Tampa Bay is coming back!

Many people complain about President Obama. I can't speak about any other part of the country, but Tampa Bay is showing many signs of recovery.  I live in Pasco County (north of Tampa) and work in Pinellas County (west of Tampa).  I see so much progress being made.  Most of the McDonald's Restaurants have been torn down and totally new McDonald's buildings have taken their place (a very attractive design, I might add). Wal-Mart has remodeled most of their stores included making Super Wal-Mart stores out of regular Wal-Mart stores. They have also added three new stores in St. Petersburg (one on the 3300 block of U.S. 19 South, a Wal-Mart Neighborhood Market on U.S. 19 and 68th Ave. North and Super Wal-Mart on U.S. 19 and 1st Ave. North in the revitalized Grand Central Shopping District of Central Avenue heading toward Downtown St. Pete. What use to be a blighted area now has many new small businesses lining Central Ave. Wal-Mart is also building a store on U.S. 19 in Tarpon Springs where a K-Mart store use to be. Wal-Mart is also building a Sam's Club store on U.S. 19 and 17th Ave. North in St. Pete. The Dollar Tree chain has added many new stores, among them one in South St. Pete, one in Clearwater Mall, and one in Port Richey, Florida. Within the past few years, I noticed that HH Gregg appliance & Electronics stores that I use to shop at when I lived in Indiana have come to the area. Hobby Lobby built a new store in Port Richey. A new chain of gas station/convenience stores called WaWa are being built, too. God Bless Harold Seltzer for opening two steakhouses where the old Sam Seltzer's Steakhouses use to be. (They have the best New York Strips and every once in a great while T-Bone steaks that just melt in your mouth.) These are just a few examples.

While I tend to moan and groan about all of the road construction being done these days, I had to think back that before President Obama was elected, there was great concern about where to get the money to repair or replace the Eisenhower Interstate System and other highways in the U.S.  Many people complained about the Stimulus Package and how expensive it is, but after 50 years the all of these roads and many other projects needed to be replaced or built and President Obama is going to, as Larry the Cable Guy says, "git 'er done"!