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Tampa Seeks Ways To Safeguard Ybor History

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By SHERRI ACKERMAN

The Tampa Tribune

Published: October 6, 2008

TAMPA - Andy Argintar feels proud every time he spies his last name on the historic brick building in Ybor City that housed his family's clothing store for more than 90 years.

"It grounds me," the 59-year-old former lawyer and third-generation haberdasher said. "I mean, I know that's where my grandfather went when he got off the boat with nothing. He spent his life there."

But ask Argintar about removing that name and he struggles for an answer.

"If somebody buys the building, they have a right to do what they want," he said. "But there is a lot of sentimentality about that."

That tug of war between new and old has long bedeviled city leaders, who want to honor and celebrate the past while they at the same time acknowledge the historic entertainment district must be open to change if it wants to thrive.

For former Mayor Dick Greco, the answer was as easy as placing plaques on the buildings that described who had owned them and their original purpose.

"All these buildings have a history and a history of families," Greco said. "Who were they and what did they represent? Some people will never know."

During his last few years in office, Greco, whose parents owned King Greco Hardware Store at Eighth Avenue and 15th Street, pushed for the plaques.

When his term expired, though, the idea lost steam.

"Some of those buildings have changed hands many times," said Vince Pardo, executive director of the Ybor City Development Corp. "Some buildings might end up with five plaques."

There's no law requiring new owners to keep the identifiers, even in a national historic district, said Dennis Fernandez, Tampa's historic preservation manager. "We'd like owners to retain the original ones in keeping with the historical significance," he said, but some of Ybor's building names were destroyed during bad makeovers half a century ago.

Keeping The Past Alive

Architect Ken Garcia, who sits on the board of the Ybor City State Museum, said there are other avenues owners can take to preserve the past of a historic building, such as participating in the state's historic marker program.

Garcia has a marker on a retaining wall of his Ybor home, one of the 34 houses moved by the state Department of Transportation to make room for a widened Interstate 4. It tells where the house used to sit and when it was moved.

To learn more about that marker program, go to

www.flheritage.com/preservation/markers or call 1-800-847-7278.

Reporter Sherri Ackerman can be reached at (813) 259-7144.

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