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About

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Co-Founder 

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Charlie Guy’s Background

Raised, schooled, and professionally employed mostly in Tampa, FL, I moved to Saint Petersburg’s Old Southeast Neighborhood late 2003 serving now on its neighborhood association board. Additional insights into the City and Pinellas County collective transportation assets and planning expertise were then gained by monitoring the Mayor's Bicycle Pedestrian Advisory Committee and the City Complete Streets Committee meetings while also serving through December 2022 as head of the Council of Neighborhood Associations (CONA)’s Multimodal Transportation Committee. Also in January 2022, I was selected as a member of Forward Pinellas Bicycle Pedestrian Advisory Committee (BPAC).

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Education:

  • Public school educated in Tampa, FL, with a post graduate high school year at the Mercersburg Academy, Mercersburg, PA

  • Bachelor of Art (Sociology), Duke University while attending on a football scholarship

  • Masters (Education) University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, while teaching 1st grade for 3 years at Carolina Friends School 

  • Chartered Life Underwriter’s designation from The American College, Bryn Mar, PA

Life Passions:

My original interests in historical property restoration and urban renewal projects in emerging neighborhoods, cities, and small towns first originated when I returned to work in Tampa in the early 1970's purchasing an older home in Hyde Park when it was at best was considered a very interesting, BUT a rundown neighborhood. I became a member of our neighborhood leadership group organized to ultimately pressure the City of Tampa to convince the Canadian developer to finally meet with us to negotiate a compromise on building heights and other quality of life issues on what was later to become the very successful Hyde Park Village.

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After restoring number of older homes in Hyde Park including moving one out of harm’s way for the above project, we later won an Hillsborough County restoration award for completely repurposing a large dilapidated commercial building (known as the The Hyde Park Atrium) located at a prime gateway to the Hyde Park Village. (Willow, Platt , & the Leroy Selmon Crosstown ramps.) After my wife’s mother's death home in rural Lewes, DE, we were then able then saved her father’s family home by moving it to her mother’s family’s farm overlooking Rehoboth Bay and completing a total restoration.

 

My largest restoration project was located in a small Southern Pennsylvania historical town (population1,500), Mercersburg, PA, where I wrote and was awarded a US Urban Development Action Grant in competition with 500 other similar challenged US communities. Successful in receiving only 1 of the 92 grants awarded, this $210,000 loan was then a part of a total million-dollar investment used to restore and develop a 20,000 sq. ft. historical home on 5 acres in the town center into a 16-room luxury country inn, The Mercersburg Inn where we lived and managed it. Later this loan was repaid to the town….NOT the Federal government and used for then current public works projects. 

 

Returning to Tampa in 1988, I began involvement as a private business sector volunteer in East Tampa. In late 1992, I was selected as Chairman of this area's first economic development corporation…Lee Davis Neighborhood Development Corp...in the mostly African American area north of the Federal government's development of I-4 corridor to Orlando. Philosophically the organization was built upon the research and the assistance of Robert  Woodson, Washington, DC, founder of the Woodson Center. During this role, I was also chosen as Alternative Vice Chairman, Tampa Enterprise Community-Based Partnership, an inner-city community-based group that developed and was awarded a Federal Enterprise Zone designation and $2,900,000 grant for the City of Tampa.

 

Professionally, I later became proactive in the use of technology and distance learning to improve the lives of challenged younger students. After serving as the Florida Manager for NetSchools, one of the first companies specializing in 1-1-eLearning  solutions (wireless classroom deployed laptops), I then developed BrightZone Institute. This was a non-profit research and development consortium of private-sector firms in the fields of education, technology, and telecommunications along with several other educational technology non-profit entities.

 

Its primary mission was to help mitigate America’s Digital Learning Apartheid by better enabling America’s poorest English and Spanish speaking middle school students to experience safe Internet access via pre-Apple iPhone smartphones connected to safe digital learning resources at home while also fully participating in a safe networked educational collaborative platform. Our research and planning efforts resulted in a $1,000,000 grant by QUALCOM to field-test our system through mobile devices to increase mathematic achievement for 9th and 10th grade students in the State of North Carolina.   

Other Tampa Bay Area Public Sector Volunteer Experiences

  • Member of the Advisory Committee for the Gulfcoast Oncology Foundation

  • Director of Tampa Sports Club (Non-profit group dedicated to providing financial grants to support youth athletics.)

  • Board member of the Downtown Rotary Club

  • President and board member of St. John’s Parish Day School

  • President of HARC Housing, Inc. (Housing opportunities for the mentally challenged.)

  • Partner of the Learning Lab Student Incentive Project for the Florida Aquarium

  • President’s Task Force on Intercollegiate Athletics at the University of South Florida, Tampa (Studied and restructured the athletic department.)

  • Member of Planned Giving Committee for Suncoast Gerontology Center

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