Citizens for the Revitalization of Temple Terrace
Latest News April 11, 2004
Latest News (April 11, 2004):
On March 16th there was a
meeting of the City of Temple Terrace Strategic Teamwork and Redevelopment Committee
(STAR) in which our town planner Neal Payton of Torti Gallas and Partners gave a small
presentation and fielded questions from the group. Neal
stated that there was one area in the southeast quadrant that could support a higher
density than the rest of the area and that was the area along the river (most of the
downtown area would probably be a maximum of three stories in height, this area could
possibly be up to five stories in height). The
riverfront area is the most valuable land in the southeast quadrant. The CRTT has stressed the importance of leaving
the city owned land directly adjacent to the river as a public park amenity
and placing town homes or condos along the north side of Riverhills Drive looking over
the beautifully wooded park to the river. As
Architect Frank Lloyd Wright used to say in reference to his sites, “if you want to
preserve the beauty of the hill, build on the side of the hill, not on top of it”. Currently, there is a huge drainage pond on the
east portion of this area so it should be carefully studied during the creation of the
Master Plan. There was also a question
about how the design guidelines, which are basically a new code for the downtown
quadrants, would tie into our existing antiquated City Code. Neal stated that the design guidelines would
delineate a new building type that the current City Code does not address—i.e.
pedestrian oriented, mixed use, medium density, new urban—so there would not be a
conflict between the existing City Code and the design guidelines.
There was a Temple Terrace
Community Redevelopment Agency (TTRA) meeting on March 16th, 2004. The two items on the agenda were a presentation by
our town planner Neal Payton of Torti Gallas and Partners and the city’s “intent
to purchase” the Havana Palms restaurant property (8615 N. 56th Street) in
the Revitalization area. Neal’s
presentation was enthusiastically received (as was the “intent to purchase”) and
Neal praised the City and City Council for their foresight in gaining control of
Terrace/Kash n Karry Plazas and their continuing desire to acquire more parcels in the
Southeast Quadrant. Again, the CRTT is a
strong advocate of the City gaining control of as much of the southeast quadrant as
possible before the Master Plan is created in June.
Regarding the Busch Boulevard
beautification efforts from Florida Avenue to 56th Street. On March 24th, 2004 the Metropolitan
Planning Commission presented there concepts and ideas gathered from their previously held
Interactive Open House. Many felt
their proposals, which included the addition of period street lighting, landscaping,
applied crosswalks and street furniture didn’t go far enough towards taming dreadful
Busch Boulevard, but their efforts are a start. In
all truthfulness the Busch Boulevard corridor needs to be entirely rethought from the
ground up—a sign ordnance and the burying of aerial electrical lines below ground
would go a long way, though it would be expensive.
Our own Bullard Parkway corridor would be significantly improved if we
were somehow able to eliminate those huge power poles on the south side of the road.
CRTT board member Lani Czyzewski and
the City have finished putting together the Temple Terrace specific information and
photographs for the 12 page Pre-Charrette
informational newspapers. These
newspapers will contain information about the upcoming charrettes/workshops and New
Urbanism, our City’s downtown revitalization direction. The City has ordered 20,000 copies of these
newspapers and the first batch will go out to the citizenry with the Temple Terrace Guide
phone books that are created by the GFWC Temple Terrace Women’s Club, Inc., in late
April. A second batch will go out the
beginning of May. Great job Lani!
CRA Director Ralph Bosek and the town
planner’s excellent traffic consultant Rick Hall of Hall
Engineering have been meeting with the Florida Department of Transportation (FDOT)
about what options our City has to “tame” dismal, noisy, deadly 56th
Street. This effort is crucial, as our
downtown’s success will be affected if it is adjacent to an unsightly 4-lane highway
with a disregarded speed limit. Currently
46,000 vehicles a day cross the Hillsborough River into Temple Terrace. Lately, the FDOT has considered handing over
ownership of that portion of 56th Street between the river and Fowler Avenue to
the City of Temple Terrace. Many have
asked, “how could the City afford to own and maintain that portion of the road?” As Councilmember Joe Affronti has said regarding
the Revitalization in general, “how can we afford not to?” If the city had control of 56th
Street we could increase the right of way or slightly adjust its orientation so that
landscaping could be added, we could add traffic calming measures, lower the speed limit,
or even possibly narrow it ala Delray Beach. The 56th Street problem is one we
need to confront head on.
One of the concerns I’ve heard
lately from citizenry is that we’ll design a great Master Plan for our four Downtown
Quadrants but no qualified Development Teams will answer the Developer RFP to construct
it. This scenario is extremely unlikely
because mixed-use, new urban projects
are currently one of the hottest things in the development industry. Last year, 500 developers and consultants
attended a two-day Urban Land Institute “Placemaking” conference at Reston Town
Center in Virginia. The strong turnout was
indicative of developer interest in building mixed-use projects centered on main streets
or designed as downtown districts.
Not surprisingly, our preference would
be to utilize Development Teams in the Downtown Revitalization that have previous
experience in building projects like ours, that is, mixed-use new urban projects;
preferably successful ones like CityPlace
or Mizner Park.
Since Florida has more New Urbanist projects than any other state
there is no shortage of Development Teams out there with experience in new urban projects
in Florida. Following are a few for
your perusal:
1) The
Palladium Company
Project: CityPlace, West Palm
Beach
2) Haile
Plantation Corporation, Gainesville
Project: Haile Village Center,
Gainesville
3) The
Graham Companies
Project:
Miami Lakes Town Center, Miami Lakes
4) Don
Castro Organization
Project: Winter
Park Village, Winter Park
5) Michaels
Development
Project: Belmont Heights, Tampa
6) The
Aragon Group at Pensacola
7) New
Urban Communities, Delray Beach
Project:
Atlantic Grove, Courtyards of
Delray, Old Palm
Grove—all in Delray Beach,
Botanica,
Jupiter Beach, East
Village, Fort Lauderdale
Another
question that has come up several times is “can retail survive if placed in the
southeast quadrant, based on that quadrants recent history and the current
demographics?” Firstly, the town planner
has a very good real estate advisor, Marc McCauley of Robert
Charles Lesser & Co., LLC, on their Project Team so the town planner will not
design a Master Plan that doesn’t work. I
can say that we won’t be putting back the amount of retail (which was 100%) that was
previously in the southeast quadrant as our area is over-saturated with retail as it is. Since we envision that the Revitalization will be mixed use (not single use like it
currently is, remember the old adage about not putting all of your eggs in one basket?)
we’ll have a combination of retail, restaurants, residential (town homes, condos),
office space, civic (City Hall), governmental (U.S. Post Office substation), and cultural
(performing arts center). By having the
residential located downtown we’ll automatically make that area safer (the term is
“eyes on the street”) and the residential component could also provide patrons
for the various uses located in the town center. Having
the performing arts center, post office and City Hall located there will provide
additional patrons before and after shows, errands, etc.
Our new downtown could very well become a destination if we want as
there’s no competition for this type of place in our area.
Regarding
the demographic issue, I would first like to point out that Temple Terrace has the highest median household
income, median house value, and education levels of any city in west central Florida. This is based on the entire 6.9 square mile city
area; the area around the golf course and near the river would be even higher. If our community can’t support quality retail
and restaurants then neither can any other community in our area. As I mentioned earlier our planners real estate
advisor will be conducting demographic studies as part of their market analysis but
we’re confident we won’t be stuck with corpulent “big box retail”
(i.e., Target, Big Lots, Home Depot) as our only retail alternative!
Lastly, many in the CRTT have been
asking “okay, lets say we have the Master Plan, design guidelines (a special code
that will allow us to create a mixed–use new urban town center), and zoning overlays
created for our four downtown quadrants, what about the rest of the City? Should the rest of the City at least have the
possibility of being developed in a similar manner to our downtown?” For this to happen we would need to have the
town planner create design guidelines for the rest of the city to be used in conjunction
with our existing City Building Code. Developers
would utilize the new code because there would be incentives offered such as faster
permitting time, etc. This new Citywide code
aka SmartCode would give
developers an option to our current City Building Code which if followed exactly
still produces buildings of debatable value. Ralph Bosek mentioned that Torti Gallas will
only be creating design guidelines or a new code for the downtown quadrants--the rest of
the city will continue to be governed solely by the antiquated City Building Code.
GR 4/11/04