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Another skirmish in South Tampa's mini-war: In addition to Parkland Estates not wanting outsiders' cars in their neighborhood and Palma Ceia not wanting townhouses in theirs, Historic Hyde Park doesn't want a 31-story condominium building on Bayshore at DeSoto.
They live in a historic neighborhood, the residents say. It doesn't fit.
The brick street is too narrow.
The very size of the building throws Architectural Review Commission guidelines out the window.
But even the residents - members of the Historic Hyde Park Neighborhood Association - accept the inevitability of a condo tower being built there. They just don't want it to be 31 stories. They want the developer to lop off 21 stories, which would make it the same height as the condo next door to the site, the Bayshore Royal.
Originally built in the 1920s, the Royal has been renovated out of whatever it looked like then into a generic 1960s non-style. It's 10 stories tall. Newer condominiums on Bayshore are twice that high.
Take a look at the site, and the neighborhood. As incredible as it seems on Bayshore Boulevard, the site is now an empty lot, grown over with weeds and trees. A huge oak tree already has a sign hanging around its trunk: "SAVE THIS TREE."
Behind the site, on DeSoto, is a small brick apartment building. Bungalows line the rest of the block, a heavily shaded park-like median separating the two lanes of the old brick street. One afternoon this week, a woman wearing a hat was walking her dog there and waved as my car went by. This is the kind of place where people probably feel if the car is on your block, you must know the people in it.
At the end of the block, close to the junction where Howard Avenue's restaurant row begins with St. Bart's Island House and Bella's, a few of the houses have "5 Minute Parking" signs in the front lawns, citing city code 15-43 - another clash of cultures we see in South Tampa. One has an extra admonition tacked on a tree: "Day or Night."
On Bayshore, across DeSoto from the site, is a white antebellum house, one of the grand homes that define so much of what Bayshore is, or was.
If I lived in that house, I'd be dead set against a 31-story condo going up across the street.
If I lived on DeSoto, I wouldn't want it, either. It will bring traffic, no doubt about it.
This is one more fight that is a result of a neighborhood becoming too desirable.
Jeanne Holton Carufel, the president of the Historic Hyde Park Neighborhood Association, is ready for a long fight. She absolutely refuses to believe this condo tower will get built. The association has an attorney, who lives on DeSoto. The neighbors' heels are dug in.
My heart is with the people who live in the neighborhood. But my head tells me the tower will go up - and it won't be 10 stories, either.
Yet the passion of the neighborhood protest may well translate into something smaller than 31 stories and a building design that's more simpatico with this neighborhood.
But make no mistake. The condos are coming.
One Bayshore, a hulking residential project that looks to have all the architectural appeal of Tampa General, is planned to go up at Bayshore and Platt. The site is empty now, but remember when it had that Victorian house with the big wraparound porch that was one restaurant after another? It was so charming to have something like it on valuable property so close to downtown and with a water view. Too good to be true, I remember thinking, several years ago, as we sat outside one night eating dinner and watching fireworks in the distance.
- Sandra Thompson is a writer living in Tampa. She can be reached at tampa@sptimes.com City Life appears on Saturday.