In his State of the City address last week, Tampa Mayor Bob Buckhorn urged local residents to make the city as good as any place in the country.
In Tampa’s Seminole Heights, that’s exactly what a group of active and engaged citizens have been trying to do for years — and in the process have often found themselves at cross-purposes with City Hall.
A December 2000 cover story in this newspaper (then called the Weekly Planet) described a situation that would persist for years to come. According to reporter Fran Gilpin’s “Getting the business,” the district’s small business owners wondered ruefully how many other “masochists” would be willing to open up shop in the area, given the surfeit of regulations dictated by the city’s zoning department.
Things on that front are slowly beginning to change. But in the meantime, a number of self-proclaimed pioneers have plowed ahead and made Seminole Heights one of the most dynamic neighborhoods in Tampa Bay.
Pat Kemp remembers how it used to be. A co-founder of the Old Seminole Heights Neighborhood Association (one of four such associations in the district), she has lived in the area for over 25 years. She says there’s been a “huge evolution” in the neighborhood since the late 1980s, and she’s excited to be seeing what many residents have always wanted: community commercial development, which is now taking hold at a greater pace than ever.
The most well-known examples are the quality restaurants that have opened in just the past four years, especially Ella’s Americana Folk Art Café and James Beard semi-finalist The Refinery. Call them the Beatles and the Stones, Nirvana and Pearl Jam. The two establishments have achieved what was once regarded as impossible: putting the words “hip” and “Tampa” together in the same sentence.
But community commercial development also means places like Health Mutt, Cleanse Apothecary and Microgroove, all of which have established themselves in the ’hood in recent years.
Another factor in the renaissance in the area is the reduction of crime. Shawn Hicks helped organized the Old Seminole Heights vehicle patrol (aka “hooker patrol”) a decade ago to chase off the ladies of the evening who used to ply their wares on Nebraska Avenue. With the reduction of prostitution came an attendant decrease in drug crime. He says that made it a little safer to be out on the street, which made the neighborhood more business-friendly.
“I think the demographics are changing,” says Sherry-Taylor King, owner of Sherry’s YesterDaze, a vintage clothing store that moved from Hyde Park to Seminole Heights a decade ago. A few years later she co-founded the Seminole Heights Business Guild, which she says has been a place where the “changing of the guard” has taken place to some extent, with the older generation of neighborhood association leaders now being joined by new businessmen and women.
Del Acosta, the city of Tampa’s former historic preservation manager, says the district has some “excellent pockets” of good historic structures, and has been a spawning ground for creative people. “I think Seminole Heights is a very pleasant success story with a lot of determination and what people working together can accomplish.”
Not that every business is welcomed with open arms.
Take the proposed Wal-Mart at 1720 E. Hillsborough Ave. It’s being built on the edge of Seminole Heights’ Hampton Terrace neighborhood, where, in the mid-aughts, residents were so fervently against historical designation (and the many restrictions that come along with it) that they seceded from the Old Seminole Heights Neighborhood Association and created their own separate group.
Hampton Terrace Association President Wesley Warren says most people he’s spoken with are excited about the store. “East Tampa is ripe for development,” he says of the district to the immediate east of Seminole Heights. “We’re just concerned with the possible cut-through traffic.”
But Leslie Mattern of Mattern Labs and the Seminole Heights Business Guild says her group takes considerable pride in keeping things local and independently owned, so having a big-box store when “we’re trying so hard to develop this new identity of being artistic and independently owned is really frustrating for us.”
Nevertheless, the new Wal-Mart is a done deal, as is the Family Dollar opening soon at 5100 N. Florida Ave., right near the popular neighborhood gathering spot The Independent. News of its imminent arrival last summer generated extensive opposition.
One of the arguments against the consumer-friendly store is that there are already so many of them in the area — at our count no less than six within four miles of the latest one. Some residents say their hard feelings about the new store haven’t abated, and they intend to boycott it when it does open.
On the other end of the spectrum, there are still some older small businesses who haven’t yet felt the love, either.
Colombian native Juan Carlos Londono and his wife Lilliana opened the San Carlos Tavern, a Latin nightclub and restaurant on North Florida Avenue, nearly nine years ago. Londono says business is “okay,” but he expresses some frustration that he can’t attract a non-Latin crowd into his establishment.
“I hope that the neighbors start to realize everybody is welcome,” he says. “All of the people here go to The Columbia [restaurant], and that’s what I want — people to feel more than welcome to be here.”
But for every Family Dollar, there are entrepreneurs like Brian Bosco. Bosco is the co-owner of Domani’s Bistro & Lounge, which opened up last fall across the street from San Carlos Tavern, and he’s also the proprietor of the soon-to-open Red Star Rock Bar just north of Faedo’s Bakery on Florida Avenue.
Bosco says Red Star will have a retro ’70s rock motif, with different food trucks in his large parking area each week. The Syracuse, New York native says he’s hoping that the bar will be a place where music and art converge.
He purchased the building a year ago, and though he’s reluctant to describe any issues with City Hall, there’s no doubt that he wishes construction could have proceeded faster.
That remains the story with much of Seminole Heights. During the 2011 mayoral and city council elections, the district was the poster child for excessive red tape, and even the success-story businesses complain of excessive regulations.
Ernie Locke is the co-owner of Ella’s. He and his partner, Melissa Deming, purchased the land for their restaurant in 2006, but spent nearly three years getting the necessary permits to begin construction.
Now it’s a place frequented by local politicians where it’s impossible to get a table on a Friday night. Yet Locke refers to his dealings with the city as a “bureaucratic nightmare,” involving much back-and-forth on variances like water and sewage. One of the aspiring business owners featured in that CL December 2000 story, Forever Beautiful Salon & Day Spa’s Elizabeth Graham, says a major challenge in the area is changing the usage of a property, converting it from, say, a car lot or industrial building into another kind of business. There are also stormwater issues in new building codes that require large financial resources.
“It takes a long time, and for an average person, they might not have enough capital to just get through that and then start a business,” says Graham.
Former City Councilwoman Linda Saul-Sena says that the city’s zoning regulations are geared toward suburban development, with burdensome requirements for parking spaces and the like that don’t fit a neighborhood like Seminole Heights.
She favors form-based zoning, which the city has been working on with community residents as far back as 2008. Such zoning would focus not so much on a building’s use, but on how it would fit with the aesthetics of the neighborhood. That distinction would make it easier, for instance, to place “an artist studio next to a restaurant,” and allow greater density in “key intersections” that could someday become likely spots for transit stops.
Debi Johnson, president of the Old Seminole Heights Neighborhood Association, likes the sound of that.
“My impression it that the main way it differs from the old zoning is this focuses a little more on what is an acceptable design for the neighborhood,” she says. “In that sense, any new development is supposed to conform to the look and feel of Seminole Heights, and I think we’re okay with that.”
The Buckhorn administration seems attuned to such a zoning change. An economic committee convened by Mayor Buckhorn released a report in February of 2012 saying that the city’s zoning procedures were “unwieldy.” It also said the codes were outdated and weren’t directed at what was actually happening in the city.
At a March meeting of the Seminole Heights Business Guild, discussions covered a wide range of topics, including one key goal: having a more collective voice with City Hall.
Two City Council members’ districts cross into SH. But, even though Charlie Miranda and Frank Reddick earn praise for their responsiveness, they’re considered to be more indigenous to West Tampa and East Tampa, respectively.
The neighborhood, for all its clout, has never elected a resident to City Council; Randy Cohen fell short in 2007, as did Susan Long and Kelly Benjamin in 2011.
Elizabeth Graham says it would be good to have a local council member representing SH’s interests at City Hall. “It could really be a charming neighborhood if this city would really work with us on it.”
But she says that she doesn’t want to discourage any would-be entrepreneur from doing business in the district. She urges them to contact her if they’re on the fence.
“I’m not an expert, but let me tell you, this hairdresser has learned how to read blueprints!”
This article appears in Apr 4-10, 2013.