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Plan for Central Park okayed

The Tampa Housing Authority accepts a plan to turn Central Park Village into a blend of public housing and upscale condominiums.

By JANET ZINK
Published August 17, 2005

TAMPA - With little discussion, the Tampa Housing Authority board on Tuesday voted unanimously to accept a proposal from a developer to rebuild Central Park Village.

Applause, cheers and tears of hope followed the decision.

"We have been waiting for this day," said Ruth Dewberry, vice president of the Central Park Village Residents Council, as she dabbed at her eyes.

This is the fourth plan that has been proposed in the past five years for rehabilitating Central Park, but the only one that has come this close to reality.

"This is a historic day for the city of Tampa," said board member Gerald White.

The vote allows the authority staff to begin negotiating a development agreement with the Central Park Group, which includes developer Bill Bishop, Don Wallace, chairman of the board for Lazydays RV SuperCenter, and Bank of America. The group wants to combine the Housing Authority's 28-acre Central Park land with nearby property to create a 60-acre community that blends public housing and upscale condominiums.

The plan calls for more than 4,000 apartments, condominiums and townhomes.

Jerome Ryans, executive director of the Tampa Housing Authority, said it will probably take a few months to work out details of the agreement.

Replacement housing for the more than 1,300 residents of the 484-unit complex is of particular concern. The Central Park Group's plans call for only 182 new public housing units.

"Hopefully we can have some improvement in that number," White said.

Displaced residents who don't return to Central Park would need to find another type of subsidized housing, possibly using vouchers from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

The Central Park Group says new affordable homes will be available to all Central Park residents either in the old neighborhood or in locations nearby.

Susan Greenbaum, an anthropology professor at the University of South Florida who has a $15,000 grant to study the relocation of Central Park Village residents, said she's skeptical that affordable housing will be easy to build in Tampa's "overheated" housing market.

"I don't know how any developer can do affordable housing on ground that's so expensive," she said.

Still, she said, she likes the Central Park Group's vision.

"I'm really hopeful this can be what it promises to be," she said.

Moving forward also requires creation of a special taxing district to help pay for new infrastructure. Haggling between the city and county over the details of such a district killed a similar plan to redevelop Central Park in 2003.

Mayor Pam Iorio told the Housing Authority board Tuesday that she remains committed to establishing the taxing district.

"We have the city," said Housing Authority board member Manny Alvarez. "But we need the county. And we don't know where we stand with the county."

Ryans said he hopes residents will be relocated in the next year so that demolition of Central Park Village might begin by fall 2006.

The first new units could be open by 2008, the developers say.

But senior citizens in Central Park Village could move by the end of this year to new quarters in the old Centro Asturiano Hospital building on 21st Avenue and 14th Street, now being redeveloped as senior housing by Bank of America.

Janet Zink can be reached at 813 226-3401 or jzink@sptimes.com

[Last modified August 17, 2005, 01:08:12]