Yes, it's an overused and "cutesy" word, but in the case of downtown Safety Harbor, it really is the only descriptor that fully captures the village feel of this residential and retail neighborhood.
Quaint.
Main Street (what other name could it have?) is the retail center, with small, locally owned shops selling everything from antiques and gifts to fine art, from bait and tackle to hardware, from makeovers to massages. Downtown here is very walkable, with wide sidewalks and benches under shady trees.
The blocks around downtown are a jumbled mixture of businesses and single-family homes, co-existing peacefully if you don't count the fight for side-street parking. The 4.89-square mile city, which was incorporated in 1917, grew up around five natural mineral springs discovered in 1539 by Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto.
An equally jumbled collection of historic homes and newer, much less distinguished houses forms the small downtown residential district. A peek at the historic survey of the area shows everything from a log cabin (circa 1865) to tiny turn-of-the-century cracker houses (frame vernacular, in historic architecture-speak), to bungalows and Colonial Revivals from the 1920s within blocks of Main Street. (The weird thing is: None of them are for sale. Owners are holding onto them and renting instead of selling.)
Safety Harbor may be quaint now, but it is poised for big changes. Developers broke ground last month on Harbour Point, a retail, office and residential project on the eastern edge of downtown, on a parcel that stood vacant for more than two decades. The project will forever change the city's skyline, anchor retail shops along its bay shore and – perhaps most importantly for this neighborhood – bring 53 condos and townhouses to the city, the first upscale multifamily in Safety Harbor. Given that the site is just 15 minutes away from Tampa International Airport and another five beyond that to downtown Tampa, downtown Safety Harbor could appeal to lots of folks.
That may prove to be a mixed blessing. The spotlight of hot housing can change a neighborhood for the worse. City officials and downtown merchants hope it has the opposite effect.
Because the downtown, while charming, has struggled to stay viable, new, wealthier residents could help existing businesses on and around Main Street. The higher profile on the housing market will also put pressure on the surrounding neighborhood, which could use some new construction and renovation of its older housing stock.
Which would mean more people to enjoy ice cream at the Whistle Stop, marvel under the giant canopy of the centuries-old Baranoff oak tree or enjoy an old-fashioned outdoor concert at the green gazebo on Main Street.
"We need that," said Hildegard McCarthy, who runs Hildegard's Art House on 3rd Avenue South, a collection of arts and crafts inside a converted single-family house, with a side yard for art installations where bored spouses can sit and grab a beer. "I think this town is going to be great."
Here To Stay: Cindy O'DonnellIn the middle of Main Street in Safety Harbor, tucked between the myriad architectural styles of two-story buildings that make up its retail core, sits a half-city block with a single-family home on it. You'd have to travel to rural areas like Dade City to find a similar site. It's an anomaly in Pinellas County, the most densely populated county in Florida.
Cindy O'Donnell stands on the sidewalk in front of the house and talks wistfully of the architecturally indistinct home built in 1948 (and owned by a septuagenarian professor at St. Petersburg College who refuses to sell it) and the small-town charm of the downtown surrounding it.
"You know one day this is going to be gone," O'Donnell says. "I love this town. I don't want to see it change a whole lot."
When you consider that O'Donnell, 46, is the head of the local chamber of commerce, those are strange words. Aren't business leader supposed to be obsessed with knocking down and building up? Safety Harbor has found more middle ground than some of its neighbors, and guiding the business effort is this mother of three who has – except for a six-year spell spent in Georgia as a child – lived in Safety Harbor her entire life.
O'Donnell is the public face of the 370-plus businesses in the chamber, and she knows the stories behind each and every parcel on Main Street. She joined the chamber as a member of its board and the owner of a health screening company. After the previous executive director left, O'Donnell was given the job. The first order of business was overseeing the renovation and expansion of the chamber offices downtown, in a historic building on Main Street within feet of the new Harbour Pointe project.
O'Donnell is charged with marketing existing businesses, but she's also concerned with vacant commercial properties, like the one that used to house the mini-mall for gift shops and antique dealers. The owner won't lease it any more but also won't sell, so its half-city block sits vacant and uninviting. It vexes O'Donnell.
The eclectic mix in downtown Safety Harbor goes beyond retail establishments. There's apartment housing above some of the shops and a bed and breakfast, too. The headquarters for the West Florida Ballet is located here, as well as a day center for mentally challenged adults.
Even more interesting is the way downtown buzzes with programming. More than three dozen events are listed on the chamber calendar, from the larger festivals (Harbor Sounds on March 5-6 and the Wine Festival in November) to the holiday tree lighting, Fourth of July fireworks, lunchtime concerts, arts and crafts shows and the monthly 3rd Friday Nights.
The chamber and the city recognize the importance of creating community – not to mention foot traffic for the retailers – by hosting events that bring neighbors out of their houses to come together downtown.
That sense of community and the convenient location translate into very little turnaround in residential properties.
"You can't hardly buy a place in Safety Harbor," O'Donnell said. "People come here and stay."
Condo Consciousness: Harbour PointeNeil Brickfield, a plainspoken former city commissioner in Safety Harbor, stands on Main Street and points toward the waterfront, where the construction on Harbour Pointe has already started and says: "The most valuable piece of land in our community sat vacant for 20 years."
He's talking about the parcel at the corner of Main and Bayshore, where the bulldozers have cleared the brush and trees from the site to prepare it for three stories of shops, offices, condos and townhomes. On a small bluff above Old Tampa Bay, which is across the street, the new project is either the start of the next phase of Safety Harbor's evolution (according to its proponents) or the beginning of the end (according to a few who worry about it ruining the small-town atmosphere).
"I think it's going to have several impacts," said Eddie Entreken, the chief financial officer of its owner, Dunedin-based Olympia Development Group. "From a retail perspective, it is going to focus the retail component closer to Bayshore. It is going to complete the street. It is going to change the skyline of that city forever. You're talking about bringing some high-end residential units into a town that doesn't have any upscale multi-family."
The $30 million project involves 45 condo units (which are not on the market yet), eight townhouses, 15,000 square feet of retail space and 25,000 square feet of offices.
While it will change the skyline today, the project's height isn't unprecedented. The property had a three-story building on it from the 1920s through the '80s. For city officials, approving Harbour Pointe involved a "delicate balance" between the need for larger retail areas and more housing, and keeping the scale of downtown relatively intact.
"It's going to be different, but it will still have that quaintness that people already love," Mayor Pam Corbino said. She envisions a Safety Harbor that is like Winter Park in Orlando, with a vibrant retail center and sought-after fringe neighborhoods.
To that end, the city extracted several concessions from the developers of Harbour Pointe: a major restaurant in the project and an open plaza, among other changes.
"It is very difficult to maintain the unique qualities that we have, and that is essential as we move forward," said Ron Pianta, the assistant city manager who oversees downtown redevelopment. Harbour Pointe is "the biggest project that has happened in Safety Harbor in quite a long time, since the boom time of the 1920s."
STYLE TO SPARE: The Bowling Ball HouseLove and geography brought Todd Ramquist and Kiaralinda to Safety Harbor. Bowling balls made them famous.
Ramquist and Kiaralinda (no last name) are artists and former middle-school sweethearts who, 20 years ago, lived on opposite sides of the bay. The halfway point in their compromise to live together was Safety Harbor, specifically just north of Main Street in downtown.
They bought a nondescript beige house on 3rd Street. Then, after seeing a magazine story that depicted a home with a lone cactus and a single bowling ball outside, they began slowly but surely to transform their own home into the most recognizable one in the city.
"We thought it was an interesting lawn object," Kiaralinda recalls. "It got kind of out of control that way."
Soon, bowling balls in every color and design and swirling detail lined their flower beds and demarked their lawn from the street. Their house, called "Whimzey," is better known as "The Bowling Ball House" and has been seen on Oprah, Discovery Channel, and Home and Garden Network. The bowling balls have been joined by blue glass bottles and fabrics, metals and other cartoon-painted objets to match the garish paint job on Whimzey herself.
The pair say their neighbors over the years have been tolerant of the intense lawn-decorating job. They figure it has evolved so slowly that folks have just grown accustomed to it. That's the kind of place this is, Ramquist says – laid-back, family-oriented, people looking for good schools and a central location.
He says Safety Harbor's attraction is that "you are within the metropolitan area of Tampa Bay, which is huge, but if you are downtown, you are in a little town."
HOME COOKING: Dawn Algieri of Lincoln Heights BistroDown a quiet street, past the church with the sign that reads "Apostolic Church of Jesus Inc." and beyond the modest homes with surplus car parts in their backyards, stands an unassuming restaurant squat against the secondary school next door.
Forty years ago, Elm Street in Safety Harbor was the retail hub for its African-American community and the center of the Lincoln Heights neighborhood. This was one of the first neighborhoods in Pinellas County where African Americans could own a home. Where Elm Street was once lined with businesses, only this tan-and-brown restaurant still exists as evidence of its commercial origins.
Today, Lincoln Heights Bistro's blend of Southern home cooking and soul food attracts diners from all over Tampa Bay.
Chef-owner Dawn Algieri spent more than two decades in the food service industry in New York City and moved to Florida more than seven years ago, working as a teacher at a Dunedin culinary school. In 2003, she started looking around for locations near her home in Countryside and found "Miss Clara's" old restaurant, a three-decade Jamaican fixture on Elm Street. She bought it in October of that year and opened for take-out only.
Now there's a dining room, but neighbors still come by Algieri's front take-out window to get her cast-iron-skillet fried chicken, greens, grits with shrimp and andouille, squash casserole, smothered pork chops and other comfort foods.
And Algieri is happy to see them. "I have the best neighbors of any place I've ever lived or worked."
Lincoln Heights Bistro, 603 Elm Street, Safety Harbor, 727-726-4210.
This article appears in Mar 2-8, 2005.