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Coffee Talk (Tampa edition)
Naming rights
Coffee Talk hears the Hillsborough County Bar Foundation has a sponsor interesting in acquiring the naming rights to the planned Hillsborough County Bar Association Law Center. Sources are mum, and the prospective candidate could decline, but any anticipated contribution would go a long way to supporting the estimated $3.3 million construction cost. Construction begins when the foundation collects the entire amount.
The law center will be built on property adjacent to the Tampa campus of the Stetson University College of Law.
If all goes well, the foundation expects to raise a total of $4.5 million, which would pay for the building, fixtures and amenities. The difference would fund a proposed endowment.
This has been a good year for the foundation under Akerman Senterfitt attorney Joseph W.N. Rugg, the group's volunteer president. Last year, the foundation raised $15,000 to fund its programs. As of May 14, Rugg says the foundation has raised $65,000. He credits Tampa attorney Steve Sessums for overseeing a fund-raising campaign that should eventually reach $100,000.
Lightning strike may be coming
So, what does a Stanley Cup championship mean for the Tampa Bay Lightning?
Are home tickets going to be as hard to come by as admission to Buccaneer games? Will Brad Richards' jerseys be as plentiful as those of Derrick Brooks around the bay?
Coffee Talk is a wee bit skeptical. The St. Pete Times Forum seldom filled up before the Stanley Cup finals, even for this year's early-round games just two months ago.
Hockey fever was bit late coming to football country.
The Bucs owned the eighth best-selling specialty automobile license plate in Florida last year. The Lightning plate was 43rd, right behind the Boy Scouts. (But two places ahead of the World Series champion Florida Marlins, speaking of teams with fair-weather fans. Go figure.)
Still, Coffee Talk thinks the Lightning experience offers some valuable lessons for business owners of all stripes.
First, there's the importance of good management. The Bolts are not the best team to have ever hoisted the Cup. (That would be the '71 Canadiens.) At the risk of needing our mug to deflect the pucks thrown at us, Coffee Talk thinks the 2004 Bolts were a fairly good club that peaked at the right time of the season, thanks to the masterful determination of blunt-talking coach John Tortorella.
Second, ownership was fiscally responsible. Lightning owner Bill Davidson opened his wallet a little wider than the team's two previous owners. Without the television fees of professional football, basketball and baseball teams, however, Davidson wasn't about to mortgage the Forum to keep up with free-spending losers like the New York Rangers.
The team's parent company reported a $10 million operating loss on about $65 million of revenue in 2003. The Bolts will only show a profit when its fiscal year closes at the end of this month because the long playoff run added unanticipated home dates at the Forum.
Whatever local appetite for ice hockey that the Lightning has created could melt away quickly.
The national TV ratings for the Cup finals were not great, again. Therefore, the National Hockey League's new network TV contract does not improve on the old one.
Team owners are determined to impose some sort of salary cap on players, as the league's labor contract with the on-ice help expires. The players union won't come around to that idea for a while, if ever. The only real question about next season is: Will the players strike the owners or the owners lock out the players?
The Lightning could be carrying around that Cup for a good long while.
So much for transparency
Don't expect easy access for at least a month to the first-quarter list of contributors giving to the re-election campaign of Pinellas Circuit Judge George W. Greer. Until then, anyone who wants that information has to drive to Tallahassee and pay 15 cents a page to get it. State election officials didn't give an explanation why this is so. But it does raise questions about the transparency of the process, considering Greer contributor's list is the only one of 14 in the 6th Circuit that is not available through the state Division of Election's Internet Web site (www.election.dos.state.fl.us).
The only available information now shows that Greer's campaign collected $57,585 through the first-quarter ended March 31. Of the total, Greer loaned himself $100.
Greer is the only incumbent facing a challenge. Clearwater attorney Jan Govan paid the qualifying fee to oppose him at the eleventh-hour. He is not yet required to file his campaign financials.
Re-elected last month were incumbent circuit judges Michael F. Andrews, John Lenderman, Tom McGrady, Robert J. Morris Jr., Peter Ramsberger, Irene H. Sullivan and Ray E. Ulmer Jr.
Besides the challenge to Greer, four others are vying for the seat now held by retiring Judge Thomas E. Penick Jr. They are Michael C. Berry Sr., Jack Day, Cynthia Newton, Walter L. "Skip" Schafer Jr. and Bill Vinson.
Only two candidates are contributing considerable dollars to their cause. Day has loaned his campaign $65,000, while Schafer put in $50,000.
Michael Saunders nominated for award
Michael Saunders, president of Michael Saunders & Co. in Sarasota, is one of three finalists for the Ernst & Young's Florida Entrepreneur of the Year award in the category of real estate and construction. The Tampa office of Foley & Lardner nominated the head of the Sarasota-based real estate firm.
Other finalists in that same category include Chaim Katzman, chairman and CEO of Equity One Inc., based in North Miami Beach, and George Donovan, president and CEO of Bluegreen Corp., Boca Raton.
The award ceremony will be June 24 at The Peabody Orlando hotel. If Saunders wins, she'll be eligible for Ernst & Young's national Entrepreneur of the Year award.
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