What might you find along the Midtown stretch: Thugs and looters? More like working folks, homes, churches and shops.
By JON WILSON and SHARON L. BOND
Published May 16, 2004
ST. PETERSBURG - Three times since October 1996, 18th Avenue S has provided the venue for street violence, the latest episodes occurring last week.
Despite that, the Midtown section of 18th Avenue - Fourth to 34th streets - suggests a benign, workaday character, at least on the surface.
A morning late last week produced these 18th Avenue S scenes:
People driving to work or waiting for buses. Shoppers walking up to their nearest neighborhood grocery, perhaps Midtown Grocery near 19th Street or Novell's Quick Market at 29th Street.
Near 31st Street, a firefighter in a truck lets loose a blast of the horn, greeting the outdoor loungers at the Joy Riders Motorcycle Club. Near Eighth Street, two young women stroll shady sidewalks, one pushing a baby in a carriage, the other carrying her infant in a tummy pack.
The avenue is a main street for Midtown's African-American neighborhoods, to a lesser degree serving the same purpose as 22nd Street S did years ago.
"It is the center of south St. Petersburg," said Milton Mobley, who owns Sports Cuts barbershop at 3166 18th Ave. S. His business is several years old and doing great, he said. The avenue is healthy but needs more.
"Right now, for lunch we have to go 2 to 5 miles," Mobley said. "There are no restaurants in this area." He feels that closed businesses on 18th Avenue and nearby on 34th Street S should be rehabilitated to strengthen the road.
When the Tampa Bay Buccaneers won the Super Bowl in January 2003, exuberant residents hopped in their trucks and cars and celebrated bumper to bumper down a 12-block stretch of 18th.
The thoroughfare, whose entire length runs from Third Street to near 58th Street in Gulfport, has a long St. Petersburg history.
Known as Tangerine Avenue in its early days, what became its Midtown section supported a white neighborhood during the segregation era.
Then, as now, it offered a stretch of small businesses where nearby residents could buy small household items, get some groceries or stop for a lube job without having to travel far.
Old-timers recall Tangerine Sundries, the Park Theater and VFW Post 6827. For a while there was a feed store.
A grocery store occupied 1245 18th Ave. S, now the site of the Uhuru headquarters.
Trolley tracks ran down Tangerine Avenue, hooking downtown to Gulfport until the city phased out the system in 1947-48.
Today it is a well-traveled strip where single-family houses, churches and apartments nudge mom-and-pop businesses, car washes, markets and takeout garlic crab cafes. Perkins Elementary, a well-regarded magnet school for the arts, is at the corner of 18th Avenue and 22nd Street.
"People here are mostly people like me," said Melvin Dandridge, whose family has owned Novell's Quick Market since 1977. "We're working people. We work for everything we get."
A relatively narrow road, 18th Avenue is often used as a four-laner, precariously at times because of the none-too-generous right-of-way. Vacant lots, some with majestic, hovering oaks, are interspersed along the way.
Its east-west traffic feeds into major north-south routes such as 16th, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Fourth streets. The vehicle volume is comparable to that in sections of many well-used St. Petersburg thoroughfares - parts of Fifth and Ninth avenues N and sections of 28th and 58th streets N, for example.
Churches outnumber nightclubs - by far. Eight places of worship are scattered between Fourth and 34th streets. The Little Club, a tiny green block of a saloon at the 22nd Street intersection, is the only bar. There is an Elks Club and a Masonic Lodge.
Two shopping centers are part of the future of 18th Avenue's Midtown section. Three Oaks Commerce Center is under construction on a block between 16th and 17th streets. Tangerine Plaza is planned for the block between 21st and 22nd streets. It will be anchored by a chain grocery, which is badly needed by Midtown residents, particularly those who do not have transportation.
Ron Donaldson is the developer of Three Oaks. It will total close to a $1-million project when finished, he said.
Donaldson plans for it to be open by Nov. 1. He is incorporating an empty building into the center, erasing one of those sore spots Mobley mentioned. And to satisfy the appetites of those like Mobley who say more food outlets are needed, Three Oaks will bring two more restaurants: a Subway sandwich shop and Rush Hour Seafood Grill. It also will have a dry cleaners, Your Dollar Store and an accounting firm.
Tangerine Plaza is the larger project, close to $4-million. It is a hallmark for 18th Avenue S. First, it will stand on land where crack houses used to be, clearing out undesirable activities. Second, the city purchased the land and is leasing it to Urban Development Solutions for practically nothing, adding to the city's investment in Midtown. Third, the plaza will be anchored by a Kash n' Karry, now renamed Sweetbay Supermarkets, bringing only the second chain grocery into Midtown.
Developer Larry Newsome hopes the plaza will be open for business in the summer of 2005.
"There is a real potential for renaissance," Newsome said of the area.
