LARGO - City Manager Steve Stanton has evidently reacted sharply to a contention by a former member of the City Commission who has charged that the Winn-Dixie project on East Bay is a mask for the failure of the former "super block development."
Nothing had been heard for many months on that super block project, located at Roosevelt Boulevard and U.S. 19.
Charlie Harper, a former commissioner, said that the dog and pony show and excitement over the city's involvement in developing the site of the former chain grocery on East Bay was "designed to take the heat off the 'super block' project."
Harper was a one-term member of the commission and did not seek re-election in 2005, giving ailing health at the time as the reason.
Stanton puts out a report each week and seems to have reacted quickly to Harper's comments because his report that came out December 22 gave an update on the status of the Town Center project on Roosevelt Boulevard.
Stanton, in his report, asserted that Mike Staffopoulos, the city's Community Development Director, had met with Boulder Venture, one of the developers, and then the report lurched into a gobbledegook of bureaucratic bafflegab.
Also cited in the report was the status with Cepcot, the company owned by Fred Thomas, that gave equal non-information.
In short, nothing is happening with the "super block" Town Center project, which once seemed to be headed for burgeoning success.
The background leading to the train wreck that the Town Center has become involves the bitter battle between Stanton and former Mayor Bob Jackson.
That story is so arcane and convoluted that it would take a volume of words to unravel it and make it clear.
Thomas was planning to move his successful business into the Town Center site (it used to be Crossroads Mall) and Bob Schmidt, a Belleair Shore official and developer, had plans through his Boulder Venture company for a mixed use development.
The petty politics and acrimonious encounters between Stanton and Jackson obviously have led to the current disaster at Roosevelt Boulevard and U.S. 19.
Because of that failed effort, Harper said, "The redevelopment of the old Winn-Dixie site is now the 'future,'" Harper said.
Another issue that Stanton appears to have answered - in a report issued last week - is his official discovery that there is a leaseholder in the midst of a city block that the city plans to buy.
Some weeks ago, the administration brought to the commission for its approval its plans to buy the property on West Bay (many observers thought the cost was over-priced) but that hit a snag when a citizen, John Atanasio, pointed out that O'Houston's Irish Pub had a 15-year lease on the site.
This fact had totally escaped the notice of city officials who one would have imagined might have done what is called "due diligence" in anticipation of buying the property.
Evidently this was not done.
So Stanton reported last week that the city is scrambling (he did not describe it this way, of course) to get its feet under itself on the deal.
In the meantime, the City Commission - the elected officials - remain all at sea, apparently oblivious to their fiduciary duty to the taxpayers.