A tour of the Tampa Bay Times Forum

It was first called the Ice Palace. Then the St. Pete Times Forum. Now it's the Tampa Bay Times Forum. It has hosted concerts, national events like the Republican National Convention and it has been the Tampa Bay Lightning's home for the past 16 years. � This year the Lightning turns 20. The Times Forum is where the Lightning won Game 7 of the Stanley Cup Finals in 2004. It's where the championship banner was raised the next season in front of a record crowd of 22,120. � It was also the site of the 1999 NHL All-Star Game. � Last year, the Times Forum underwent $40 million in renovations that included a pipe organ and two Tesla coils that shoot lightning from the arena's ceiling after goals. � To celebrate the Lightning's two decades, the franchise opened up the Times Forum for tours that include visits to the locker rooms, laundry room and even the VIP clubs where Clint Eastwood borrowed a chair to make his famous speech. The Times went along for a tour. Here's what we saw....

Church band's prayers answered with fateful knock at door

TAMPA — Thursday is rehearsal night for the band at Relevant Church. But the Tampa Bay Buccaneers were playing on national television on Thursday, and the guitarist wanted to watch.

So the band moved practice a day earlier.

Knowing Sunday's sermon would focus on the pitfalls of pride and arrogance, Carl von dem Bussche, the church's creative arts pastor and the band's lead singer, picked out a song he felt fit perfectly: Demons by indie rock group Imagine Dragons. Demons' lyrics — Don't get too close, it's dark inside, it's where my demons hide — exemplified how people conceal hidden flaws, he thought....

The Hold Steady is the hot ticket at Guavaween

YBOR CITY

The Hold Steady has appeared on the Late Show With David Letterman, the Colbert Report and the covers of major music magazines. Movie stars have called the hard-rocking indie outfit their favorite band.

Hailing from Brooklyn, N.Y., the Hold Steady has found a second home that many other New Yorkers have found over the years. Florida. Specifically, Ybor City.

The connection between the band and Tampa's historic cigar district is strange, whimsical and nonsensical. But among fans, it's strong and will be on display Saturday night when the band returns to Ybor City to headline Guavaween, giving the annual Tampa Halloween tradition some major national cred from a band with pseudo local ties....

Longshoreman remembered as loving pastor

TAMPA — During his last sermon Saturday, the Rev. Hercules Gilmore told his small East Tampa congregation to be a "flashlight" to the world. Shine, spread the good news and live it out like a beacon for everyone to see.

Longshoremen who worked with the pastor on the Port of Tampa docks said he practiced what he preached, providing encouragement and confidence to other stevedores at the right time in people's lives....

At memorial service, former Congressman Sam Gibbons hailed as Tampa's 'favorite son'

TAMPA — The memorial service for Sam Gibbons was held in a church where, in his last days, the statesman sat in a wheelchair by the organ, singing with all the gusto he could find.

It was his church, Palma Ceia Presbyterian, named for the neighborhood that Gibbons helped Tampa incorporate into its boundaries.

Across the street was Plant High School, his alma mater, and many miles to the north, the University of South Florida, an institution that Gibbons helped establish....

Seminole Heights library closes to make way for bigger, better branch

TAMPA — The library that serves Tampa's largest neighborhood will close on Halloween to make room for a replacement more than three times its size.

The nearly 50-year-old one-story Seminole Heights Branch Library at Central and Osborne avenues across from Memorial Middle School is being torn down and replaced by a $6.9 million, two-story building that is expected to open in winter 2013....

Tampa Theatre needs $150,000 to enter digital film age

TAMPA

The first film shown at Tampa Theatre, a 1926 silent romance known as Ace of Cads, disappeared forever. It was stored on nitrate film, which is flammable and prone to combust. It also decayed easily.

Like most films shown before 1929, the movie starring Adolphe Menjou vanished over the decades, leaving a void in the history of American film and culture.

Tampa Theatre has tried to slow this deterioration of time. Behind the stage is a lighting board that includes red switches, red bulbs and big white levers that still operate the stage lights, just as when the theater opened....

Oaks at Tampa office building are spared ax, unlike Ybor City's trees

TAMPA — With summer temperatures consistently around 90 degrees, property manager Cal Buikema knows the importance of the oak trees that line his skyscraper.

"Heat deterrence," he says.

Over the years, he has also come to admire their stature as tall sentries complementing his 42-story downtown building with pewter-tinted windows and a Spanish rosa dante granite surface that rises into a pyramid....

A Rain maker has tall hopes for ABA basketball team

There are second careers, and then there's Dennis Casazza's new job. At the age of 73, he oversees a fledgling basketball team despite having no experience in basketball, playing or otherwise. Originally from Brooklyn, N.Y., Casazza is the vice president and general manager of the Tampa Bay Rain, an expansion American Basketball Association franchise that began playing this month. • Casazza, a former engineer, salesman, marketer and telecommunications company owner, moved to Tampa to retire in 2002. That's where he met Steve Davis, who owned a company that digitized paper records. Casazza worked for him as a marketing consultant until about three years ago, when Davis sold the company. • Davis went on to buy and create the Tampa Bay Rain franchise, and he went back to his old friend Casazza to run and market the operation. Times staff writer Justin George caught up with Casazza to ask him why he thinks the Rain will bring a torrent of fans to Expo Hall at the Florida State Fairgrounds....

Elmo and Cookie Monster visit St. Joseph's Children's Hospital

TAMPA — Two iconic furry characters that have touched generations of Americans came bounding into St. Joseph's Children's Hospital on Friday bent on bringing smiles to ill children. They came with blanketing hugs, peek-a-boo mitts and bright, googly eyes, disregarding their own mortality, having only recently learned that they themselves might be facing a deadly prognosis.

Elmo and Cookie Monster made a special hospital visit Friday in advance of Sesame Street Live's Elmo Makes Music shows over the next five nights at the University of South Florida Sun Dome. Twenty-four miles away, Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney was in Pier Park in St. Petersburg....

After massive tree cutting in Ybor City, Tampa will take public input before replanting

TAMPA

City agency and department heads failed Thursday to resolve Tampa City Council members' concerns about why a contractor chopped down 102 trees in the historic cigar factory district.

City parks officials halted replanting trees until the public could weigh in Oct. 16 before the Barrio Latino Commission, which oversees Ybor City architectural changes.

The trees became a thorn in the administration's side Sept. 21, when city contractor ValleyCrest Tree Care Services sawed scores of live oak and holly trees on Ybor sidewalks, leaving behind 4-foot stumps and confused merchants. ...