Jim and Brenda Christian: "You feel the potential'
[Times photo: Toni L. Sandys]
Brenda and Jim Christian, along with sons Dakota, 15, left, and Sky, 16, have spent the past four years beaming over their 1928 home. The place caught Brenda’s eye from the interstate.
Jim and Brenda Christian have told the story about their home a zillion times. For years, Brenda drove by the enormous, yellow brick house next to Interstate 275 as she took her kids to school.
She wanted it.
One day she knocked on the door and offered to buy it. The owners, the original family that built it in 1928, said yes.
Today the home is a popular stop on the annual Tampa Heights House Tour.
But there's a Part 2 to the Christians' story.
After living in the house for four years, they find their love of it goes beyond the six bedrooms, walnut woodwork and miles of crown molding. It extends to their community.
Jim likes its legacy as the city's first suburb. He's proud to live around the corner from a sign marking where the Buffalo Soldiers once camped.
"It's just a neat place," he said.
The Christians and two of their sons live in a swath between Columbus Drive and Floribraska Avenue heavily populated with homes that look loved, restored to their original trim, with tended lawns and Tampa Heights banners swinging from porches.
Brenda, 39, and Jim, 47, said the area is still evolving but at least headed in the right direction. They see more young professionals of all colors and backgrounds moving in.
A former drug haven has been renovated into an apartment complex. Drugs and prostitution remain a problem, but residents report problems to police on a regular basis. They know the police officers by name.
Brenda, who sells real estate, now focuses on Tampa Heights and Seminole Heights, where buyers are drawn to the large, old houses and location close to downtown.
Clients often ask her to sum up Tampa Heights. She tells them: It's still block by block. There are original owners, rentals and fixer-uppers. There are developers building new structures to mirror the old.
She also tells them that she loves it.
"When you go into the heart, you feel the regeneration, the pride," she said. "In some of the areas, you feel the potential."
- DENISE WATSON BATTS
Jerome and Yvonne Harris: "Good and bad in all neighborhoods'
Jerome and Yvonne Harris found their first home as a married couple in 1984. It was a wreck.
The floors and walls were dingy; a wagon wheel hung as a light fixture in the formal dining room.
The neighborhood's reputation wasn't much better. Crime that hovered around nearby Nebraska Avenue spilled in all directions.
But the house on Plymouth Street was bigger than others they had seen. Yvonne wanted it.
Years later, crime along Nebraska has dropped, except for the persistent calls about drugs and prostitution. Strangers walk through back streets to do who-knows-what, said Jerome, 58.
Fortunately, the couple haven't had many problems, except for the occasional missing flower arrangement from their front porch.
"You're going to have your good and bad in all neighborhoods," he said.
When Harris thinks of the good, he thinks of the white, black and Hispanic families along his block that have been there for years.
Their home is not the rundown shack they first arrived at two decades ago. The wagon wheel is long gone, the kitchen decorated with the ceramic apples that Yvonne collects. Their corner lot brims with wandering Jew, peace lilies, Caladiums and lavender Campanula.
One day they might have to sell the place. It sits in the shadow of Interstate 275, which they've been told might widen in their direction. The idea doesn't bother the Harrises. It's just another part of life.
"There's no such thing as a problem-free society," he said. "The fact remains that you teach and train. If you didn't have obstacles in life to test you, what do you live for?"
- DENISE WATSON BATTS
Tabatha Hays: "I want to see a mix'
[Times photo: Toni L. Sandys]
Tabatha Hays, 34, walks her dog, Dibble, outside the Sanctuary lofts, where she and her boyfriend have lived for the past 10 months. Hays deems her new neighborhood “funky” and “friendly.”
On weekends, the bright new face of Tampa Heights can be found bicycling to Ybor, a tiny dog named Dibble in a mesh bag over her shoulder.
Tabatha Hays moved here 10 months ago.
She and her boyfriend wanted to live in Hyde Park but were spurned by high prices. In Tampa Heights, they found an $840-a-month apartment in the Sanctuary lofts, a converted church on Ross Avenue that has come to symbolize the neighborhood's transformation.
"I used to live in New York City and always wanted a loft," says Hays, 34, an out-of-work mental health counselor.
She pitches two words for her new neighborhood: "funky" and "friendly."
The Sanctuary's 32 units are occupied by yuppies in suits, college students with bulging backpacks, punk rockers with spiky hair. The maintenance man lives here. So does a woman in her 50s who says she has a house and kids elsewhere but wanted her own pad in the city.
Diversity blooms beyond the Sanctuary, too.
From her 9-foot windows, Hays sees two dilapidated wood-frame houses. She is sure they will be snapped up and fixed.
On walks, she marvels at the stately Victorians, the art deco house with the steel door, the shoes left outside the Hindu temple. She says hello to the homeless.
"I want to see a mix," she says. "We don't need to put ourselves in a little pocket with everybody else who looks like us."
Before she moved into Tampa Heights, Hays was a case manager at homeless shelters a few blocks away. She learned so much from folks with so little.
White, black and Hispanic "managed to get along, work together, take care of each other's kids," she says.
"I thought, "Why is it just this way inside the walls of the shelter?' "
- RON MATUS
Eula Jackson: "A beautiful place'
[Times photo: Toni L. Sandys]
Eula Jackson, 76, has lived in public housing at Robles Park since she was widowed 30 years ago. She recalls when the complex was integrated and lined with fruit trees -- “a beautiful place,” she said.
Eula Jackson has lived in Tampa Heights for the past 30 years but didn't realize it until a few years ago. That's when she heard that some Tampa Heights residents wanted to exclude Robles Park Village from the neighborhood.
Jackson and others who live in the 436-unit public housing complex put up a fight and stayed.
Since then, little has changed. While other parts of Tampa Heights have prospered, her area near Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard and Florida Avenue has flailed.
Jackson was born on Twiggs Street in 1928. She married, had two sons and worked as a housekeeper most of her life. She moved to Robles Park Village in 1974 when her children were grown and she was widowed.
She remembers it a much different home.
Back then, it was integrated, she said. Now it's almost all black. The concrete yard outside her front door used to be a lush lawn. At the end of her building were plum, avocado and pear trees that died when other residents moved in and didn't take care of them, she said.
"Robles was a beautiful place," Jackson said.
Over time, as the complex aged, drug problems and conflicts with police arose. Outsiders were blamed for much of the trouble, making it difficult for the residents trying to keep the peace.
"The majority of the people in there are good, honest people," said police Maj. George McNamara, whose area includes Robles.
Robles has forces working against it, residents say. Tall gates were erected between buildings to hinder criminals running from police. A negative side effect: Neighbors can't visit each other or walk to stores. The housing authority that runs the complex bans block parties.
The rules muddle Jackson. In other parts of Tampa Heights, neighborhood gatherings create a sense of community. In Robles, they are viewed as criminal activities.
But Jackson, known to many in the community as "Miss Eula" or "Grandma," still sees signs of beauty. Her home is filled with photos of family and friends, including Hillsborough County Tax Collector Doug Belden, for whom she worked for years and whom she considers a son. Her shelves and walls are covered with awards honoring her friendship and service in the Order of the Eastern Star.
She can't imagine where she would be without Robles.
- DENISE WATSON BATTS
Julia Jackson: "I am not blighted'
[Times photo: Toni L. Sandys]
Developers have made numerous offers for Julia Jackson’s property, and the city has called her area “blighted” — an insult Jackson disputes. She’s lived here for more than 60 years, and she’s not moving.
Julia Jackson's home anchors a sea of vacant lots.
She refuses to set it adrift.
Her family moved to Tampa Heights in the 1890s. She raised four children alone. On an art teacher's salary, she bought a home on Highlands Avenue.
For decades, it was surrounded by other houses - modest, proud houses, the houses of dentists and beauticians and insurance salesmen. Neighbors watched each other's children. They spent evenings together on porches.
But over the years, neighbors died or moved, and once-proud houses sagged. The house two doors down was demolished three months ago. The one around the corner fell a few weeks ago.
Developers want Jackson's house, too.
They've sent representatives to her door, past the tangle of potted plants on the porch, past the butterscotch bell peppers sprouting from buckets. The developers never tire of repeating themselves: "Are you ready to sell?"
Jackson has lived here more than 60 years. She is sick of telling them no.
She tells them, "I was here when it was up. I was here when it was down."
And now that Tampa Heights is up again, she wants to enjoy it again - just like the newcomers.
Jackson suspects the city is plotting, looking for an excuse to condemn her property so somebody rich can buy the whole block and put up something upscale.
"My house is an eyesore to them," she fumes.
In 1997, the City Council designated part of Tampa Heights, including Jackson's home, a "blighted" area - an official term that made it easier for the city to buy land and sell it for redevelopment.
Jackson will never forgive the insult: "I am not blighted."
- RON MATUS
Vincent Scott: "Like any other neighborhood'
Not long ago, police helicopters thwumped over Vincent Scott's house.
When he moved to Tampa Heights nine years ago, slumlords piled trash on vacant lots and cops chased drug dealers through back yards. Scott couldn't drink coffee on his porch in the morning because addicts still circled for crack.
Now, Scott, 39, sips coffee in peace. Instead of addicts, he watches neighbors walk their dogs.
"It's pleasant," he says.
Scott was among the first wave of pioneers, black and white, who took advantage of a city program that allowed them to buy nice houses in Tampa Heights at bargain rates. They took the risk. Now they're reaping the rewards.
Scott paid $52,000 for his Victorian. His down payment: a single paycheck. Today, a similar house down the street is selling for $299,000.
"It's crazy," says Scott, a social worker.
Scott is tempted by the thought of a beachside condo. But neighbors - black and white - make him pause.
For years, blacks and whites pulled together to get Tampa Heights over the hump. Now, they laugh together at porch parties.
"We were determined to have a decent neighborhood," Scott says. "That forced us to talk to each other, to befriend each other."
But Scott doesn't think it will last. As property values soar, it will be harder for black families to buy into Tampa Heights. Eventually, "it will be just like any other neighborhood," he says. "Segregated."
