TAMPA, Fla. — Tampa's north downtown area could transform from parking lots to a walkable, bikeable corridor as the city projects over 100,000 new residents by 2050.
The north end of downtown Tampa spans 330 acres of opportunity between the city's downtown core and historic Ybor City.
WATCH full report by Michael Paluska
According to a study by the Tampa Downtown Partnership, "the overwhelming opportunity of this area is the vast ownership by the public sector. Including public road networks, the district is 68% publicly owned. This offers a unique opportunity to leverage existing assets and create a cohesive urban environment that serves the community effectively.
Read Tampa's city-wide vision here.
Jordan Copher is the owner of Late Start, a coffee house and brewery located at 1018 E. Cass Street, one of the first businesses established in the area.
"It seems mostly abandoned — this whole block is abandoned, and the rest are parking lots," Copher said.
"Do you think you are taking a gamble being the first?" Tampa Bay 28 reporter Michael Paluska asked Copher.
"We don't feel like that. No, I think there's so much promise for development here, at least in Encore. You know, we've got a couple of 20-plus story buildings going up. There are cranes all over the place in the skyline here. So that is the promise," Copher said.
The numbers support Tampa's population boom. By 2050, the city is projected to gain more than 100,283 new residents.
CoworkingCafe ranked Tampa #2 among mid-sized cities in the United States, citing it as one of the fastest-growing economies in the country, with a 71% increase in business applications from 2019 to 2023. This growth trend occurred during the pandemic.
Mayor Jane Castor believes the north downtown region will develop rapidly.
"Well, in five years, I think there are a couple of areas within Tampa that are really going to pop and they're going to do it very, very quickly. One of those is the North downtown region. It right now is almost a clear landscape, and there's so much that can be done," Castor said.
"There's an incredible amount of opportunity down in the north end of our downtown, and a lot of those buildings are government-owned, either by the state, Hillsborough County, or the city of Tampa. So there's a great deal of opportunity in so many different ways to bring that to life," Castor said.
City planning expert James Lima spoke about Tampa's growing competitiveness for talent and businesses.
"Tampa is definitely becoming a more competitive place for talent. It's winning on the tech front, on the eastern seaboard, this is a very attractive place for new innovation economy businesses to land," Lima said.
For Copher, who was born and raised in Tampa with his business partner, the location, situated between downtown and Ybor City, made strategic sense.
"Just the location. It's the corridor between downtown and Ybor," Copher said." My business partner and I were born and raised in Tampa, so this has been very fulfilling for us. All those people are coming out of the shadows of the buildings to come here. So it's been great," Copher said.
The transformation represents Tampa's broader evolution, as Copher noted the city is "unrecognizable" from when he was a child.
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