity Council had an office there.  The Gibbs High School chorus, the NAACP and other groups have met at the house, which was called the Southside Community Center at one point. It sits on a site of a tennis court where the first West Coast tournament for African-Americans was held. The state-funded improvements to the house will make it more accessible to the community again, chapter members say.

Ponder was proud of the house.

“It’s just wonderful,” she once said. “That building has been used by many people. We’ve had marriages, birthday parties for the young…and many U.S. congressmen and local mayors have introduced themselves to the black community there. That council house has served a great purpose in the community.”

By COREY GIVENS JR.
NNB Student Reporter

ST. PETERSBURG – When Carolyn Brayboy went for her annual physical in 2007, she told her doctor she had been feeling a little nauseous.

The doctor referred her to a specialist for tests that led to a dreaded diagnosis: cancer.

For months, Brayboy underwent chemotherapy, which left her weak, exhausted and bed-ridden. But it worked. More than a year after the diagnosis, she was cancer free.

Shaken by her brush with death, Brayboy and her husband, Elihu, decided to take a risk. They invested $800,000 in real estate in the Midtown area of St. Petersburg.

Where some saw rundown old buildings and empty lots, the Brayboys saw opportunity. When some lamented what integration, urban renewal, an interstate highway and crack cocaine had done to a once-thriving neighborhood, the Brayboys remembered the good times of their youth and the values that a close-knit community instilled in them.

Now the Brayboys, both 65, are hard at work restoring four buildings along 22nd Street S, which in its heyday in the 1950s and ‘60s was the main street of a community that its black residents and business owners proudly called “The Deuces.”

In one building, at 909-913 22nd St. S, the Brayboys have installed an art gallery, a consignment shop and an ice cream parlor, which was inspired by their three young grandchildren.

In another building, at 901-903 22nd St. S, they will have a restaurant called Chief’s Creole Café featuring many recipes of Elihu Brayboy’s mother. It is scheduled to open in a few weeks.

Nearby, at 951-963, is the historic Merriwether building. The Brayboys plan to put more shops on the ground floor of the two-story, 1925 building and low-cost housing on the second floor.

The fourth building is at 1025, where daughter Ramona Brayboy-Reio and her husband have a hair salon and fitness center.

In an area like Midtown, the crime rate tends to be high and poverty levels even higher. The Brayboys say they knew they were taking a risk by investing there. But their experience has been positive.

“We know that we have to remain prudent of our surroundings no matter where we are, but in the six years we have been here, not once have we had a break-in, a single item stolen, or a broken window,” Elihu Brayboy said.

To outward appearances, the Brayboys are an odd couple. He is outgoing and talkative. She is reserved, reticent. He favors leopard print jackets and silk shirts with initials monogramed on the cuff. She is more likely to be in jeans, clambering up a ladder to help the roof repair guys. She’s good with her hands and watches expenditures closely – a good thing, he says with a chuckle, since budgeting is not his strength.

Unlike other business developers in Midtown, the Brayboys are not new to the area.

They both grew up in Midtown. “My mother was a nurse at Mercy (Hospital) and my father worked at Clark Funeral Home, which was one of the only black funeral homes at that time,” he said.

His strict upbringing in a close-knit community instilled in him values that he has carried throughout his entire life. “I remember my next door neighbor, Mr. Anderson, got me my first job bussing tables at a restaurant in Seminole. I saved my money to buy the things I needed, not the things I wanted.”

Brayboy was in the second group of black students to desegregate Bishop Barry High School (now St. Petersburg Catholic High) in 1962.  His skills as a football player there earned him a scholarship to attend Bethune-Cookman College in Daytona Beach, where he joined Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity Inc., a prestigious accomplishment in the black community. During the career that followed, he has been a stockbroker, math teacher, mortgage broker and small-business developer.

He started his business career in New Orleans, where he spent several years in the 1970s. But family obligations brought him back to St. Petersburg in 1977.

Brayboy said it was local leaders like attorney Frank Peterman Sr. and Judge James B. Sanderlin who inspired him to come back and make a difference in the community that he once called home.

“I could have gone and established my business anywhere I wanted, but my history was on 22nd Street,” he said. “I was raised here, so therefore I’m going to invest here.”

In New Orleans, he said, he saw a lot of second- and third-generation black-owned businesses. He knew that was a concept he could bring back to St. Petersburg.

“Here in St. Pete the only black family-owned businesses you see are funeral homes, and today you don’t see many of those because they are being bought out or closed down,” he said.

The Brayboys, who have known each other since childhood, began dating when Carolyn was at 16th Street Junior High and Elihu at the Immaculate Conception Catholic School.

“It wasn’t love at first sight,” she said. “He was cute, but at that time boys were the furthest thing from my mind.”

She always knew that her calling was to become a businesswoman, she said. “My mother wanted me to become a teacher, but that wasn’t what I wanted to do. So I changed my major from math education to finance.”

She was one of the first black students to attend St. Petersburg Junior College. She then earned a bachelor’s degree and master’s in business administration from Florida State University and landed a job at IBM, where she worked for 39 years.

The Brayboys lost track of each other for about a decade. But when he returned to Florida from New Orleans, they reconnected and married. They have three children: Gus, Lynae and Ramona.

“We’ve never given our children anything. Everything they’ve been given they have earned, because that’s the way it is in life. You have to work for what you want. To this day, our daughter (Ramona) pays us rent monthly for the salon space,” said Carolyn Brayboy.

On their mission to give back to a community that has lost so much, the Brayboys said they are determined to make their mark in the history of St. Petersburg.

Years from now, what will their legacy be?

“I want people to know that they have options,” he said. “They have the option to spend or the option to invest. When I am gone, let it be said that I chose to invest so that others could have a better life.”

BY TAYLOR WILLIAMS
NNB Student Reporter

The little leaguer is 52 now, the senior writer at the Tampa Bay Rays for the Tampa Bay Times. He has been at the paper since 1983 and its lead baseball reporter since 1987, long before St. Petersburg landed a team and 11 years before the Tampa Bay Devil Rays’ inaugural game in 1998.

He has been to the All-Star Game and World Series many times. He blogs, he tweets, he talks baseball on the Rays’ radio network before every game, and he appears regularly on television. And, of course, he writes thousands of words – many of them on tight deadline – for the paper.

In the press box at Tropicana Field, his competitors seem to regard him highly; one calls him “a legend.” (For the record, they are not being sarcastic – noteworthy in a profession known for snarky jealousies.)

Topkin was born in New York and moved to South Florida when he was 12. He graduated from Drake University, in Des Moines, Iowa, with a degree in journalism and mass communications.

“I worked for my high school newspaper and liked it. I worked for my college paper and liked it. I got a job and liked it,” Topkin said. “It’s good that I found something I liked and stuck with it.”

His favorite part of the job? “Being at the games and finding a way to tell people about stuff that they might not know from watching the game,” he said. “That and breaking news, which is harder and harder to do” in an era of social media.

One story that Topkin broke earlier this season was pitcher Matt Moore’s decision to undergo season-ending Tommy John surgery.

“I was the last writer in the clubhouse (after an April game) and I asked him about it.” Topkin said.  At first reluctant, Moore disclosed his decision.

“I had to go back to the press box with a poker face,” Topkin said. “I didn’t want to tweet about it too early so the other writers could get it, and I didn’t want to tweet it too late because I didn’t want it to break and have been sitting on it.”

Topkin ended up tweeting it out at the perfect time. “We had it in the paper and the other paper (the Tampa Tribune) didn’t,” Topkin said. “Which is rare. It’s rare to have a scoop in the paper.”

On a typical day at Tropicana Field, Topkin takes his seat in the front row of the press box and readies himself for long hours at the ballpark, a day in which time is of the essence.

“You have to accept the fact that you’ll be here all day,” Topkin said. “If you have plans after a day game, they’ll probably change.”

For the June 17 game against the Orioles, Topkin arrived at 2:45 p.m. Once there, he spent 45 minutes or so reviewing game notes and writing a short preview of the June 18 game.

“All of the minutiae you hear on TV, radio, from us, that makes us sound smart, comes from them (the Rays),” he said.

At 3:25 p.m., Topkin headed down to the field to talk with Rays manager Joe Maddon and some of the players. At this game, Topkin and the other members of the media were greeted with a change in schedule. The Rays put in some extra work and the media had to catch players when they were done.

Waiting around is one of Topkin’s least favorite parts of the job. “The tremendous amount of waiting around and the travel time… it’s dead time,” he said.

The Rays stretched and did their extra work at 3:25 and took batting practice at 4:25. Topkin’s first interview was with Rays pitcher Alex Cobb, at 4:05 p.m. It lasted 10 minutes. His next interview, at 4:30, was with pitcher Brent Honeywell, the Rays’ third overall pick in this year’s draft.

Honeywell spoke of his hopes for the future and simply said, “Hopefully one day I’m a pitcher in the big leagues.”

At 4:35, Maddon chatted with the media. The talk ranged from the Rays’ extra work that day and their on-field performance to third baseman Evan Longoria’s new hairdo, a blond Mohawk.

At 4:50, it was Topkin who was interviewed. In a chat with Rays’ radio play-by-play announcer Dave Wills, he was asked about relief pitcher Grant Balfour’s recent struggles and the Rays’ on-field improvements. The interview ended with jokes about Longoria’s hair.

At 5:05, Topkin and other reporters chatted with Longoria on the field. They asked him about the Rays’ extra workout and the reason for his new ‘do. “I did it because of the World Cup and to show my support for Team USA,” said Longoria.

At 5:30, Topkin returned to the press box to transcribe the interviews, which he had recorded. He then had a bite to eat, and at 7:05 he was back in the press box for the first pitch at 7:10. He put the finishing touches on a “Notebook” piece for tomorrow’s paper, which previews the upcoming game with half a dozen short items like injury updates and notable statistics. Then he began to work on the game story for that night.

“To meet deadline for a night game, I write a filler story and then anticipate the quotes,” Topkin said. “Now we’ll write it as a Rays lose story and send that in after the O’s are done batting (in the top of the ninth), then we’ll work on a top that has a dramatic Rays win.”

The deadline for the first edition, which goes to subscribers in Pasco and Hernando counties, is 10:40 p.m. Deadline for the second edition, which goes to readers in Pinellas and Hillsborough, is 11:40 p.m.

“If it (the story) doesn’t make the 11:40 deadline for the midnight edition, that’s when people get mad,” Topkin said. “Sometimes I cheat a little. I’m usually clean on editing, so I can push it (the first deadline) to 10:45, 10:46, maybe 10:47,” Topkin said. “The 11:40 can be pushed a little.”

This night’s game ended at 10:41 p.m., and Topkin headed to the locker room to interview Maddon and key players for the second edition story – Matt Joyce and David DeJesus, outfielders who didn’t make key catches, and Erik Bedard, the starting pitcher. He had a rough outing.

“The locker room is supposed to be open within 10 minutes of the game ending; sometimes it’s longer,” Topkin said. “Every minute is working against me.”

“That’s the danger of these deadlines,” he said. “In the old days, we had a better deadline, so we could wait around for whoever we want, but now we can’t.”

Topkin’s plan is to interview Joyce, DeJesus, Bedard, and Maddon. But with the clock ticking, he might have to settle for Maddon’s thoughts on the three players. “We’ll ask Maddon the questions because we might not have enough time to catch the players,” Topkin said.

Once inside the locker room, Topkin and other journalists went to Maddon’s office, where the manager addressed their questions. On Bedard’s start, Maddon said, “It wasn’t a loss (overall); we just didn’t have the starting pitching.”

On Joyce’s missed catch in right field, Maddon said, “He will say he should have caught that.”

Asked about DeJesus’ play on a home run that clanged off the left field foul pole and sent DeJesus crashing into the fence, Maddon was not critical. “Not an easy play. Jesus … DeJesus … Even Jesus couldn’t have caught that,” he said with a laugh.

At 10:59, Topkin interviewed Bedard, who simply said, “(I) tried to throw strikes and it just didn’t work.”

At 11:03 he interviewed Joyce and, seeing DeJesus emerge from the shower rooms, walked over to talk to him at 11:04.

“I only needed Joyce’s answer to the first part of the question,” Topkin said. “Then I saw DeJesus and he was in his underwear. He was either going to shower or to his locker and we couldn’t let him get to the shower.”

DeJesus was direct. “I was asking the guy (a server) at the wall there, ‘Where did it hit?’ And he said the wall. I looked up and saw that Sean (Rodriguez) got it (the ball) and made sure I was okay.”

After hustling back up to the press box, Topkin worked to meet his second deadline. He put on his headphones and transcribed the interviews in order to finish his story and work on notes for the next game. He left the ballpark around 12:30 a.m.

Tomorrow he will race against time again.

The Heater
Marc Topkin’s blog on the Rays is at http://www.tampabay.com/blogs/rays/