Tampa Bay Lightning fans will have to wait until at least Feb. 5 to see the defending Stanley Cup champions on home ice. The team announced on Saturday that it will play the first few weeks of the 2021 season without fans in attendance because of the recent spike in coronavirus cases and hospitalizations in Hillsborough County and west-central Florida. The team had previously announced that about 3,800 fans would be allowed to attend home games at Amalie Arena. The decision to exclude fans also applies to the Toronto Raptors NBA team, which has temporarily relocated to Tampa. The Lightning open their season with a Jan. 13 home game against the Chicago Blackhawks.
Stageworks Theatre and The Mar St. Pete are producing an outdoor cabaret, with songs from musical theater and the pop charts, Saturday at 7 p.m. on a stage set up outside The Mar, at Central Avenue and 23rd Street. Performers at the free event include vocalists Heather Krueger, Eileen Lymus and Jose Rosario Jr., along with a three-piece band.
The Florida Department of Health reported an additional 773 cases in Pinellas County Friday and three additional deaths due to Covid-19, bringing the cumulative county total since March to 49,771 cases and 1,117 deaths. The two-week percent positivity rate now stands at 10.59 percent with nine consecutive days in the double digits. As of Friday afternoon, there were 377 people hospitalized with a primary diagnosis of Covid-19 in Pinellas County's acute-care hospitals, with 14.2 percent of adult ICU beds available. More than 20,000 people have been vaccinated against the virus countywide.
Due to a closure on Bayshore Drive for the St. Petersburg Power and Sailboat Show, AVA’s shuttle service will be temporarily suspended from Sunday, Jan. 10 at 12 p.m. until Wednesday, Jan. 20 at 6 p.m. Service will resume as scheduled on Thursday, January 21 at 10 a.m. For more information, click here.
The St. Petersburg city council unanimously approved a nine-month $850,000 contract with Gulf Coast Jewish Family & Community Services to hire a program director and staff for the St. Petersburg Police Department's new Community Assistance Liaison program. The program, which was announced last year following the death of George Floyd, will send community and social service professionals instead of uniformed police officers on some non-violent calls. Initially, plans call for social workers to respond to calls alongside officers, though the goal is for social workers to go out on 80 percent of calls alone by the program's sixth month. The pilot phase of CAL will run through September when council members will evaluate it and determine what the next steps will be.
The City of St. Petersburg has been awarded a $900,000 grant through the Florida Department of Economic Opportunity’s Rebuild Florida General Planning Support Program, Gov. Ron DeSantis announced Friday. The grant will go toward helping the city develop a comprehensive seawall mitigation strategy to address sea level rise. In total, nearly $20 million was awarded to 37 counties, municipalities, educational institutions, and non-profit organizations through Rebuild Florida. The program, administered by the DEO, provides funding for communities and organizations to develop or enhance state, regional or local plans which will enable the state to withstand future disasters. The funds are allocated through the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development’s Community Development Block Grant - Mitigation program.
Tampa resident Ra Nu Ra Khuti Amen Bey, 49, has filed a civil lawsuit against Darden Restaurants, the Orlando-based parent company of Olive Garden restaurants, alleging that a Tampa Olive Garden refused to accept cash as payment for a pickup order he placed in December. The management of the restaurant in question, located at 2801 E. Busch Blvd., cited the company’s new COVID-era policy of cashless transactions as its basis for denying service to Bey, a convicted felon who also goes by the name Bertram Andrews-Powley III and claims he is an indigenous member of the “Moorish Nation.” Bey’s lawsuit, filed in Hillsborough County, seeks $8,000 in damages.
Although all the workshops have been canceled, Eckerd College's annual Writers in Paradise conference will go on, virtually, with two days of evening readings. Authors (view the list here) will read Jan. 17 and 18 via YouTube. Writers in Paradise was founded in 2003 by Sterling Watson and Dennis Lehane. All information about the 2020 event changes can be found here.
Burg Simpson Eldredge Hersh & Jardine P.C., a Denver-based law firm, has opened practices in Tampa and Sarasota that will focus on construction defect cases for plaintiffs such as townhouse and condo associations. According to a news release, the offices will be led by shareholder Diana Sada. The firm — which has secured more than $1 billion in verdicts, settlements and judgments, the release states — also has offices in Arizona, Ohio, Wyoming, New Mexico and Nevada.
The Howard Frankland Bridge will remain open the weekend of Jan. 9-10. An earlier plan by the Florida Department of Transportation to close the bridge Saturday afternoon through Sunday morning has been postponed, FDOT said in a news release. The department cited an unforeseen delay in the arrival of needed bridge equipment. FDOT said it will need to close the bridge so crews can remove the 4th Street North (SR 687) bridge over Interstate 275 as part of the Gateway Expressway project. UPDATE: FDOT now says all I-275 travel lanes on the Howard Frankland Bridge will close from 8 p.m. Saturday, Jan. 16 until noon Sunday, Jan. 17, weather permitting. Electronic message boards and temporary signage will assist I-275 northbound and southbound motorists traveling around this closure via the posted detour route using Roosevelt Boulevard, Gandy Boulevard, and Dale Mabry Highway, FDOT said. Drivers are advised to add 30 minutes to their travel time.
Medical device maker ConMed (NYSE: CNMD) has designated its Largo office as its corporate headquarters. The company, which generated $955.1 million in gross revenue in 2019, had been headquartered in Utica, N.Y. That location will remain open. ConMed employs 3,300 people worldwide, according to Yahoo Finance, 850 of whom work in Largo. In addition to more than a dozen international locations spread across Europe, Australia, India and Asia, it has U.S. offices in Denver, Atlanta and Westborough, Mass.
