Tight-Rod
It's hard to deny claims of being "Pay-Rod" and obsessed with money over titles when stories like the one in the New York Times about Alex Rodriguez is out there.
Rodriguez has earned nearly $200 million over the past decade, but, according to 990 tax records dating to 1998, he is a cheap tipper to his foundation.
In eight years of available documents, donations averaged $30,000 a year and gifts distributed to the community averaged $13,000 a year. In 2002, A-Rod did not contribute more than $5,500. In 2006, the foundation did not give away more than $5,090 despite a fund-raiser that collected $368,000.
A-Rod isn’t exactly a slumlord — some renters interviewed at his other properties had milder complaints — but he has become a landlord caricature among dwellers who hold him accountable for, say, the stack of molding mattresses by the dumpster at Newport Villas on MacDill Avenue.
A-Rod is the face on their leaky faucets, and yet his name isn’t in the welcome kit. Rodriguez’s brother-in-law, Constantine Scurtis, is the company manager — the one whose signature is on nearly $50 million in mortgages for properties in Tampa, according to records — but some of the cashiers and cooks who live at places like Newport Riverside know who holds their house keys.
To them, he isn’t A-Rod, a regular-season crackerjack on the verge of a Yankees deal potentially worth $300 million. To them, he is Tight-Rod, an apartment tycoon, who, renters say, has jacked late fees to $100 from $50 on units that run around $600 a month.
Here is A-Rod, steeped in a paradox of principles, engaged in a corporate venture that binds the needy, the very same people his foundation was designed to help.
“As far as keeping the grounds clean, it’s fine,” said Horace Bacon, a resident of Normandy Park, a recent acquisition by Newport Property Ventures. “But the late fees? When I sign my next lease, it’s $100 for being a day late — a day. I don’t agree with that. So, you know, it’s not the outside of the apartment I’m worried about.”
Will A-Rod ever worry about what’s beneath a moneymaking veneer? Or will he forever be Mr. Potter in pinstripes?