In conjunction with the St. Pete Chamber and the St. Pete Downtown Partnership, the St. Pete EDC hosted a screening for the business community of RAZED, a documentary about the Gas Plant neighborhood. Before there was Tropicana Field and its surrounding acres of asphalt, there was the Gas Plant Neighborhood. A primarily Black neighborhood, the Gas Plant was home to families, businesses, churches, and a deep sense of community and place. The people were displaced and the neighborhood was leveled to make way for baseball. RAZED is the story of St. Petersburg’s historic Gas Plant Neighborhood. It shares firsthand stories and memories from the community, presented in a historical context through documentary filmmaking.
The screening was followed by a Q&A session with filmmakers Andrew Lee and Tara Segall of Roundhouse Creative, historian Charles Dew, and former Gas Plant resident Carlos Lovett, and concluded with remarks from Caper. The film originated when Lee and Segall interviewed former Gas Plant residents for a former residents’ gathering and they realized there were many stories to tell. They partnered with Ms. Gwendolyn Reese of the St. Petersburg African American Heritage Association to produce the film with the support of the Foundation for a Healthy St. Petersburg. Dew, professor emeritus of history at Williams College and author of The Making of a Racist, was born and raised in St. Petersburg. He spoke about how race underpinned the decisions around the Gas Plant. Lovett spoke movingly of growing up in the neighborhood and about the impact on him and his family when they were displaced.
The panel closed by talking about the importance of the site’s history and how it relates to the unprecedented opportunity it provides to St. Pete, noting that Mayor Ken Welch is uniquely positioned to lead the efforts as someone who grew up visiting his grandfather’s wood yard and other family in the Gas Plant community.
Many thanks to Dean Gary Patterson at the Kate Tiedemann School of Business and Finance at the University of South Florida for hosting and to Scott Callison and Lake Michigan Credit Union for sponsoring the event.
For more about the film or to subscribe for information about future showings, visit https://gasplantfilm.com/.
