by Janan Talafer • Jvt916@tampabay.rr.com

THE MASSIVE MAKEOVER of Clear-water's "billion-dollar beach" has gotten so much press lately that anything else going on in town has all but been overshadowed. Look around, though, there's plenty elsewhere.

Few places in Florida can claim water-front property that's 27 feet above sea level - it's almost an oxymoron. But in downtown Clearwater new residents of planned upscale condos will enjoy a clear view of Clearwater Harbor and the Gulf of Mexico from the safety of a perch on top of the highest coastal bluff in the state.

"We have a very unique downtown situated right on the water, only five minutes from the beach. That sets us apart in Tampa Bay," says Clearwater Mayor Frank Hibbard.

Regardless of its amazing location, Clearwater has remained largely undiscovered and overlooked. Not for a lack of trying, though, because over the last two decades there have been numerous, abortive attempts to kick-start life into the downtown. This time could be different, though.

Perhaps it's the jump in property values or the sheer number of people moving here from out of state. Whatever the reason, developers are building and people are buying, potentially turning Clearwater into the vibrant city it was always meant to be.

"There's a little softening of the market with rising interest rates and some pulling back a little, but we're moving forward, gaining momentum," says Dwight Matheny, chairman of the Clearwater Downtown Partnership, a newly formed private-public partnership that has become a cheerleader for economic development.

Like many urban centers, development of downtown Clearwater is actually redevelopment, as David Stone, president of Liberty Bank, points out. Take Water's Edge, a 25-story residential tower and retail complex planned by Opus South, the developer that's erecting two classy condos in St. Petersburg. Water's Edge is being built on a waterfront site once occupied by the Calvary Baptist Church. And Opus South hopes to incorporate neighboring property that currently houses Clearwater City Hall.

"We're in conversation with the city; they've been a great partner with us," says Jerry Shaw, Opus South's senior vice president of real estate. "We're looking at perhaps a combination of residential and maybe a hotel. We're very pleased with the success of Water's Edge. It's better than we anticipated and we hope it will spur additional developments downtown."

Lee Arnold Jr., founder and CEO of Colliers Arnold, calls Opus South the real catalyst behind the city's redevelopment efforts. "They have a phenomenal project under way," he says.

Bill Witter, a broker with Equity Pro Realty, agrees. "Opus is one of the largest developers in the world and they have confidence in Clearwater. This was a huge step," says Witter.

Eyeing Clearwater

Businesses large and small also have their eye on cost of doing business and the over-homes in Sacramento, CA, were reasons for Jonathan Brewer's to move his company across the to Florida.

Now EarthWorks Environmental, a in high-tech soil remediation occupies a brownfield zone in Clearwater, a site that once Pinellas County school buses. In the spring, Brewer and his team were remodeling the former warehouse facil-make it ADA accessible and to to its original 1922-era look. He expects to be fully operational by fall year.

"Where I'm coming from (California) is so expensive to do business; it makes compete," says Brewer. "We Texas, Alabama, Mississippi, talking with the folks from the County Economic Development office."

It was after Brewer attended a Bay Manufacturers Association dinner that he was convinced the area was right. "In Sacramento I didn't have a peer group," he says. "In the Tampa they're making ships, building sorts of things. Out there, being able to pay someone to make my equipment became a problem. Here I was able to bid it out to six parties. It's having a choice."

EarthWorks tackles contaminated sites, turning soil polluted with diesel fuel, gasoline or chemicals into what calls plain old dirt. The company, founded in 1996, provides clients turnkey solution, offering the equipment, licenses, supplies, training and support for its Matrix Enhanced Treatment System (METS) technology. "We sell our equipment and a technology-use license," says Brewer. "It's not a franchise per se, but we want to control the consistency and quality of the product and make sure the soil is cleaned the right way."

IF YOU ARE ONE of the approximately 4 million people in the U.S. who have cataract surgery every year, it's possible that your new artificial lens was made at Bausch & Lomb's Clearwater plant.

"We are a manufacturing site for cataract surgery products - intraocular lenses and insertion systems," says Scott Zygadlo, director of manufacturing.

While the vision care company has been in Clear-water over 25 years, Bausch & Lomb didn't purchase the business until 1998, part of a strategic direction to grow the firm's core business in eye health, says Zygadlo.

The Clearwater plant is experiencing consider-able growth, ramping up its workforce to almost 400 employees and bringing in a new high-tech intraocular lens that incorporates technology to reduce the size of the incision required during cataract surgery. The company's location across the street from Clear-water Mall on busy Gulf-to-Bay Boulevard is tucked behind what was originally 20 wooded acres. "We have the most beautifully landscaped factory in the country," says Zygadlo.

Mail Madness

In 1998, Joy Gendusa started PostcardMania out of her home with just a computer and phone and no capital investment. Last year, the Clearwater firm made the Inc. 500 list of fastest-growing private companies in the U.S. - $3.7 million in revenues in 2002 and $12.7 million in 2005, with a projected $18 mil-lion for 2006, says Karla Jo Helms-Eicher, vice president of public relations. "A little over a year ago we had about 60 employees and now we're close to 130."

The main reason for the company's growth, she says, is that "we do exactly what we tell our clients to do. That means spending close to $800,000 every six months on marketing. Whatever we spend we get back 10 times."

PostcardMania began with a simple premise, says Helms-Eicher. "Small mom and pop companies typically can't afford an advertising agency and commercial printers might not offer them the kind of marketing advice they need."

PostcardMania starting filling the gap and is now a leading direct mail postcard marketing company with clients big and small nationwide. Some 3.5-million postcards roll off the company's presses a week at the plant on Hercules.

AEROSONIC CORPORATION IS ANOTHER Clear-water company that has gained a national reputation. A major supplier of aircraft instrumentation, Aerosonic made the Forbes 2004 list of 200 best small companies in the U.S. In March, the publicly owned company reported record revenues of $34.8 million for its fiscal year ending Jan. 31, 2006, up 13 percent from 2005. The company was also awarded a $1.1-million order for altimeters from the U.S. Army Aviation and Missile Command Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Alabama.

"We make flying safer with mechanical and digital instrumentation designed to provide the pilot with altitude, air speed, rate of climb and descent; and with gauges for monitoring pressures and temperatures," says Mark Perkins, executive vice president. "Our mechanical instrumentation is very precise. We're a lot like old-fashioned watchmakers."

Clearwater will soon be the new corporate head-quarters for Suncoast Roofers Supply, which is relocating from Tampa to a new facility that it will share with Haydon-Rubin Development Inc. and Rubin Real Estate Inc. The new site in the Triad Commons Office Park will serve as the statewide operations center for the company.

Easy Living

Growing the business community is just one part of the excitement in Clear-water these days. Mayor Hibbard, along with dozens of other business and civic leaders, remains focused on creating residential development downtown, which he feels is the key for the city to succeed. "We're finally starting to see progress," he says. "We've been gradually putting the infrastructure into place to create the right environment for private developers to come in and invest in downtown."

The infrastructure Hibbard mentions includes the new 90,000-square-foot, $20-million Clearwater Main Library; the new $69-million, four-lane Clear-water Memorial Causeway Bridge; the diversion of beach traffic off Cleveland Street to Court Street; and the planned streetscaping for Cleveland Street.

City officials are also proposing the creation of 138 boat slips not far from the Memorial Causeway Bridge. The proposal is a dramatically scaled-down version of a referendum previously vetoed by voters. That plan included a marina and other changes to the city's waterfront.

But the new plan, which includes boat slips and no marina, will go before voters possibly in November. It has the backing of the Clearwater Downtown Partner-ship and business leaders such as Lee Arnold, who sees it as an opportunity for "people to come in by boat, park, get out and visit downtown."

"A lot of things go into the formula for making downtown great," says Clear-water city manager Bill Horne. "The waterfront attracts people who want to bring their boats."

"We want to make sure that the public is well informed and that they under-stand what the proposal is all about," says Matheny of the Clearwater Down-town Partnership. "We're not talking about trailer parking, fueling or boat ramps; we're simply talking about boat slips. We have a backlog of people who want to put their boats in the water."

According to Doug Matthews, City of Clearwater public communications director, the boat slips would "essentially straddle the new bridge and be the perfect anchor for the new promenade."

The city is currently developing a promenade from part of the old Cause-way Bridge that will jut out into the water from Coachman Park.

Of course, creating a livable, vibrant downtown means drawing in new residents, and developers are busy with plans to make that happen.

One of the most sizeable downtown projects is the brainchild of developers who are members of the Church of Scientology, which has an international religious retreat center in Clearwater. The church's dominant presence downtown may be controversial to some people, but others view it as a positive.

"If not for the Scientologists, the sidewalks would have been rolled up a long time ago; they're the only economic power that has had some consistency here," says Bill Witter of Equity Pro Realty. "The church has done nothing but help with redevelopment efforts."

Those developers - Ben Kugler and Ron Pollack of Triangle Development - are creating an exclusive waterfront community that extends from Fort Harrison Avenue to the Intercoastal Waterway and sits next to Scientology's Sandcastle retreat center.

Triangle Development's new project will eventually span about 12 acres, more than two city blocks - the largest private investment in terms of size after the city, county and Church of Scientology, says Kugler. The project includes Island View, which encompasses a small number of town homes and 400 condos in several low-rise towers, along with an adjacent retail center called Harrison Village. Kugler says they already have 300 reservations for Island View, with initial groundbreaking scheduled for December.

Guy Bonneville's Clearwater Centre at the corner of Cleveland Street and Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd. will transform a building that was first a medical research facility in the late 1970s into a luxury urban resort. Each of the 71 condos in Clearwater Centre's new 16-story tower will have a private balcony and will be 1,300 to 2,800 square feet. The second floor of the tower will house a fitness center with concierge-style amenities, along with an outdoor pool and spa with cabanas. The complex also includes 23,000 square feet of retail space and new plans call for two-story "city homes" with private garage access to go on top of the shops.

Also new on Cleveland Street is the 19-unit Ewing Place Town Homes, a Key West-style project developed by Peter Leach, senior vice president of South-port Financial Services. Leach is also developing Garden Trail Town Homes Street, located adjacent to the Pinellas Trail. A transplant from New York City, Leach says he couldn't imagine living anywhere else than Clearwater.

"I love this town," says Leach. "I'm 15 minutes from the best beach in the world, 30 minutes from the best airport in the country and I have to have a calendar to schedule all the people who want to come and visit. I live and work in paradise."

Blake Longacre of FBL Development has 48 residential units and five retail spaces planned for a former Scotty's Lumber yard on Corbett Street. Old Clearwater City Flats at Wells Court will be a gated community offering maintenance-free living, heated pool and clubhouse with fitness center. All but three units had sold by early May.

Other downtown projects include Station Square, a 15-story condo complex next to the historic downtown post office. Plans call for some 126 condos, 10,000 square feet of retail space and a 100-space public parking garage. Elias Jafif of Clearwater Development LLC is also planning CW Acqua and The Down-town Plaza, a 34-story condominium tower with 245 units. "Ninety percent of the units face west to the water and unlike the beach, our residents will have two views - the water during the day and the lights from the skyline at night," says Jafif.

Original plans for the Acqua called for 35,000 square feet of retail and a 10-screen movie theater, but Jafif says that skyrocketing construction costs call for a trip back to the drawing board to "see if we can make the numbers work."

Exactly what the final results might be, he's not sure, but he does believe that the area has "incredible potential to become a signature downtown but not without a major anchor like a movie theater."