From crime-plagued public housing, Tampa’s West River neighborhood emerges
The old North Boulevard Homes were bulldozed to make a mixed-income community that’s rising by the river downtown.

By Sue Carlton
Tampa Bay Times
Published: May 21, 2024

Things are happening on the swath of land that runs along Interstate 275 at the edge of downtown Tampa. Witness the swarm of construction workers, the bright new landscaping, the tall buildings that keep rising from bulldozed lots.

But there are subtler signs of a place turning into an actual neighborhood.

Sidewalks are decorated with children’s drawings scrawled in pastel chalks. Leashed dogs out for walks keep the poop bag dispensers in perpetual need of refilling. A crowd of kids in backpacks gathers pre-dawn to await the school bus. Later in the morning, elderly people relax on shaded benches.

And in what was once a neighborhood marred by crime and poverty and long considered a food desert comes the surest sign that things are changing, according to a recently-posted placard with the signature green letters spelling out the name of Florida’s premier grocer:

“We’re getting a Publix,” said Alberta Brown, 52, who since October has been a resident of this suddenly-a-neighborhood called West River. “I saw the sign and I got so excited.”

Though the interstate was traditionally considered downtown Tampa’s northern border, city boosters are already referring to West River rising on the other side of the highway as one of downtown’s seven newly designated neighborhoods.

The ambitious $387 million (so far) urban renewal project of walkable streets and high-rise apartments with space for ground-level stores and restaurants is designed for low income residents as well as those who can afford a market rate apartment in a booming downtown. It was once the site of North Boulevard Homes, which was Tampa’s oldest public housing community.

The worn-down 44-acre complex across the street from Blake High School had been completed in 1940. Its military barracks-style buildings, many without air conditioning, became plagued by drug and gang activity. Once, a man who had been shot burst into the Tampa Housing Authority office there during business hours to escape his assailant, said Housing Authority Chief Operating Officer Leroy Moore.

Brown, the new West River resident, said her brother who lived in North Boulevard Homes told her: “You’re welcome to our house during the day, but at night, do not come over here.”

The old structures were bulldozed and today, seven buildings — with more to come —are nearly fully occupied, Moore said. The 160-unit, six story Renaissance at Main Street and Rome Avenue has a well-appointed lobby, computer room, hair salon and fitness center, among other amenities shared by other West River high rises. A street-level restaurant is under construction at Renaissance, and a Grow Financial Federal Credit Union branch has opened on the ground floor of one of the nearby Boulevard towers.

“We’re not commercial developers,” said Moore. “But the neighborhood retail we think eventually will thrive.”

The Housing Authority is working on West River in partnership with the city and Miami-based developer Related Group.

On the east end, near where Publix is planned, 174 units of workforce housing are coming. Beyond that, Manor West River, 360 units of market rate apartments with views of the Hillsborough River and the downtown skyline, is getting built.

The idea is a place “where everyone can live together in homes that are all the way from market rate to subsidized,” said Mayor Jane Castor, “and you can’t tell the difference.”

It makes for a wide range of rents in the same neighborhood — an average $350 a month for a subsidized one-bedroom apartment, depending on the resident’s income, and up to $2,000 for a market rate one-bedroom unit in one of the privately held buildings.

Brown, who worked at banks and a hotel chain before medical issues left her 100% disabled, said she appreciates the mixed-income concept. “The people who (pay) regular rent, they get to see that people who are less fortunate are not bad,” she said. “We’re just in a different situation.”

A one-bedroom apartment in downtown Tampa costs on average about $2,737 monthly, according to the rental platform Zumper.com.

Two hotels, a Cambria Hotel and an extended stay Staybridge Suites, are also under contract for West River along the interstate.

The only surviving original building is the Mary McLeod Bethune Apartments, named for the educator and civil rights activist, which has housed low-income tenants for half a century. Rehabilitated down to the original terrazzo floors, the 150-unit, eight-story building remains affordable housing for seniors, as is Renaissance next door.

As downtown’s growth sprawls, West River sits in what’s become a prime location. Julian B. Lane Park on the river, which in recent years got a $35 million makeover, is blocks away, Downtown proper, with its museums, Tampa Riverwalk, performing arts center, restaurants, bars and Amalie Arena are just beyond that, across the water from the iconic buildings of the University of Tampa. The popular Armature Works food and event hall is just over the bridge from West River. And the region’s new pro women’s soccer team, Tampa Bay Sun FC, plays its first seasons in an upgraded stadium along the river that it will share with Blake High until it finds a permanent home.

West River also has an amenity most other downtown neighborhoods don’t: Free parking, with the lots and garages tucked inside the development so the homes face the street. The Housing Authority can’t charge for parking, Moore said.

On a recent morning, Helen Jordan, 70, sat in in the shade outside her building with her small dog Cocoa, not far from a 10-foot metal sphere of public art called Boulevard Flow by artist Ya La’ford. She likes the dog park at her building. “I wouldn’t move out of here,” said Jordan, who previously lived in St. Petersburg. “It’s comfortable.”

Some 2,000 residents were moved from the old North Boulevard Homes ahead of the 2018 demolition. They were given first right of refusal for the new West River public housing units, and about 50 have returned, according to the Housing Authority.

Large oak trees from the North Boulevard Homes days still dot the property and line Main Street. One of them blocks Brown’s view of downtown, but she likes sitting on her balcony at night listening to the cars flowing by on the highway. Like her neighbors, she’s looking forward to the Publix opening expected by year’s end.

“To have one right in the neighborhood,” she said, “it makes it feel like a neighborhood.”