Today, the site where Mass Brothers and the Strand once stood is a surface parking lot, sucking up space in the near center of downtown for almost two decades. Credit: Courtesy, Tampa-Hillsborough County Public Library System.

To be a better place four years from now, and for many, many years beyond, Tampa Bay needs to appreciate, preserve, and honor its structural history.

We’ve lost entire blocks of buildings, some a hundred-plus years old, to the wrecking ball in Tampa Bay city centers this decade alone. Historical architecture is what sets a place apart from Anytown, USA. Destruction, often branded as “revitalization,” doesn’t happen all at once—it’s death by a thousand cuts. So many of our downtowns and neighborhoods have long-since been slashed to a fraction of their origins.

While those losses of storefronts, factories, schools, and homes are irrevocable, our local leaders will need to stand firm against the flashes of developers’ dollars—and their plans to seemingly turn every charming and historically significant structure into another car wash or high-rise condominium.—T.J. Chaltry

To commemorate the leap year, Creative Loafing Tampa Bay asked readers and local leaders to chime in on what Tampa Bay needs to be a better place in four years. These are some of the results of the “What Tampa Bay Needs” survey.

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