TBO.com - TBO is Tampa Bay Online

Helpers Take To Streets For Planning

ADVERTISEMENT

By KATHY STEELE, The Tampa Tribune

Published: February 16, 2008

SEMINOLE HEIGHTS - The tiny wheel goes round and round and numbers tick into view as Sherry King rolls the measuring stick across Hanna Avenue's crosswalk while cars zoom along Nebraska Avenue.
Greg Barnhill and city urban planner LaChone Dock follow behind with maps that lay out the street grid of Old Seminole Heights, following Hanna from Florida Avenue to North 22nd Street.

"We're noting what's on the corner," Dock says as she scrawls a few details on the map about the northwest corner of Hanna and Nebraska. "Some small landscaping, no trees."

This band of urban explorers and more than a dozen more were out Monday and Wednesday mapping the streets. They sized up crosswalk and curb widths, building setbacks, grassy rights of way, residential versus commercial, and whether streetlights dangled from wires or metal arms.

Photographs captured the buildings and panned the sights a few yards beyond at about 20 intersections. The information will be building blocks in a long-range plan for Old Seminole, Southeast Seminole and South Seminole Heights.

Many hope the plan will encourage a more mixed-use, pedestrian-friendly community and streamline an often-chaotic zoning system. The city will hold workshops in the months ahead to get input from residents and business and property owners.

"It feels good to be hands-on at some level, to be part of the process," said King, past president of the Business Guild of Seminole Heights and owner of Sherry's YesterDaze Vintage Clothing & Antiques on Florida.

At a Feb. 5 meeting, the city kicked off a two-year pilot project in the three Seminole Heights neighborhoods, covering nearly 5 square miles. The goal is to gauge the community's vision of how the neighborhoods should develop and then create city codes to make it happen.

Long-range planning is not new to Seminole Heights residents. They spent about two years working with the city and the Hillsborough Planning Commission on a strategic business plan.

Residents gave their approval to the plan at a 2005 town hall meeting but say they haven't seen the city put it into action. Members of the business guild, which formed in 2006, said they would use the plan as a guide in promoting commercial development.

The community-planning project could be "the next step in the right direction," said Barnhill, a community activist and member of the city's Architectural Review Commission.

Along Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, Gary Ellsworth was among the volunteers mapping intersections Monday at North Boulevard and Highland, Florida, Central and Nebraska avenues.

There is hope that the project, which has city support, will produce change, even if it's 10 or 15 years away, said Ellsworth, president of the South Seminole Heights Neighborhood Association.

"Don't look for a big change next year," he said. "But hopefully there will be a plan in place so we can go forward."

Four public meetings are scheduled in February and March, and a weeklong series of workshops will be held in April. Recommendations to change city codes will be given to the city council in 2009.

"I'm acting like it's important, that it matters," King said. "I'm having faith."

IF YOU GO

WHAT: Community-planning meeting for Seminole Heights
WHEN: 5:30 to 8:30 p.m. Monday

WHERE: Seminole Garden Center, 5800 Central Ave.

INFORMATION: Call the city's growth management and development services at (813) 274-8405 or go to www.tampa gov.net.

Reporter Kathy Steele can be reached at (813) 835-2103 or ksteele@tampatrib.com.

Share this:

Loading Comments...

Email Print

ADVERTISEMENT