East Ybor: In the Bottoms, residents root for a renaissance
Now part of the historic Ybor district, the long-neglected East Ybor neighborhood sees signs of redevelopment.
By RON MATUS
Published January 9, 2004
In Ybor, 22nd Street might as well be the tracks.
To the west, there are parades and parties, debates about nightclub noise and a gleaming trolley.
To the east, houses groan from neglect and old furniture rots on vacant lots. On some corners, kids sell drugs.
"This is the Bottoms," said lifelong resident Victoria Giunta.
The nickname refers to East Ybor's low-lying landscape and the bottom-rung economic status of many of its residents.
But even in the Bottoms, dreams persist.
In December 2002, the City Council expanded the Ybor historic district to include East Ybor, a designation boosters expect will bring attention from the city and investment from developers. Here and there, those rooting for a renaissance see the baby steps of progress: New street lights. Refurbished bungalows. Neighbors who pitch in to pick up trash.
"We can be a pocket of hope," said Jeraldine Williams Smith, a lawyer and East Ybor native who heads the neighborhood association.
Nobody suggests it will be easy.
In Smith's back yard, she cemented concrete planters to the patio and chained lawn chairs to the earth, to keep them from being stolen. Smith doesn't mind pointing that out to visitors. In fact, she's sending a message: I'm not leaving.
"I have options. I have another home in Hillsborough County," said Smith, whose family moved to East Ybor in the 1930s. "But I chose to live here."
For the first half of the 20th century, the area now known as East Ybor was a thriving enclave for Italian, Spanish and Cuban immigrants, a place where black and white lived side by side, Smith said. Today's East Ybor is less diverse, dominated by African Americans. And it is less affluent: Most of the residents are renters, not homeowners.
When Nathaniel Miller moved his family here 40 years ago, to a butterscotch-yellow house with Japanese plum trees out front, life was better. "Crack wasn't around," said Miller, 59, a retired mason.
Now, from his front porch, he watches motorists buy drugs and addicts retreat to boarding houses. The other night at 1:30 a.m., police cars screamed past his bedroom window to make a bust down the block.
"People don't care about nothing," Miller said.
But the old-timers still care, and enough of them have stuck around to make rebuilding a reality, the boosters believe. They "remember what it was like when it was a real neighborhood," Smith said.
If nothing else, the Giunta garden will remind them.
Along 11th Avenue, lush rows of leafy vegetables spring from dark soil, surrounded by homes that have seen better days. The Giunta family began tilling this land in the 1920s, growing chard and escarole and other Italian produce to sustain immigrant workers.
The garden continues to thrive today.
"This farm means there was a community here," Vicki Giunta said. "It wasn't just abandoned land and trash and mattresses on the side of the road."
In East Ybor, hope about the future can vary block by block. Many testify to a turnaround.
In 1999, when Fran Costantino opened up her real estate office on Fourth Avenue, spent bullets and drug paraphernalia came with the territory. Not anymore, she said.
A few streets over, Betsy Davis, 72, remembers when drug dealers hid their goods in her flower beds. One time, police caught a suspect under her house, a wood-frame number with a tin roof and well-swept porch, graced by ferns and honeysuckle vine.
"It was terrible," Davis said.
And now? It's peaceful, she said. "Sometimes I get scared it's so quiet," she joked.
Her new gripe: no grocery store.
For the time being, a grocery isn't on the neighborhood association's agenda.
Members want to see more homeowners, a back-to-the-future change they say will bring more stability. At the same time, they're not bad-mouthing renters; the East Ybor association may be one of the few in the city that actively encourages renters to join its ranks.
"We don't have to be like Seminole Heights," Smith said. "We're going to work with what we have."
A block from her house, along 26th Street, the city is promising to turn a half-acre chunk of land into a playground.
Across the street, two houses relocated by the Interstate 4 expansion sit on a scruffy lot. The neighborhood association envisions a community center - and hasn't been shy about sharing that vision with the city.
While they wait for such projects to develop, members are encouraged by the little things.
A few years ago, Williams said she was the only one on her block who watered the lawn.
Now, some of her neighbors pamper their grass, too.
Tampa is a collection of neighborhoods, with more than 50 south of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. Hyde Park and Palma Ceia need little introduction, but others do. In an occasional series that continues this week, City Times explores some of them.
