A third of downtown Tampa is parking lots, city planners say they are actively trying to fix that

When you picture Tampa Bay, you might picture palm trees, the pink flamingo who greets you at the airport, the crystal beaches of St. Pete, the champion sports teams, or the occasional pirate.

You probably don’t picture parking lots.

And yet, from a bird’s eye view, one third of down Tampa is just that: parking lots. Over in St. Petersburg, the downtown area gives up 24% to parking.

Surface lots, garages, street parking, you name it, Tampa Bay's got it, and slowly but surely, cities are attempting to address just how much of our space is occupied by parking lots.

Of course Tampa and St. Petersburg aren’t the only cities that paved paradise to put up a parking lot.

Cities across the nation are undergoing parking reforms in this post-COVID era when surface parking lots have become absolutely vacant due to remote work and ridesharing. The Wall Street Journal reported that the average American drove 4% fewer miles in 2022 than in 2019. “Recognizing this, cities are shrinking the number of spaces, freeing up the land for other uses,” WSJ added.

“We have parking instead of people space,” Karen Kress, Senior Director of Transportation and Planning at the Tampa Downtown Partnership, told Creative Loafing Tampa Bay. “We’re wasting a lot of space, especially with the housing crisis.”

In 2019, Kress and the Downtown Partnership completed a parking survey, which reviewed 24,000 parking spaces in the central and business districts of downtown Tampa. Of these 24,000 spaces, the survey found that 6,000 spaces were unused during peak hours.

Kress noted that one of the reasons that 90% of people think there isn’t any parking in Tampa is because Tampa isn’t great at sharing parking. For instance, certain commercial towers’ lots sit empty on the weekends and there does not seem to be an incentive to offer up those spaces to weekend visitors.

Furthermore, Kress is an advocate for unbundling the parking. She points out that an additional $225 is added to an apartment’s monthly rent which essentially means that you can’t rent an apartment in Tampa without also renting an accompanying parking space, even if you’re not going to use it.

Parking minimums also play into this issue of there being plenty of parking but nowhere to park. Parking minimums have their roots in the 1950s when city planners wanted every new car owner to be guaranteed a space, therefore apartment buildings, hospitals and churches had to include a certain amount of space for parking. Hospitals had to have two parking spots per bed and churches had to include one spot for every five seats in the pew.

Cities like New York, San Francisco, Buffalo, and Bend, and even Fayetteville and Norman, Okla. have eliminated parking minimums altogether.

Stephen Benson, the City Planning Director from the City of Tampa said in an email that, “Parking is not a one-size fits all approach. Reducing parking requirements can be a step in the right direction but there are other elements at play that will drive how much parking is provided in a project.”

Since 2020, Tampa City Council has approved over 100 rezonings where the number of parking spots was waived below what the code required. Last year, the city controversially slashed free parking in Ybor City by 26%. Council has also approved amendments to the downtown zoning code and is working with the Mobility Department and Parking Division to draft a Parking Master Plan to address the parking issue.

Benson added that additional amendments will be forthcoming for the Westshore Business District, East Tampa and Tampa Heights. “Beyond reducing minimums in the code, we must find ways to reduce our reliance on cars,” Benson wrote.

In Tampa, twice as much land is used for parking lots as for greenspace and although the city is making moves to redevelop the lots into something a little more aesthetically pleasing, for instance in 2018, the City of Tampa redeveloped the City Hall parking lot on Jackson Street and Florida Avenue to build what is now Hyatt Place, it’s not enough.

Kress hopes to create something in downtown Tampa similar to the Underline in Miami, which is a 10-mile linear park and trail that will run under Miami’s elevated rail system. While Orlando just nixed plans to create a similar project—and opted for more parking—Kress suggested redeveloping some of Tampa’s many parking lots into dog parks, pickleball courts or urban art spaces.

The 2019 downtown survey took stock of two parking platforms: the lots and garages owned by the City of Tampa and the lots and garages owned by the private sector. Although this private sector is operated by a few companies, 717 Parking, owned by the Accardi brothers, owns 4,000 of the 7,800 private sector spaces in the survey.

“Downtown Tampa will never recognize its full potential until 717 develops its lots,” Kress said.

The Accardi’s did not respond to requests for comment.

Across the bridge, St. Petersburg’s Transportation and Parking Management Director Evan Mory told CL that the Sunshine City is softly and systemically reducing the number of surface parking lots; replacing these lots with structured parking as well as re-purposing the land for more people-friendly spaces. He cites the Pier as one of the most recent and ambitious projects; the city took 750 surface and street parking spaces and reduced these down to 525. They used the space for the splash pad and playground that children now enjoy at the new Pier.

“We know we are still a car-centric city but over time we hope we can use parking spaces a bit better,” Mory said.

He pointed out, however, that parking is essential to the economy. The parking in St. Pete is for people working in St. Pete, as well as people who are spending money in the local businesses.

Tropicana Field for example has 7,000 parking spaces for the people attending the baseball games. Mory said that without those parking spaces, people probably would not come to the games.

He added that surface parking lots are good place holders; they’re consistent income for the city and they keep property taxes down. Until the city can figure out how to better develop the lots, surface parking isn’t such a terrible use of the land.

Mory’s department falls under city development so he and his team consider parking and transportation through an economic lens.

St. Pete is working to reduce the demand for parking by giving people more choices to get around. The city now has scooters, bike lanes, clean sidewalks and most recently added the Sun Runner, which will run for free until October.

Mory emphasized that the city is slowly implementing these changes because they do not want to move too quickly. “But surface lots are not the end game for the city of St. Petersburg,” Mory said.

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