Uptown Cheapskate Can Turn Your Unwanted Clothes Into Cash!

Uptown Cheapskate Tampa Palms owner Amber Watt.

We bet you didn’t realize that there’s money hiding in your closets. It’s sitting there right now. And no, we’re not talking about that $20 bill you found in your jacket pocket, so continue reading if you need a little Covid-19 cash boost. You really can find some convertible cash on your hangers, in your drawers and sitting on your shoe racks.

Thanks to Uptown Cheapskate — a chain of fashion retail stores that are similar to a thrift store but with more upscale, designer-label items — the clothes, shoes and accessories you no longer want, may be of resale value to you. The 4,800 sq.-ft. store that opened in the Publix-anchored City Plaza at Tampa Palms shopping center back in November of 2018 has re-emerged from a temporary Covid-19 closure in need of more trendy clothing and accessory items that you may have outgrown or stopped wearing or using for whatever reason.

Every day, the local Uptown Cheapskate buys your items from the time they open up until an hour before closing. There’s no appointment necessary, but the staff does prefer that your former fashions arrive in hampers or bins. You can shop while one of Uptown’s 12 employees sorts through to find inventory they need. From there, your “upcycled” clothes go through an appraisal system that generates two offers. You can choose cash or store credit — the latter yields an extra 25-percent value.

So, what should you be looking for the next time you clean out your closets? Uptown Cheapskate Tampa Palms owner Amber Watt says the store accepts a plethora of name brands, and fashions ranging from XS-XXL. The store is particularly in need of high-waisted “mom” shorts and jeans, crop tops, tank tops, shirts and trendy, summery pieces from brands like Zara and H&M.

“We cater to a very wide range of people and that’s what makes us so successful,” says Watt, who adds that she regularly shopped at Goodwill as a youngster before attending West Virginia University in Morgantown on a full academic scholarship and studying engineering.

Watt’s store is one of three in Florida from this national franchise that includes more than 80 locations in two dozen states. It launched in Utah more than a decade ago., and the Tampa Palms store is the only one in the Tampa Bay area. Watt says it was doing very well until the novel coronavirus forced a temporary shutdown in March.

“It hit us pretty hard,” says Watt, who was very happy that Publix, the landlord for the plaza, issued her a rent abatement for two months. “We were having a pretty strong Saturday in the middle of March and by the next Saturday, we were completely shut down. We did start an online store over the break (Uptown-Cheapskate-Tampa-Palms.myshopify.com) and were able to keep some of the staff on. It helped, but it wasn’t what we needed.”

Uptown Cheapskate reopened at 25-percent capacity during the first week of May and went to 50 percent by the end of that month. It returned to full capacity by June, along with some new changes.Sneeze guards have been installed on all of the counters and stickers are now on the floor depicting the 6-feet social distancing space.

All employees must wear face masks and customers are required to as well. The store provides free disposable face masks for customers and also sells double-layer cloth masks. All six dressing rooms are sanitized and locked each time a customer uses one, and hand sanitizer is available at all stations. 

We Want Your Clothes!

“It was surprising when we reopened,” Watt says. “We expected a lot of pent-up demand to sell us clothes, but when we reopened, it was really the opposite. We had a lot of customers shopping for clothes, but not selling us (their) clothes. We were unprepared for that, so we’ve depleted our inventory quite badly and really need spring and summer clothes now. We hope everyone will clean out their closets and bring their clothes to us. ”

Whether shopping or selling, Watt prides herself on keeping a clean, organized store where customer service is paramount. Clothes are organized by size, then subcategorized by short/long and further by color groupings. The experience was something that Ashlee Fredrickson felt compelled to share on Facebook after recently making the drive from Brandon to shop there.

 “Clean store,” she said. “Plenty of safety measures in place with recent Covid-19 issues. Great selection and great prices.”

Any time you visit, shoppers should look for stickers. Depending upon the color, there’s various discounts available — as much as 70-percent off retail. Uptown Cheapskate puts new items out within 30 minutes of bringing them in and many are gone within a week. For other items that literally hang around longer, the local store offers a semi-annual sale to push through old inventory and make room for the new styles that come in every day.

Other deals to look out for include Dollar Days — where clearance items go for as low as a $1 — and the tax-free weekend August 7-9, where you save the 8.5% sales tax.

Watt says that plus sizes are hard to keep in stock and the handbag rack also is a popular display. The store also always needs shoes, especially men’s athletic footwear, and offers a wide range of bralets, complete outfits, swimwear and new and used jewelry. The casual clothing store caters to everyday wear fashions – primarily for the age 18-55 crowd.

Customer favorites include brands such as lululemon and Gymshark athletic wear, Kate Spade and Michael Kors handbags and American Eagle jeans. You will find everything from Target brands up to Gucci and Louis Vuitton. On a recent visit ,we found a Coach purse for $22.99, Victoria Secret leggings for $13.99, Adidas shoes for $27.99 and an almost new men’s Ralph Lauren Polo shirt for $13.99.

Anything that the store doesn’t purchase from you can easily be donated to the Salvation Army, which picks up donations onsite 2-3 times a week. You can leave them behind and you’ll receive a tax receipt. It’s better than having your unwanted clothes end up in a landfill, Watt says.

“Resale is on the rise,” she says. “It’s the future — for environmental reasons. Clothing in a landfill lasts up to 200 years. But, your trash might just be somebody else’s treasure.” 

Whether or not you think you have a few dollars hanging in your closet, head over to Uptown Cheapskate at 16031 Tampa Palms Blvd. W. Store hours are Monday–Thursday, 10 a.m.-8 p.m., 10 a.m.-9 p.m. on Friday and Saturday and noon-6 p.m. on Sunday. For more info, call (813) 287-8696 or visit UptownCheapskate.com.

Local Teen Delivers A Positive Message

For one Wesley Chapel teenage entrepreneur, every Friday is Black Friday.

In conjunction with her online store selling T-shirts that promote positive messages for black teenagers, Janiah Hinds also posts a video every week of someone who is important in black history. She begins each video with “Welcome to Black Friday…”

The 15-year-old, who lives in Country Walk and will soon start her junior year at Wesley Chapel High, hasn’t missed a Friday since she first came up with the idea last fall.

She says it started with brainstorming in her room one day.

“I thought of stereotypes of African Americans and I wrote them down,” she says. When she showed them to her dad, an entrepreneur and business coach himself, he encouraged her to put the list on a T-shirt to sell.

Janiah’s online store now carries T-shirts that dispel those stereotypes, plus three additional T-shirt designs that celebrate being black. For example, one popular shirt says, “Black is ambitious, powerful, intelligent, resilient, hardworking.”

She also created a limited edition design for Juneteenth that sold out.

Janiah named her business “Slay It Proud,” which she says means to “rock the message proudly” and also is a tribute to the song, “Say it loud! I’m black and I’m proud” by the late, great R&B superstar James Brown.  

She says it’s also a nod to her 13-year-old sister, Joelle, who also is a young entrepreneur herself. Joelle started a business selling press-on nails, called “Slay All Day Nails,” last year.

“When I was younger, I never would have thought I would have my own business selling T-shirts,” says Janiah, “but I’m glad that I have this opportunity and that I can use my platform to spread black history.”

That’s what Janiah says is her true passion — sharing black history with teenagers and others.

So, she came up with the idea to post the weekly videos. With the self-imposed responsibility of posting so much new content, she says she now takes suggestions and also does quite a bit of research of her own.

In the past couple of months, she’s posted videos about Ida B. Wells, a prominent anti-lynching campaigner in the early 1900s; a famous “hypocrisy speech” delivered on July 4, 1852 by Frederick Douglass; as well as one about the inventor of the Super Soaker water gun in the 1980s, Lonnie Johnson.

“A favorite person of mine would be Shirley Chisholm,” Janiah says. “She was the first African American woman in Congress. When she (ran) for president of the US, she wasn’t allowed to be on the stage and debate (against the other candidates) because she was black. She had to take legal action to be allowed to participate.”

In 1972, not only was Chisholm was the first black person to run for a major party nomination for U.S. President, she was also the first woman ever to run for the presidential nomination for the Democratic party. 

Janiah’s dad, Kymone Hinds, says he also is learning from his daughter.

“From a young age, Janiah has had a heart for people who are in need and those who are forgotten about. In addition, from the time she was first exposed to black history, she has become a self-student — doing self-studies in that area — and has helped to educate me on important figures in black history that I didn’t know about.”

Janiah says her business is just the start. In the future, she says she hopes to become a civil rights lawyer and help bring justice and equality to people.

As she sees Black Lives Matter protests happening throughout the country, she sees an opportunity to change the world for the better.

“I hope that what’s going on now can bring a better change for future generations, especially future generations for people who look me.”

Janiah has even been featured on local TV news stations, including a February interview on WFLA-TV News Channel 8 (screenshot, right)).  

And while Slay It Proud was founded with black teenagers in mind, Janiah says it’s not limited to them.

“A lot of white people and people of other races have supported my business and bought my ‘Black is’ shirts,” she says. “To me, it’s saying that you see something is wrong and you want to fix it and change society for the better.”

Her dad sees Janiah as a young leader. “In any movement for change, people are playing different roles,” says Kymone. “There are those on the front line making sure it stays in view and those pushing for change at the political level. Her role is helping people to understand black history. Here is a true education, besides the limited scope of slavery and the civil rights movement.”

Janiah’s website is SlayItProud.com, where you can view all of her merchandise and access her virtual African American museum. She posts her Black Friday videos on Facebook and Instagram. Find them by searching “Slay It Proud.”

 

New Tampa Road Projects Still On The Way!

A new roundabout for Highwoods Preserve Pkwy., a new coat of paving for New Tampa Blvd. and a number of new enhancements for Tampa Palms Blvd. remain in the New Tampa/District 7 pipeline for Fiscal Year 2021, according to Tampa City Council member Luis Viera.

Issues like lawsuits and Covid-19 have slowed some of the projects down.

“They’re coming, though,” Viera says. “They’re coming.”

One project that likely already would have been done, or certainly would’ve been underway by now, are the long-awaited repaving and enhancements of New Tampa Blvd., from the New Tampa Gateway Bridge to Bruce B. Downs Blvd.

Long a prickly point with many West Meadows residents, the repaving was on the list of items that were supposed to be expedited after the All For Transportation (AFT) referendum passed in 2019, with 57 percent of voters agreeing to a one-cent sales tax increase to be used for transportation projects.

The New Tampa Blvd. project was slated to receive $1.3 million of the $280 million a year for 30 years the tax was expected to yield. However, Hillsborough County Commissioner Stacy White challenged the referendum language and it is now tied up in the Florida Supreme Court, which has yet to make a decision. A back-up plan for another referendum this fall has been postponed until 2022, as Covid-19 has taken precedence.

There is some good news — the New Tampa Blvd. project concept design is being funded by the City of Tampa. 

“However, it can’t be completed without AFT funds, which really stinks,” says Viera, who pushed hard for New Tampa to receive some immediate improvements due to its support for the referendum, only to see it get tied up in litigation. “Moving forward with the design means they are married to the idea. So, if the AFT money doesn’t come through, it will still be funded. It’s just going to be on a longer timeline.”

The same goes for Tampa Palms Blvd., which had a total of $700,000 earmarked for Complete Streets programming, which is a Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT) plan for improving pedestrian and bicyclist safety and “building the right road in the right place for the right purpose.”

The Tampa Palms Blvd. project is supposed to include operational improvements to its two Compton Dr. intersections —  namely potential roundabouts to replace four-way stops — as well as roadway improvements like enhanced crosswalks, sidewalks and bulb-outs (also called curb extensions) along the roadway’s 4-mile loop.

One project that won’t be held up by AFT funds is a roundabout currently being designed for the intersection of Highwoods Preserve Pkwy. and Highwoods Palm Way/Bridle Club Dr. 

The roundabout will help calm traffic at the busy intersection that leads out of the Highwoods Preserve Corporate Campus (home to thousands of employees at MetLife, Syniverse and T-Mobile) and, on the other side of Highwoods Preserve Pkwy., the Equestrian Parc at Highwoods Preserve apartment complex.

The design is expected to be completed by the end of this year, with construction expected in 2021.

Outside The Box, Inside The Pod?

Although Hillsborough County is giving parents three choices for the upcoming fall semester, it really comes down to two choices — learn in a traditional classroom with other students, restoring the social interaction and face-to-face contact that are the stalwarts of education; or learn in a more isolated and individual-based online format at home that makes it easier to avoid contracting the virus and transmitting it to others.

However, there is a group of local parents considering something else — merging the classroom and online settings together in a unique collaboration that, they believe, will offer the best of both worlds.

Tampa Palms resident Jenni Wolgemuth, an Associate Professor of measurement and research at the USF College of Education and mother of a first- and fifth-grader, is helping to organize a group of 4-5 families whose children will learn online, but will learn together in a small “learning pod” overseen by a privately hired learning support specialist.

“A one-room school house,” Wolgemuth calls it. “It is an attempt to create a bubble around a group of families, all agreeing to similar standards of social distancing.”

That school house, or learning “pod,” that Wolgemuth has organized will have nine students in it. Four of the students are fifth graders, who would hopefully have the same teachers at the charter school they all attended last year.

The pod also will include two first-graders, a third grader, an eighth grader and a ninth-grader. The parents would rotate hosting and the kids would bring their lunches and eat together and have time for outdoor activities together, too.

Everyone would still be taught by their school’s teachers through the online platform and Zoom video classrooms used by their schools. However, the parents are already interviewing people to be a support specialist, who would monitor the pod from 8 a.m.-3 p.m. and help the students with technology issues, staying on task and doing their assignments.

“Basically what we would have been doing if we had been home,” Wolgemuth says.

The idea was Wolgemuth’s brainchild and she says she began thinking about the learning pod solution before the Hillsborough School District issued its choices for parents. She thought the District was too comfortable with the idea that everything would be fine by August. “I’m a planner,” she says. “This was my plan A.”

She mentioned the concept to friends, but the response, at first, was tepid. She continued, however, to bring it up in conversations.

When she had a Zoom call with other parents after the choices were revealed by the District, there was still some hesitation. During that call with other mothers, however, one of the husbands, a doctor who works with Covid-19 patients, overheard the plan.

“That is a really good idea,” he said, and the plan started to take root.

There are still hoops to jump through for Wolgemuth and her group, which includes a second Tampa Palms family, two families from Lutz and another from Carrollwood. 

They will have to see how the pod works for the younger students, namely the two first graders. And, having nine or so computers using the same WiFi network could create issues that would need to be addressed.

Otherwise, Wolgemuth thinks the idea is the best fix for one semester, with the hopes that the coronavirus can be brought under control and that everyone can go back to their brick-and-mortar schools in January.

Sports Coast Hoping For Tourism Reboot

Scallop season for Pasco County, which runs July 17-26, is a great way to get outside while social distancing. (Photo: Florida Sports Coast)  

To use a sports metaphor, you might say that the Florida Sports Coast, from the moment it was created as Pasco County’s new tourism “brand” in 2018, jumped out to a huge lead, outscored the opponent, boasted a deep bench and an impressive farm system and was on top of the world.

Then, it was as though every single player got injured. 

That pretty much describes Pasco County’s tourism in the era of Covid-19.

But, players heal from injuries and so, too, is the Florida Sports Coast ready to get back on the field. Despite rising numbers of positive cases of the virus in June, Pasco County tourism director Adam Thomas has been eyeing July as a launching point for a major comeback.

“July will be big,” Thomas says.

The Tohrs Roller Hockey National Championships accounted for 1,800 hotel room nights in 2019, although those numbers were expected to be down in the current Covid-19 environment. The tournament was held last week at AdventHealth Center Ice; according to the event’s schedule posted online, roughly 130 teams competed.

On the leisure tourism side, scalloping season (July 17-26) is one of the county’s more popular events. Thomas says more than 300,000 people took part or were impacted by the bay scallop season last year. 

“People look forward to that,” he says. “It’s a seasonal activity. And, you can practice social distancing in the water. It’s a fun, family activity…like a great underwater Easter egg hunt.”

This will be the third season for scalloping in the county. In 2018, the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission (FWC) finally granted Pasco County an annual scallop season following a 25-year hiatus. 

Participants can collect up to two gallons of the bay scallops per day. There are a number of areas on the west coast of the county from which to collect them, from Anclote Village Marina to Hudson Beach Marina, as well as a number of local fishing guides who will be happy to help you catch your limit.

Thomas is hoping both events can begin the reboot of what was expected to be a record-setting year for tourism in Pasco.

In late March, hotel occupancy dropped to 18-20 percent, and is only now back up to around 44 percent. In April of 2019, the county pulled in $430,000 worth of tourist tax revenue, compared to just $93,000 this past April, which is typically Pasco’s biggest tourism month.

The county and private facilities like AdventHealth Center Ice, had to cancel a number of events that typically fill local hotel rooms, like the 2020 Adult Men’s and Women’s National Ice Hockey Championships on back-to-back weekends in April.

“It impacted our revenue stream greatly,” Thomas says.

The county was projected to pull in $3.2 million in tourist tax dollars in 2020, which Thomas says would have been the largest total ever. And, Pasco’s tourism was on pace to hit a number of historical marks.

“In a matter of three months, we went back three-and-a-half years,” says Thomas, who adds that a full recovery could take 20-24 months.

There was some good news —while many events were outright canceled, 13 events have been rescheduled or postponed to a later date.

The county has launched a Get Back To Adventure recovery marketing plan, hoping it encourages people to visit and leave their homes.

“We’re now seeing additional booking that is going to increase our economic impact and demand for visitor and consumers alike to come and enjoy what our destination has to offer,” he says.

For more information about scallop season and other tourism plans, visit  FlSportsCoast.com.