In 2008, investor Tom Gaffney bought the 600 block of St. Petersburg’s Central Avenue for $2.3 million. “Nobody went to the 600 block, ever,” he recalled. “It was all abandoned. Every store was empty. You can imagine what kind of shape it was in.”
On the last Thursday afternoon in May, the J.W. Cate Recreation Center in St. Petersburg played host to several hundred residents, who milled around a basketball court ringed by folding tables, filling complimentary canvas bags with enough paper measured in pounds rather than pieces – each one potentially holding the information that would save their lives.