St. Petersburg businessman Bill Edwards died Thursday morning, following a brief illness. He was 81.
Edwards, whose birth name was Edward Francis Sylvia, was known for his 15-year stewardship (as Big3 Entertainment) of the city-owned Mahaffey Theater and his contributions to theater in education through the nonprofit Bill Edwards Foundation for the Arts, which operated out of the theater. He spent $2 million of his own money in Mahaffey renovations.
He was inducted into the Tampa Bay Business Hall of Fame in 2013…