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Mass transit drives population report

Tribune file photo (2005)

The planning commission expects Central Tampa to increase 73 percent to 190,000 people by 2025, which bolsters the argument for mass transit.

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By RICH SHOPES

rshopes@tampatrib.com

Published: April 15, 2009

Central Tampa is poised to become the next growth magnet, in part because of mass transit.

The city-county planning commission expects the area bounded by Hillsborough Avenue, State Road 60, 50th Street and Old Tampa Bay to increase 73 percent to 190,000 people by 2025.

That would make the area, now a mix of single-family homes and businesses, Hillsborough County's new growth king, ahead of Brandon, New Tampa, Town 'N Country and Riverview.

Planners expect a boom because of ongoing development downtown, in the Channel District and in the West Shore business district.

They also foresee a transportation corridor of buses and possibly light-rail trains to take root from the University of South Florida to downtown and West Shore.

That corridor would include a sprinkling of transportation hubs, or station stops where trains and buses meet, and cause clusters of condos, apartments, shops and offices to spring up, planners say. Officials would update the city's zoning designations for those areas to push the growth.

All of this would take years, decades actually, to fully develop.

Moving in from the 'burbs

When asked what Tampa can expect, planners point to scores of cities with growing transit corridors, such as Phoenix; Salt Lake City; Denver; Dallas; San Diego; Charlotte, N.C.; and Portland, Ore.

Transit often is cheaper than commuting by car, which accounted for some of the growth. In other cases, people traded the suburbs for smaller homes in the city to be closer to work, restaurants and shops.

The same can happen in Hillsborough, planners here say. Already, smaller homes are claiming a larger share of the housing market.

"The fastest growing segment of housing between 2000 and 2006 was villas and town houses," said Ray Chiaramonte, assistant executive director at the city-county planning commission. "People are tired of gridlock. Not everybody wants to live 25 miles outside the city and have a two-hour commute."

Central Tampa's population boom theory is gaining other adherents, as well.

Ron Rotella, executive director of the Westshore Alliance business group, said employers looking to relocate more often turn to cities with robust transit systems.

It's no wonder politicians and business leaders are pushing for transit here. On average, Bay area commuters spend 20 percent to 30 percent of their incomes on commuting, among the highest nationwide.

Tampa Mayor Pam Iorio and Hillsborough Area Regional Transit, the county's bus agency, are pitching a rail line from USF to downtown and the airport.

The county commission recently voted to begin preparing a referendum for November 2010 on a 1-cent sales tax increase to help fund transportation projects, including light rail.

The commission is expected to decide in September whether to put the question to voters, but some commissioners expressed doubts the public will approve such a tax increase.

Rotella said politicians need to set aside differences, rally around transit and think about the Bay area's future. If that happens, Central Tampa will take off, he said.

"It's going to take policy decisions, land use and zoning decisions. If you want transit-oriented development to work, you have to put the laws in place to support it," Rotella said. "If that happens, I'd say it's not only plausible it's feasible."

Ron Weaver, a Tampa land-use lawyer for more than 30 years, agreed. Although the commission's population estimates seem a little high, he pointed to other cities that boomed after they put in rail systems.

"It's absolutely realistic. Look at what's happened in San Diego, Portland and a dozen other cities," he said. "Before the rail system, people didn't even live in downtown San Diego."

Analysis draws skeptics

Still, the planning commission's analysis is drawing critics, including one who used to work for the commission, former planner Jim Hosler.

Hosler said the commission's analysis assumes higher densities than planners had ever envisioned, meaning a dramatic influx of apartments, condos, villas and town houses.

Hosler said that can happen, but not at the pace planners are predicting. Elected officials and building departments would need to enact sweeping changes in zoning and put in place incentives to lure builders.

Assembling several small lots for an apartment building usually is costlier than buying a single, large rural tract, he said.

"There's nothing wrong with ideas. Maybe in 2050, Tampa will have everything they're thinking about ... but they're ahead of themselves," Hosler said.

Developer Edd McGrath is skeptical, too. While developers continue to build downtown and in the West Shore district, thousands of more units would need to be squeezed into the urban core to meet the commission's predictions.

That's not going to happen unless city officials give developers incentives to offset land costs and stand firm when residents start complaining about the projects, McGrath said.

"All of these in-fill ideas are out of textbooks for planners. But when there's talk about them, they just don't happen," he said.

"It's really a political problem," McGrath said. "We don't have a commissar of development saying 'go here and go there.' The county commission will always side with the voters. The reality is projects like this rely on politics and money, and if politics and money aren't working, then it won't happen."

Chiaramonte disagrees. "If you guide development in areas that need to be redeveloped ... you're going to have less of that opposition."

HART likes growth numbers

The commission's analysis is more than academic. HART, the county's transit agency, hopes to use the population estimates to make a case for federal funding next year when it formally rolls out its light-rail proposal.

The Hillsborough Area Regional Transit Authority is counting on a combination of federal grants and local sales taxes to build and run a rail and bus network. The higher the population in the city's urban core, the stronger the case becomes for transit network.

"The higher numbers will definitely help," HART spokesman Ed Crawford said. "Have we been over there saying, 'please plug in those numbers?' No, of course not."

One reason more people will move to the city, he said, is "because the mind-set is changing. There's a huge demand for housing that's closer to things, like jobs, but also to various amenities."

Reporter Rich Shopes can be reached at (813) 259-7633.

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