Critics can't stop the high-density tide in South Tampa, not with the appetite for townhouses and the cost of land.
By RON MATUS
Published April 2, 2004
[Times photo: John Pendygraft]
Jose Hurtado, 21, center, works on the 35-unit Thomas Townhomes in Port Tampa. The neighborhood association chief says, "There's a prevalent feeling that townhomes don't fit in."
SOUTH TAMPA - It's a fact of life in the evolution of cities: When land prices go up, buildings do, too.
In South Tampa, condominium towers are rising from West Shore to Bayshore.
Everywhere in between, townhomes are gobbling turf.
"South Tampa has always been single-family-detached suburbia," City Council member John Dingfelder said last week. "Now it's becoming more urban."
Despite protests from pockets of critics, the boom of townhome development in South Tampa shows no signs of fizzling. Hundreds have been built in recent years. Hundreds more are planned.
At least 300 are under construction.
The demand is so great, many units are selling before land is cleared.
"Lifestyles have changed," said architect Chris Kirschner, a partner with a development company building 45 townhomes in Port Tampa. "I don't think people want the white picket fence and the yard anymore."
Townhomes are usually two-story residences that are individually owned and interconnected.
Some owners like having no lawn to maintain.
Many like the price.
In South Tampa, some new townhomes start at $150,000, with many available for less than $200,000. Given South Tampa's white-hot housing market, that's a megabargain.
The prices are especially attractive to singles, retirees and young families who want both a home of their own and the advantages that come with living south of Kennedy Boulevard.
Developers say rising land values in South Tampa make townhomes inevitable.
They could build single-family detached homes on the same parcels, they say, but those homes would have to be big and expensive to cover the land costs and still net a profit. In many cases, those big houses would be out of character with the neighborhood.
And, they'd be harder to sell.
"It's a simple matter of economics," Kirschner said.
Opponents aren't feeling pity over developers' lost profits.
In some neighborhoods, an antitownhome mood simmers. This year, residents in Gandy/Sun Bay South went so far as to ask city officials to cease rezonings to stem the townhome tide. The city didn't oblige.
One of the residents, Shirley Adams, has lived in a single-story house on laid-back Wallace Circle for 37 years.
When the 68-year-old retiree envisions the 139 townhomes planned for across the street, she can't help but think the worst: More cars. More flooding. Declining property values. And who knows? Maybe even peeping Toms.
With townhomes next door, "How do you know people aren't looking down into your windows?" Adams said.
The reaction to townhomes has been particularly strong south of Gandy Boulevard, where the pace of construction is feverish. A headline last year in the Ballast Point neighborhood newsletter summed up the sentiment: "Townhouseville?"
"There's a prevalent feeling that townhouses don't fit in," said Scott Davis, president of the Port Tampa Civic Association.
Developers say townhomes won't cause the problems many critics fear. On some points, local planners and development experts agree.
- On stormwater: City rules in place since 1982 prevent virtually all major new developments, including most townhome projects, from allowing more stormwater to run off site than did before the development was built.
- On traffic: Studies nationwide show that townhomes typically generate far fewer car trips per unit - almost half as many - as regular houses. The reason: Townhomes cater to smaller families with fewer cars.
That means in many cases, townhome projects aren't likely to create many more car trips than the single-family detached houses that could have been built instead.
- On property values: In many cases, new townhouses in South Tampa are selling for more than the older houses around them - and are likely to increase surrounding property values.
In Port Tampa, the Thomas Townhomes under construction near West Shore Boulevard start at $215,000 - more than twice the going rate of houses across the street.
On Davis Islands, some townhomes are selling for $700,000.
Near S Howard Avenue, developers are asking $1.2-million.
"I think people sometimes mix up the townhouse concept ... with apartment buildings," said Warren Weathers, Hillsborough County's deputy property appraiser and a South Tampa townhouse owner himself. "I don't think they'll hurt the values unless there's something intrusive like flooding, noise, garbage."
Some critics grumble that townhomes will become apartments - the beginning of a slippery slope, some fear, that will leave renters bringing down the neighborhood.
Given the high cost of most townhomes in South Tampa, Weathers said that's unlikely, too.
Other concerns about townhomes are harder to define - or dismiss.
Concerns, for example, about a neighborhood's character.
Ballast Point residents have fought rezonings that allow townhomes because the neighborhood is dominated by single-family detached houses, said Gene Wells, president of the neighborhood association.
They want to keep it that way.
"We're talking about established neighborhoods," Wells said. "I'm not against townhouses. I'm against putting them on single-family lots."
In Port Tampa, civic association members have raised the character issue, too.
Port Tampa is a hodgepodge of housing types, but many residents want to see more Victorian throwbacks, not high-density townhouses, said Davis, the civic group president.
Some developers say the problem isn't townhomes. It's change.
And some sympathize.
For residents south of Gandy, townhomes are "taller than their houses," said Sharon Thomas, co-owner of Thomas Townhomes. "It's intrusive to them."
She likened townhome scraps to fights in other South Tampa neighborhoods over McMansions.
"I can't blame them," she said of upset residents. "They're looking out their back door at these things."
Thomas is trying to win over her neighbors.
In one case, neighbors who initially threatened to move because they hated her townhomes later told her they were repainting their house - and wanted to know what color would match the townhomes.
In other parts of South Tampa, residents remain sore.
In Gandy/Sun Bay South, Adams and her neighbors fought the rezoning that Phillips Development of North Carolina needed to build 139 townhomes on 14 acres between West Shore Boulevard and Manhattan Avenue.
They gathered petitions. They even waved protest signs. But the City Council voted 5-2 in February to rezone.
The developer is expected to close on the land this week and start building by early 2005.
