Executive Q&A: ULI chair's 20-year old prediction on Tampa's growth comes true

Phillip Smith, with degrees in architecture from Auburn and Harvard universities, checked out Florida in 2005 for a North Carolina architecture firm looking to expand in the state.

Smith had a descriptive — albeit not exactly a Chamber of Commerce-esque —first impression. "When I saw downtown Tampa, it was like I was looking at a beautiful smile that was missing a bunch of teeth," Smith says. "There were so many incredible opportunities to revitalize this city, from a riverfront that had yet to be recognized to spaces where we could link West Shore to the downtown area to the I-4 corridor. I just saw all these beautiful bones of a city with all this rich history and yet it was still a city that had yet to really come into its own."

Tampa, obviously, has come into its own, dramatically, in the past 20 years.