Morning CRA Board meeting

As I wrote to start the week, the biggest item facing the CRA Board this week was the vacant CRA Director position. The initial motion from Council member Maniscalco was to appoint Cedric McRae to be the CRA Director. Not interim, just give him the job. After some debate about the appropriateness of not opening up the position to other internal candidates interested in the position, or a broader search, the motion was amended to “interim” director. Mr. McRae has been with the CRA for a couple of years. Previously he worked as a legislative aide for former Council member Reddick. He’s well liked and committed to the city. If I could give him one piece of advice, learn to push back.

There was some preliminary budget numbers presented for each of the districts but no discussions of substance.

The other item that caught my attention was a discussion about parks in Channelside. How are we looking at paying 2025 market prices for land in this part of the city for parks now? Why wasn’t that part of the urban planning from the beginning? I would argue they have access to a linear park that wraps around downtown giving them access to all kinds of green space. Not to mention the water front.

Evening Land Use hearing

The headline item was the approval of the Robles Park development. As I noted last week, this has been a redevelopment in the works with the Tampa Housing Authority for 4 years. This was an important step but I was surprised to hear they expect to break ground by the end of 2025. And of that, it will be the smaller retirement center (less than 300 units) and the “Hub” which will have mixed use (less than 200 residential units). With that kind of timeline, the 1200 affordable units are 5-10 years away.

Item 3 was one I highlighted in that it was another building introducing air conditioned storage to downtown. This time for an existing building to use a portion of the second through tenth floors. Their argument was that it was a “re-use” and that the existing building’s design prevents it from being used for residential. In essence, they want the City to waive the rules so they can use it for storage and office space until land values and the right deal come along to maximize profit. Council agreed with Hurtak voting no. Second reading will be August 22, 2024.

The other item that I highlighted was a rezoning of a lot on North Rome from RS-50 to a PD. Under any other circumstance Council would have voted 7-0 to deny this application based on my previous observations. The design, the reduction of trees (though Natural resources spoke to the fact many of the trees are exempt and one tree was hazardous) and the glaring fact that the applicant flatly told Council he filed Public Notice and that should be sufficient, they didn’t owe anything to the concerned neighborhood that showed up and made no effort to meet with them. However this was a young, homegrown developer 6 Council members shook their finger at but gave a pass. Council member Hurtak was consistent and voted to deny the application. Second reading is also August 22, 2024.

Speaking of “meeting with the neighborhood” Council Attorney interrupted Council at one point to make very, very clear, there is no requirement for applicants to meet with a neighborhood. He emphasized that some municipalities do have language that requires it. This was in response to several of the finger waggers asking the applicant to meet with the neighbors and making their vote sound conditional on the meeting and neighborhood. I expect the idea of requiring it by ordinance will be something Council revisits.