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St. Petersburg gets burned again by a company reneging on promised headquarters move

 
The Dome Industrial Park still awaits the reIocation of IRX Therapeutics from New York, and Twinlab has never shown up at First Central Tower downtown.
The Dome Industrial Park still awaits the reIocation of IRX Therapeutics from New York, and Twinlab has never shown up at First Central Tower downtown.
Published Aug. 26, 2016

Looks like St. Petersburg got left at the altar — again — but doesn't know it yet.

In April 2015, a New York company called Twinlab Consolidated Holdings, a maker of wellness and bodybuilding supplements, announced it was moving its headquarters to the city's downtown. Twinlab committed to a long-term lease worth millions, taking two floors of downtown's First Central Tower — the "BB&T building" — on the corner of Central Avenue and Fourth Street.

Twinlab said back then it would relocate about 80 employees from its New York and Michigan offices by last summer.

The headquarters news was music to the ears of St. Petersburg political and business leaders. While celebrating the city's boomtown atmosphere, with fancy condos and apartment buildings sprouting like crabgrass, leadership fretted that St. Pete's growth needed better balance, including more jobs downtown. That's why the Twinlab announcement was received so enthusiastically and perhaps naively. Shares of this public company trade on the over-the-counter market at puny prices. Years of financial losses have prompted Twinlab in its own SEC filings to acknowledge repeatedly that its future as a "going concern" remains in question.

No matter. In a downtown lean on new business, much less a headquarters relocation, Twinlab's arrival was quickly added to Pinellas County and St. Petersburg economic development literature as a done deal.

Except Twinlab never showed up. Its space at First Central Tower, locally known as the BB&T building, was built out in anticipation of the company's arrival. But nobody's home. A search is on for a tenant interested in a subletting the empty space.

Instead, Twinlab management currently operates out of Boca Raton in South Florida. And while the company still won't officially say one way or the other whether the company will eventually put its headquarters here — despite a pricey lease commitment — the odds are stacked against a relocation here given the recent body language from Twinlab.

Is this a calamity for the city if Twinlab bails? No. But it makes St. Petersburg and the county look silly if they continue to tout a headquarters relocation that may never happen.

After all, this is not the first time a company committed to moving its headquarters to St. Pete only to slink away without ever saying "never mind."

IRX Therapeutics, a New York cancer-fighting biopharmaceutical business, announced in October 2011 that it was relocating its New York headquarters to St. Petersburg by early 2012.

That deal involved state, county and local incentives and a possible site in the city's Dome Industrial Park. A celebratory arrival event at USF St. Petersburg that drew an upbeat trio of heavyweights: Florida Gov. Rick Scott, USF president Judy Genshaft and then-St. Petersburg Mayor Bill Foster.

Rick Baker, a former city mayor who then worked as a corporate recruiter for USF, personally escorted IRX Therapeutics chief John Hadden II to the editorial board of the nearby Tampa Bay Times to elaborate on IRX's decision to relocate. Hadden's father, while working at USF, had come up with some of the basic anticancer research that would help launch IRX. The headquarters move was pitched as a "coming home" event.

The Times ran the IRX news as the lead story on its front page.

Well, IRX never showed up. And Hadden, after years of sharing email excuses for delays with me over the IRX No Show, eventually opted to ignore me.

IRX remains in New York. And St. Pete and USF officials seem happy to pretend the deal never happened. (The promised incentives were never delivered since IRX never came.)

That makes two downtown corporate relocations gone awry, with neither company fessing up to say publicly it was bailing out of an announced headquarters deal. Promises, promises.

Contact Robert Trigaux at rtrigaux@tampabay.com. Follow @venturetampabay.