Tampa a Tale of Two cities

As I touched upon in my last blog Tampa is a tale of two cities. You have the new developed areas such as Water Street, Mid town & The West Shore District. And then you have the rest of Tampa, old buildings that were here from when Tampa was first built through its original suburb of Carrollwood built in the 1970-80s. The starkest contrast is if you drive through the neighborhoods of Tampa Heights, Seminole Heights & Wellswood. Where that are putting up these lot-line to lot-line McMansions right next to small single story 2-bedroom one bath homes that were originally built in the 1950s. You have brand new huge modern house next to a small block home that probably hasn't been kept up the best in the last 40 years. It is a stark contrast in how the neighborhoods in Tampa are starting to look. I am not suing this as a socio-economic barometer of the neighborhoods, just a simple observation.

Once you leave the 3 blocks of water street you have some patch work of new high-rise buildings, but it is like looking at a forest with new growth tall trees near the water with a bare dessert with low-rise building all the way back to I-275. Now don’t get me wrong there is nothing wrong with new development. You cannot live in the past and dense residential is how you create vibrant large cities. It just seems as though Tampa does not have a plan for redevelopment or a vision on how to redevelop the city. We have a bunch of patch work developments, with no consistency and no connectivity. The only connectivity we have is any development along the Trolly Street Cars that run from Ybor into Downtown Tampa. So from Ybor to Gas Works through Channel Side & Water Street ending by Hattricks. That is our connected city. Do not get me wrong or sleep on that fact, That Trolley will be way busier and need more capacity than people expect. Now to get to the West Shore District or Mid-Town or anywhere else in Tampa we are driving. And we already know how congested the roads are here. Which circles you right back around to no planning and no vision for the growth of Tampa. All the roads in the city are the same ones laid in the 1920s-1950s. When there were less people on the road, fewer cars and a better mass transit system were in place.

And, no, at this part of the series of thoughts I am not offering suggestions or solutions, because I am not complaining. I am working on developing the path I want to take these short blogs. Right now, they are just 20-30 minutes of my time to get out my thoughts about how Tampa is now versus how it was then.