If you want to catch up on last week there’s a full Weekly Wrap Up for 7-18-24. Looking ahead at this week’s agendas, plural, Council meets as the Community Redevelopment Agency this week for the morning session and then returns in the evening for land use hearings.

The biggest item facing the CRA Board this week isn’t on the agenda however. The lack of a CRA Director. I haven’t covered the stream of folks leaving the city the last two months but the Tampa Bay Times has.

A drumbeat of recent departures has hollowed out senior leadership in Tampa Mayor Jane Castor’s housing and economic development teams a little more than a year into her second term.

I’ve included a graphic that shows the organization chart for the Development & Economic Opportunity at the start of the year. The administrator, a deputy administrator, the city planner, the director of Housing & Community Development AND the CRA Director have all resigned.

When the CRA was last without a Director, Nicole Travis, then Admin of Development & Economic Opportunity and Deputy Admin Alis Drumgo oversaw the CRA and its transformation. (At one point Ms Travis was also running the Convention Center). That’s not to say she didn’t lean on staff, but at least she had a leadership team. Interim Administrator Feeley does not have that same support system. Council will need to make a quick decision on an interim CRA Director and then immediately start looking for someone permanent.

What is on the CRA agenda is the CRA Budget. Someone will be presenting something and there will be a lot of conflation between the CRA Board and Tampa City Council roles, so it should interesting to watch.

For the evening land use meeting, the headline item will be approving the Robles Park development. This is a project with the Tampa Housing Authority that has been long planned and this is big next step. I don’t expect any opposition to the rezoning but if there are residents who will be affected and still don’t have answers, this may be their opportunity to be heard.

Beyond that many of the items were mis-noticed or pulled by the applicant. One that caught my eye (item 3)was another special use request for “air conditioned storage” downtown. Recently Council approved a new building near the HART transfer station in the north of downtown and there were concerns about precedent and best use of land downtown. This case is an existing office building where they want to in essence use floors 2-10 for storage. I don’t anticipate an issue with an existing building but worth noting.

The other item I would watch is item 5. This is a request to rezone a piece of land from RS-50 to a Planned Development (PD) to build a max of 16 units. The property is surrounded by a mobile home park that is also zoned RS-50. Two big red flags for waivers—front doors not facing the street and reduction of tree retention from 50% to 21%. Those are both generally deal breakers with this Council but every case is judged on its merits.

Finally, on a personal note, considering it’s budget season, I have considered the capital improvements I’d like to make to this site and have created a way for folks to help. If you’d like learn more I wrote a quick post, Support the Site.