Commissioner Murman mentioned in this Tampa Tribune article on JCC:

POLITICS

Bryan Glazer gives $4M to renamed Jewish community center

BY CHRISTOPHER O’DONNELL
Tribune staff 
Published: May 11, 2015   |   Updated: May 11, 2015 at 05:28 PM

TAMPA — With their name already carved into a downtown museum and their storied ownership of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, the Glazer family name already is writ large in the Tampa Bay area.

Now, the family is lending its name and wealth to another major Tampa project.

A new Jewish Community Center campus under construction in West Tampa will be called the Bryan Glazer Family JCC after the Tampa Bay Buccaneers co-chairman who donated $4 million to the center.

The $26 million project is breathing new life into the formerly disused Fort Homer W. Hesterly Armory on Howard Avenue. When complete, the former National Guard center will be a state-of-the art, 100,000-square-foot sports and recreation center including an outdoor aquatics center, a pre-school and event center.

JCC has raised $19.5 million toward the project, scheduled to be complete by the end of 2016.

Glazer, recently married, called the campus an important part of the revitalization of West Tampa and explained his donation as a way to create a place there for families, including his own.

“I live here and we want to be a very active part of the community and do good things to help the community grow and prosper and this is just one of them,” Glazer said.

The donation continues the role the Glazer family has played in Tampa since patriarch Malcolm Glazer bought the Bucs for $192 million in 1995. His three sons, including Bryan Glazer, ran the day to-day business operations of the team.

A Palm Beach businessman, Malcolm Glazer gave millions to Tampa area charities and educational causes in donations, tickets and in-kind contributions. That giving continued through the Glazer Family Foundation, which has donated almost $1 million to the Tampa Bay Sports Commission and $5 million to help build the Glazer Children’s Museum on Ashley Drive.

In addition to the Bucs, the family owns Manchester United, one of the biggest clubs in world soccer, and its wealth is estimated at $4.4 billion by Forbes Magazine.

The name of the campus was announced at a groundbreaking ceremony at the armory Monday attended by U.S. Rep. Kathy Castor, Tampa Mayor Bob Buckhorn, state lawmakers Jeff Brandes and Dana Young, Hillsborough County Commissioner Sandy Murman, and City Councilman Harry Cohen, among others.

Castor and Buckhorn see the project, with its $6 million in state funding and $1.3 million from Hillsborough County, as an example of how government should work with the private sector.

The rehabilitation of the armory is seen as a lynchpin of the city’s plan to rejuvenate a blighted, 930-acre area west of the Hillsborough River and north of Kennedy Boulevard.

The region is being designated a community redevelopment area with a special taxing district created to raise money for better streets, sewer and street lighting. The city and the Tampa Housing Authority are planning to tear down North Boulevard Homes, an aging public housing project, and replace it with mixed-income housing.

The JCC campus will help attract new development and businesses to the area, Buckhorn said.

“Think about the role this building will play in the amazing transformation of our city,” Buckhorn said. “This is the beginning of something special.”

JCC has entered into a 99 year lease with the State Armory Board for the armory and 5.6 acres of land that surrounds it with an option to purchase for $1.44 million.

The exterior of the building, which was begun in 1938 and dedicated one day before the Pearl Harbor attack, is protected by historic designation. It hosted concerts by acts including Elvis Presley and Pink Floyd, and President John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. made speeches there.

JCC’s plans for the interior include basketball and volleyball courts and a fitness center. It will also include an event center for film festivals, theater events and banquets.

The city this year agreed a 10-year contract with JCC to rent almost 8,000 square feet of space in the new center for public art space. It will cost the city $120,000 per year.

Parts of the campus will be only for JCC members but the art studio and event center will be open to the public.

Among those at the groundbreaking was 80-year-old Mario Suarez, who in the 1940s worked a concession stand when the armory hosted concerts and basketball.

Suarez, whose son is City Councilman Mike Suarez, walked around the building taking pictures of windows that still have bars on them and remembering concerts he worked, including British crooner Matt Monro and comedian-pianist Victor Borge.

“It makes me so happy,” Suarez said. “I don’t want it gone.”