The owner of an office building in Tampa, Fla., is evicting Republican Sen. Marco Rubio this Friday as a result of continued protests outside the facility.
Jude Williams, president of America’s Capital Partners, which owns the nine-story Bridgeport Center at 5201 Kennedy Boulevard, said it contacted Rubio’s office on Feb. 1 to say it would not renew its month-to-month lease due to the demonstrators’ disruptiveness.
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“A professional office building is not a place for that,” Williams told the Tampa Bay Times. “I understand their cause, but at the end of the day it was a security concern for us.”
The second-term senator has seven offices throughout the Sunshine State and has leased from this building since 2014. Rubio’s Democratic colleague, Sen. Bill Nelson, also has an office in Tampa, but has not seen the weekly turnouts of around 150 people who are unhappy with President Trump’s policies and expressing their views to Rubio.
The facility has placed barricades in front of the building and added security guards around the complex to ensure protesters stay outside of the building and do not bother its 20 other tenants.
“It’s not political,” Williams added. “It’s for no other reason than good office management. Our duty is to keep a good peaceful office building environment for our tenants and that’s not what they bargained for.”
Rubio’s staff has not located a temporary or permanent place to house the Tampa office by Friday, but will have a phone number for constituents to contact to voice their concerns while it searches for a new office space.
“We are actively looking for new office space, and our goal is to remain accessible and continue providing prompt and efficient service to all Floridians,” Rubio spokeswoman Christina Mandreucci told the Times on Tuesday. “Until we find a permanent new home in the Tampa Bay area, we will have a representative from our Tampa Bay office available to assist constituents on a daily basis and reachable at 1-866-630-7106.”
