Opinion: How Seminole Tribe turned a graveyard into a casino

Ever wonder how the Seminole Hard Rock Hotel and Casino came to be at its location on Orient Road just off Interstate 4 in Hillsborough County?

It’s quite a story, and it all starts with a string of beads.

Ray Goodrich was an amateur archaeologist and bottle hunter who was digging around with some friends where the Fort Brooke municipal parking garage sits today. He found a string of beads and what looked like a grave site, presumably a grave of a native Seminole Indian.

For two years the knowledge of the beads and the grave site was confined to Goodrich and his digging friends. But then he heard the news that the site was about to be developed.

Bob Martinez was mayor of Tampa in 1980. Martinez was building upon the development plan of his predecessor, Mayor Bill Poe. Poe conceived the idea of a Quad Block — a four-block massive redevelopment project bordered by Franklin Street, Jackson Street, Florida Avenue and Whiting Street. The Quad Block changed the face of downtown Tampa with the building of the One Tampa City Center skyscraper and the Hyatt Hotel (now the Hilton). The third part of the planned development was a $9.4 million city parking garage, which today is the Fort Brooke parking garage.

The city received bids for the parking garage in June 1980, and work soon commenced at the corner of Florida Avenue and Whiting Street. That’s when Ray Goodrich called a state archaeologist about his find two years earlier. Work on the parking garage stopped while archaeologists combed the site for artifacts.