Josh Dohring remembers when the residential population in downtown Tampa was mostly made up of people who were forced to live there: the inmates of the Morgan Street Jail.
Much has changed since his family began brokering real estate in downtown more than 25 years ago. “We were here before downtown was hip,” said Dohring, who owns an office and retail building at 514 Franklin and another on Tampa Street one block over. “Tampa’s a little slower, but downtown as a concept is coming back,” he says. As his business slowly recovers from the Great Recession, his phone is finally ringing again. “If you look at where the development is happening, it’s in the core, not in the outlying areas.”
Over the last decade, Tampa’s notoriously sleepy downtown has witnessed a development boom. Condo and apartment buildings like Skypoint, Element and The Residences on Franklin, as well as public projects like the Tampa Museum of Art, Curtis Hixon Park and the Tampa Bay History Center, have reinvigorated the downtown core. Smaller-scale projects came on line as well. The Arlington Hotel and Fly Bar have injected life into the newly designated national historic district on North Franklin, while new commercial tenants fill storefronts along Twiggs Street.
Transit options are also expanding. The TECO Street Car is creeping north to Whiting Street, and a 120-mile-an-hour high-speed rail line is set to zoom into the north end of downtown in 2015.
But despite the accelerated pace of development over the last 10 years and the potential of rail to “re-center” the city, there’s a hole at the heart of downtown Tampa — Franklin Street. Large portions of this historic thoroughfare sit idle, and they’ve remained that way for decades.
The blight on central Franklin is not only sad; its persistence throws into question the progress that is finally being made in downtown as a whole.
Tampa’s Main Street
Franklin is a street full of firsts.
The city’s first electric lights lined Franklin by 1887. It was the first in the city to be paved, the first to have sidewalks. The city’s first brick building, the Bank of Tampa, was built on Franklin in 1886. In 1885, Tampa’s first streetcar, a steam-powered contraption with passenger cars similar to a freight train’s, rambled up a sand-covered Franklin on a narrow track to a nascent Ybor City. By 1900, electric streetcars traveled up and down the street on 21 miles of track connecting downtown to Ybor, West Tampa, Sulphur Springs and Ballast Point.
As Tampa boomed at the turn of the 20th century, Franklin’s status as the city’s commercial core was firmly in place. Tampa’s first Woolworth’s opened there in 1915; Maas Brothers, Tampa’s first department store, expanded to a six-story building on Franklin in 1921. The Tampa Theatre — the city’s first air-conditioned movie house — opened on Franklin in 1926.
By the middle of the 20th century, however, the prominence of the avenue had faded with the growing allure of wide-open suburban spaces. By 1963, the newly constructed interstate was whisking everyone away. As Tampa’s in-town population dwindled, retailers struggled: Maas Brothers closed in 1991; Woolworth’s hung on until 1992.
Since the 1970s, everyone, it seems, has had a plan to revitalize Franklin Street.
In 1973, then-mayor Dick Greco drove a pickaxe into the middle of the street, signaling the groundbreaking for a pedestrian mall. Twenty-eight years later, a re-elected Mayor Greco reopened the mall to vehicular traffic.
In the 1980s and early ’90s, development was focused almost exclusively on Franklin Street’s south end: the “Quad Block” (comprising the Hyatt Regency and Tampa City Center), the Ft. Brooke Parking Garage, the Tampa Convention Center all sprung up during this period.
Meanwhile, Franklin Street north of Kennedy sat idle. The inattention would prove disastrous. A 1991 study succinctly predicted, “Vacant buildings [along Franklin Street] have a high probability of remaining vacant…and will continue to age and risk being unsuitable for any use.” It was an apt assessment.
In 2006 the city condemned the Maas Bothers Building, which had anchored the corner of Franklin and Twiggs for more than 70 years. The downtown department store, vacant since 1991, was demolished. Over the years, the Maas Brothers had expanded haphazardly, acquiring adjoining structures along Franklin and Zack and absorbing the Strand Theater, a contemporary of the Tampa Theatre, in the 1930s. When Maas Brothers came down, the Strand and several other buildings on the block went down with it.
In March of 2007 a fire ripped through the 1926 Albany Hotel at 1100 North Franklin. The Albany had been vacant for decades. The fire leaped south, consuming another vacant building at Tyler and Franklin.
Stuck in park
In December 2009, Seven One Seven Parking Enterprises purchased the former Maas Brothers property for $2.7 million, 24 percent of what it sold for in 2006. The property will open this month as a surface-level parking lot, a far cry from the lofty 27-story condo tower originally slated for the site.
“It’s not the highest and best use,” said Josh Dohring, “but we do need the parking.”
David Bailey, owner of 719 Franklin, home of Tampa’s best-known dive bar, The Hub, has a different view. He says Tampa’s “obsession” with surface parking lots is an impediment to healthy development. “By allowing so many surface parking lots within downtown, we are effectively short-circuiting our streetscape’s connectivity,” said Bailey, an architect who lives in Ybor City. “There are far more sophisticated ways of dealing with [the issue of parking] than plopping surface parking lots all over the place.”
“Interim parking lots fill a gap in the downtown area,” counters Jason Accardi, owner of 717 Parking, which manages about 70 surface lots in the downtown core. Accardi argues that surface lots are a “necessary evil,” providing needed options for downtown workers and visitors. “Every property owner in downtown would develop their property if they had a chance,” said Accardi.
Well, maybe not every property owner. Some are sitting on their land — and waiting.
“Buying and holding is the enemy of preservation and development,” particularly along Franklin Street, says Stephanie Ferrell, a preservation architect and developer of the 100-year-old Arlington Hotel property on the 1200 block of North Franklin.
Market speculation in the downtown core is nothing new. A 1976 study bluntly concluded, "More is being expected of land values than can ever be achieved."
Christine Burdick of the Downtown Partnership still wrestles with the same problem 30 years later. She says property owners often "hold onto land, waiting for an unimaginable increase in property value."
And while they wait, North Franklin’s historic buildings sit in a kind of stasis, continuing to deteriorate.
Wallflower
The elephant in the room is the three-building complex known as the Kress Block.
A five-and-dime chain with over 400 stores across the country including nine in Florida, S.H. Kress and Company went out of business in 1980. Interest in the property waxed and waned throughout the 1980s, and ownership changed hands several times. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1983 when one early project was announced. Another effort to develop the property fell through around 1988. It seemed North Franklin would remain, in the words of a Tampa Tribune columnist, "a wallflower."
By 2005, the Doran Jason Group of Coral Gables had acquired all three buildings that now comprise the Kress Block, including the Kress Building and the two neighboring structures, the former F.W. Woolworth’s and J.J. Newberry’s, purchased in 1994. The group announced plans to develop the property, which called for demolition of the Woolworth’s building. The local historic preservation community vigorously protested. Built in 1916, the Woolworth’s is one of the few examples of Art Deco architecture in downtown. More importantly, in 1960, 57 African Americans from Tampa participated in a civil rights sit-in at the still-segregated downtown five-and-dime.
After protracted legal wrangling, Doran Jason agreed to save only the facades of the remaining buildings to make way for three residential towers totaling more than 900 units. The Kress project received a 6-0 approval from City Council and the vocal support of Mayor Pam Iorio and other downtown leaders.
But the project succumbed to the housing downturn and bureaucratic delays. Christine Burdick says that "while the city dithered" about proposed heights and preservation, the market tanked. "It’s important to incentivize preservation, but it shouldn’t retard development," she said.
Last week, City Attorney Chip Fletcher asked City Council to terminate the 2006 memorandum of understanding requiring the buildings’ facades be preserved. If approved, the Doran Jason Group could revert to its original 2005 plan, freeing them to demolish both the Woolworth and Newberry buildings. The request seemed to catch some council members off guard.
“I don’t feel like this is going through the proper process… this is a big request, to change what is settled law about this property,” said Councilwoman Mary Mulhern. The action has been continued until August 26.
Meanwhile, the Kress Block remains an eyesore — a looming, discouraging presence — both for North Franklin and for the other streets it faces (Cass, Polk and Florida). Residents and business owners look at the building and other boarded-up hulks nearby and shake their heads in disappointment.
"A healthy streetscape can overlook a blighted property here or there, but when you have two entire blocks of blight, that becomes a wall against progress," said property owner David Bailey. Josh Dohring echoes Bailey’s sentiments. "The Kress is the thorn in the side of downtown Tampa," he said.
In 2009, the Doran Jason Group was cited by Tampa code enforcement for failing to meet minimum standards to safely secure the Kress building. According to District Code Enforcement Supervisor Kevin Amos, the upper-floor windows of the Kress are open to the elements and groundwater continues to seep into the basement. Although the building is structurally sound, Doran Jason Group has been fined $250.00 a day since July of last year.
Several attempts to reach the Doran Jason Group for comment were unsuccessful. There are no known plans to develop the property any time soon.
"The cool factor"
Farther up the street, however, in “Upper North Franklin Historic District,” there are encouraging signs of life.
Cheong Choi is getting ready for an art show at Café Hey, a tiny coffee shop and lunch spot he opened two years ago that has quickly grown into a destination for hip Tampa. Residents from nearby Tampa Heights and Ybor City, along with a host of local artists, musicians, writers and others, have turned a tiny corner of North Franklin into a slice of Brooklyn or East Atlanta.
Choi opened Café Hey in 2006 in a vacant storefront of the building that houses his family’s Oceanic Supermarket, the only grocery store in the downtown core. Choi describes Café Hey as a “lonely outpost” and takes pride in making the most out of a relatively small space. Choi hopes that his decision to open the café in an area better known for rampant homelessness will create a domino effect of "enlightened landlordism."
"If someone owns a building around here," he says, "they’ve probably had it for a long time and their expenses are probably low. They have the option to do something really interesting with it."
Carl Johnson and Alison Swann-Ingram were searching for "the cool factor" when they stumbled upon North Franklin Street. The pair opened Franklin Street Fine Woodwork, which specializes in custom-made wood furniture, at 1609 North Franklin, a block away from Café Hey. They restored the early 1920s blond-brick building last year, taking advantage of historic preservation tax credits.
It’s tough to see through the haphazard alterations and peeling paint jobs, but the area bounded by Palm Avenue on the north and the interstate on the south is home to 14 historic structures built between 1915 and 1946. Next door to Johnson’s woodworking shop, the Rialto Theater, built in 1924, featured both live theater and films. It remained a movie house until 1959. Further up the street, at 7th Avenue and Franklin, sits the city of Tampa’s first Carnegie Free Library, opened in 1917.
Stephanie Ferrell, who worked to broker the real estate deal for Johnson and Swann-Ingram, has just succeeded in placing the Upper North Franklin District on the National Register of Historic Places.
More than anything else, says the city’s preservation manager, Dennis Fernandez, "It sends a message to local government: 'Hey, pay attention to this place, it has value.'"
Tampa’s new doorstep
While local small businesses may spark the domino effect that Cheong Choi hopes for, significantly more drastic change may return Franklin Street to its status as Tampa’s street of firsts.
"High-speed rail will fundamentally rearrange the playing cards in downtown Tampa," says Ed Turanchik, a long-time transit advocate and potential 2011 mayoral candidate.
After lunch at Café Hey, Turanchik and I drive around in a wide circle starting south on Franklin, east on Fortune Street, north on Morgan and west on Harrison Street. Turanchik points his arms out the windows, outlining the rough boundaries of a proposed high-speed rail terminal that will span five city blocks.
“It’ll be like parking a Tampa International Airport terminal on the north end of downtown,” says Turanchik. Once completed, it will be the first exclusively high-speed rail line in the Western hemisphere.
More than any other previous public works project, high-speed rail would likely incentivize in-town living, says Turanchik. "Transportation sparks redevelopment more so than cultural arts," he said.
Over the last ten years, people have indeed returned to live in downtown Tampa. Excluding Channelside and Harbour Island, the Hillsborough County Planning Commission estimates there are 2,080 people living in the downtown core compared to just 703 in 2000, a 195 percent increase. Though the actual numbers are small, they do indicate a trend.
Before purchasing the building and opening Franklin Street Fine Woodwork, co-owner and Tampa native Carl Johnson stood on the sidewalk and looked across the street at Café Hey and across Tampa Street to the recently opened Stetson Law School. He thought about what Tampa’s Channelside District looked like before all the condos sprouted up. "This is what Channelside was supposed to be," he said, adding, "Downtown can only move one way: north."
Ed Turanchik agrees. With the coming of high-speed rail, the north end of downtown and Franklin Street, he says, "will be Tampa’s doorstep."
The question is, what will people see when they open the door?
Manny Leto is a freelance writer and Contributing Editor at Cigar City Magazine.
This article appears in Aug 5-11, 2010.