TAMPA HEIGHTS, Fla. — Improving safety and affordability as well as encouraging new development is the goal of a new Tampa Heights overlay district approved on Thursday at Tampa City Council.
Downtown Tampa, Ybor and Seminole Heights currently all have overlay districts.
Residents in Tampa Heights started fighting for this overlay district a few years ago, making this a successful grassroots effort for the neighborhood.
"The hard work goes to the Tampa Heights Civic Association. They really set the pattern of having to do it themselves," said Tampa City Councilwoman Gwen Henderson. "The overlay is the success of the community, especially the Tampa Heights Civic Association."
Brian Seel, a board member of the Tampa Heights Civic Association, believes that Tampa Heights should be the most walkable area in the City of Tampa.
"What we've seen, though, over the last six years is that development has not spread out to every part of Tampa Heights," Seel said.
Businesses have said that it's due to excessive parking regulations.
"The City of Tampa requires X number of spots per usage, depending on whether that's square feet or occupancy," Seel said. "A lot of new development and small development coming in has a hard time meeting those parking minimums because it eats up so much of their land when we as a neighborhood are laid out on a perfect grid that has abundant on-street parking, as well as several other anchors."
The new overlay district will not only improve parking requirements for some new developments but also allow for accessory dwelling units or ADUs.
"Those are garage apartments, sometimes they're attached dwellings and maybe a small apartment, above your house, attached your house, it can take different forms, and it's extremely hard to do in the City of Tampa," Seel said. "We wanted to make that easier in our neighborhood because we welcome density. We welcome more people. More people living in close quarters like that adds to the density you need to support local small businesses."
While walkability is a big factor for those living in the community, they're also allowing for any future transportation expansions like the streetcar or even light rail.
"Putting in urban design standards that get better development is going to take some cars off the road," Seel said. "And in terms of affordability, maybe allow people to live somewhere in Tampa where they don't have to own a car, or if they're a family, they maybe only need to own one car."
Seel said that this is just the start, too.
"We hope to grow it, we hope to add to it and make it more robust and interlaced, moving forward. But this is a good starting point," he said. "It's that whether we have good public transportation or not, we need this as places redeveloped."
