Bill Edwards: The man who kept betting on St. Petersburg

By 2014, Bill Edwards had become so involved in St. Petersburg that the Tampa Bay Times illustrated his holdings and interests as a Monopoly board.

“Billopoly” included the Mahaffey Theater, the Tampa Bay Rowdies, BayWalk, All Children’s Hospital, hotels, restaurants, real estate and philanthropy. The joke worked because Edwards really did seem to have a hand in everything.

Edwards died Thursday at 81 after a brief illness. His wife, Joanne Edwards, told the Times that he died in the hospital with pneumonia and multiple organ failure.

He leaves an unusually visible legacy in St. Petersburg, a city where he made a fortune and repeatedly put that money back to work.

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Edwards grew up with limited means in Massachusetts and served as a U.S. Marine in Vietnam, where he was wounded in combat and received the Purple Heart. He later entered the mortgage business and eventually brought Mortgage Investors Corporation to St. Petersburg.

MIC specialized in refinancing VA loans and became one of the nation’s largest lenders serving military veterans. In a 2020 interview, Edwards said the company grew from about $55 million in veteran loans in its first year to $3.6 billion four years later.

The company also introduced Edwards to St. Petersburg from the inside.

He located the operation on Central Avenue along a bus route because many employees did not have cars. He watched workers earn more money, buy cars and move into other businesses. He said he saw firsthand how readily people could be overlooked because of where they lived, where they came from or how they looked.

That experience helped shape where his money went next.

“I made my money here, why wouldn’t I share it here?” Edwards said in the 2020 interview.

Sharing it often meant taking a sizable financial risk.

In 2011, Edwards bought the struggling BayWalk shopping complex out of foreclosure for about $5 million. He spent tens of millions renovating the property and reopened it as Sundial St. Pete in 2014. He sold the property in 2022 for $27.5 million.

He bought a controlling interest in the Tampa Bay Rowdies in 2013, despite having little background in soccer. Edwards invested in the franchise and Al Lang Stadium, then led an ambitious campaign to bring Major League Soccer to St. Petersburg. He sold the Rowdies to the Tampa Bay Rays in 2018.

He bought the vacant Tropicana Block downtown for $12 million in cash in 2014. He owned the Treasure Island Yacht Club, recording and entertainment businesses and numerous other properties. His reach became broad enough that “Billopoly” barely felt like an exaggeration.

Edwards also gave millions to hospitals, veterans programs and community organizations. In 2010, he donated $2.5 million to All Children’s Hospital. His family said his charitable support extended to Veterans Airlift Command, cancer research and numerous other causes.

The Mahaffey Theater became his longest-running civic investment.

Big3 Entertainment took over management of the city-owned theater in 2011. Edwards spent millions of his own money improving it and remained intensely involved in its operation for 15 years.

He approached the Mahaffey as an entertainer. He studied the experience created by top Las Vegas resorts and venues, paying attention to details that began before a performer reached the stage. He wanted an evening at the Mahaffey to feel like entering another world.

Children became an important part of that vision.

Edwards established the Bill Edwards Foundation for the Arts in 2011 and sustained the Class Acts program, bringing schoolchildren into the theater for live music, dance and educational performances. He regularly referred to those children as future leaders. His family said hundreds of thousands participated during the Foundation’s years at the Mahaffey.

His management of the theater ended earlier this year. Edwards was already looking at ways to continue the Foundation’s work beyond the building.

His business career included spectacular successes, costly setbacks and regulatory battles. Mortgage Investors stopped originating loans in 2013 amid regulatory and legal disputes. Edwards continued financing the company during years of litigation, including lending it millions after operations had largely ceased.

He kept moving.

In the 2020 interview, Edwards described a philosophy that helps explain a career stretching from mortgages to soccer, shopping centers, music and theater. He said he preferred doing something wrong to doing nothing at all. Mistakes, in his view, came with the territory of getting things accomplished.

St. Petersburg gave Edwards an unusually large canvas for that philosophy.

Sundial changed hands. The Rowdies changed hands. His run at the Mahaffey eventually ended. Businesses opened, closed, succeeded and struggled.

The bets accumulated.

For more than three decades, Bill Edwards kept placing them on St. Petersburg.