Hype Group is partnering with local breweries to raise money for the Fighting Chance Fund and help local businesses impacted by Covid-19. The St. Petersburg creative agency has created a customizable, St. Pete-centric beer label for the breweries and is offering the label free of charge to any brewery interested in collaborating with the agency on the fund-raising initiative. Hype Group will customize the label with specs to fit a beer bottle or can and will include the respective brewery’s logo. The brewery will then print the label, apply it to any beer of their choosing and a percentage of that beer’s sales will be donated to the Fighting Chance Fund. Each brewery can determine the percentage of sales its wants to contribute. Six breweries have confirmed participation: Avid Brew Company, St. Pete Brewing Company, Bayboro Brewing Co., If I Brewed the World, Dissent Craft Brewing Company and Grand Central Brewhouse.
St. Pete-Clearwater International Airport had a 97 percent loss in passenger traffic in April. Only 5,799 passengers got on or off a plane last month at the airport, compared to more than 200,000 passengers in April 2019. Allegiant is operating with a reduced schedule of flights due to Covid-19, while Sunwing Airlines Canadian service and Sun Country charters to the Beau Rivage Resort and Casino were suspended in March until further notice. Year-to-date, there have been 506,751 passengers at the St. Pete-Clearwater airport.
A second area code has been assigned to Hillsborough County as well as part of Pasco County and Oldsmar in Pinellas County. The Florida Public Service Commission said the 656 area code will cover the same geographic boundaries as the current 813 area code. The second area code was approved in March by the Florida Public Service Commission. Existing customers will keep their numbers, but as 813 area code numbers are exhausted, new customers, or customers adding additional lines, will receive the new 656 area code, the PSC said in a news release. Everyone will have to dial the area code plus the seven-digit phone number to make local calls. The new area code likely won’t start to be assigned for a couple of years, in the third quarter of 2022, when the current supply of available 813 area code numbers is expected to run out, the PSC said previously.
The Bailey Family Foundation gave $350,000 to Tampa General Hospital to assist with needs surrounding the Covid-19 pandemic. Tampa General plans to use the funds for Covid-19 testing supplies, personal protective equipment, new technology and other needs. “Tampa is our home. It’s where we’ve chosen to raise families and start businesses. This gift is about trying to do our part to help protect the community we love,” says Kyle Bailey, president of the Bailey Family Foundation and founder of Replay Guitar Exchange. The mission of the Tampa-based Bailey Family Foundation is to enhance the availability of post-secondary education and to make grants to support our local community.
St. Petersburg brewer, 3 Daughters Brewing, was featured Tuesday on national talk show LIVE with Kelly & Ryan, where they were presented with a $5,000 check for their generosity toward the St. Petersburg community shown in last month's hand sanitizer giveaway. Instead of keeping the money, owners Robin and Mike Harting decided to match the $5,000 with their own dollars to purchase $10,000 of gift cards to local businesses, including restaurants, grocery stores and bars in increments of $50 and $100. 3 Daughters will give away those gift cards starting today via social media to local community members.
The City of St. Petersburg announced Thursday that local entrepreneur Daniels Ikajevs donated $25,000 to the Fighting Chance Fund. In a statement, Ikajevs expressed empathy for entrepreneurs and startups experiencing hardships due to Covid-19, and explained that he wanted to help preserve and grow the local startup community. “It’s not always easy to start and grow a business, you have to be strong and resilient, often not only for yourself, but for the many people who rely on you, be that your team, employees or your family," Ikajevs said. "Smaller businesses, with great ideas that generally expand their grassroots operations, in many ways become the job creators and future backbones of the local economy." “Daniels Ikajevs has a passion for entrepreneurship," said Mayor Rick Kriseman. "He recognizes the challenges facing our business community, especially those in the nascent stage of their operations. We recently expanded our criteria to include businesses that have been in operation for less than one year, and the contribution Daniels has made will help to ensure our funding of those businesses can continue. We are grateful for Daniels’ presence in our region and his interest in St. Pete’s success.” To see a full update about the Fighting Chance Fund, click here.
Tampa General Hospital and Kindred Healthcare have a joint venture to build and operate a freestanding 59-bed inpatient rehabilitation facility in Tampa. The 80,000-square-foot hospital will be located on Kennedy Boulevard between Oregon Avenue and Willow Avenue. It's expected to cost $35 million. The new hospital will care for adults recovering from conditions such as stroke, neurological disease, injury to the brain or spinal cord and other debilitating illnesses or injuries. Groundbreaking is planned for the summer of 2020, with the expected opening in the fall of 2021. Kindred, a healthcare services company based in Louisville, Kentucky, will manage day-to-day operations at the hospital, which will employ about 140 caregivers and other staff. Tampa General will provide medical support services such as imaging, lab and surgical services. The clinical teams at the inpatient rehab facility that Tampa General currently operates will move to the new hospital. Tampa General will continue to provide pediatric and outpatient rehabilitation at other sites.
City of St. Petersburg Emergency Manager Amber Boulding told St. Petersburg City Council Thursday that the city is looking to implement a drive-thru testing site at the Mahaffey Theater parking garage in downtown St. Petersburg within the next few weeks. The Mahaffey Theater may be the ideal location, Boulding said, because it would allow for traffic in and out, and cover for staff from rain and sun. The city is currently looking to finalize the arrangements for use of the site.
One of the biggest challenges to adequate testing has been a shortage of personal protective equipment (PPE) needed to conduct testing, rather than a shortage of tests themselves. According to Boulding, the city has adequate PPE supplies and has set aside PPE supplies for the future testing site.
While the stability of the supply chain of PPE is improving, it's still not where Boulding would like to see it, and won't be, she says, until cities, states and hospitals can order without delays. There remain long wait times to receive PPE, and N-95 masks and gowns are particularly difficult to find. Boulding said gloves and surgical masks are getting easier to source, and that the city should soon be receiving a state shipment of PPE.Neiman Marcus Group has filed a voluntary Chapter 11 petition for bankruptcy. The retailer has a restructuring support agreement with most of its creditors that would let it substantially reduce its debt and support continued operations during the Covid-19 pandemic and beyond, a news release said. The company has secured debtor-in-possession financing of $675 million from creditors to let it stay in business during the bankruptcy proceedings. Neiman Marcus has temporarily closed some of its stores through May 31 but 10 stores nationwide are open for curbside pickup including the store in Tampa, the news release said. The Tampa store is at International Plaza.
More Floridians continue to file for initial unemployment benefits claims. For the week ended May 2, there were 173,191 initial claims for benefits filed in Florida, a report from the U.S. Department of Labor said. That was down significantly from a week earlier, when about 433,000 Floridians filed for first-time unemployment benefits and from the prior week, when there were about 505,000 initial claims. Since mid-March, about 1.76 million Florida residents have filed for benefits, according to Labor Department reports. Nationally, there were another 3.2 million unemployment claims filed for the week ended April 2, bringing the total number of jobs lost during the coronavirus crisis in the last seven weeks to at least 33.5 million. The advance seasonally adjusted insured unemployment rate for the week ended April 215 was 15.5 percent, the Labor Department said.
Well-known Florida Attorney, John Morgan of Morgan & Morgan took to Twitter Tuesday to make Florida Governor Ron DeSantis "an offer that cannot be refused." Morgan offered his services and those of his attorneys to recoup the dollars spent on Florida's broken unemployment system for no cost.
“We have a computer system that was broken day one," said Morgan. "It was bought for 77 million dollars by Rick Scott. Here’s my offer: Governor DeSantis turn me and my team loose and we will recover that money for the state of Florida and you know what I’ll charge you to do this? Zero, nothing, put every single penny back in your pocket and in the pocket of our unemployed.” Morgan's call for the recovery of $77 million comes after the state has faced weeks of criticism over its faulty CONNECT website. The Governor has called for an Inspector General probe of the initial spending for the website and the lack of safeguards in the site's development. To date, 1,829,812 unemployment claims have been filed in Florida, 769,843 claims have been processed. Of those claims, 481,497 have been paid and $1.17 billion has been distributed. Data from the Department of Labor shows Florida lagging behind all states - big and small - in unemployment claims processed. For the latest numbers, visit the state's unemployment dashboard here: http://lmsresources.labormarketinfo.com/covid19/index.htmlRight now our unemployment system in Florida is broken!! Here’s an offer to the state of Florida and @GovRonDeSantis that cannot be refused! pic.twitter.com/uUPvLqX2zk
— John Morgan (@JohnMorganESQ) May 6, 2020
The City of St. Petersburg's Restart St. Pete effort has released a survey for retail and restaurant owners regarding closing on-street parking to expand outdoor seating and merchandise displays.
Business owners can take the survey here: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/YFTLYPB
