Historic Preservation Commission 11-10-26

I would like to call to order on Tuesday, November 10th, the public hearing of the City of Tampa Historic Preservation Commission at 9 a.m. Welcome, everybody. I am Carrie Ann Kanch, the chair of the commission. If you are here to present a project, you will have limited time to make your presentation, so we suggest being thorough and concise. When coming to the microphone, you will need to identify yourself and your relationship to the project. The commissioners will not ask any questions during your presentation. Next, staff will present the staff report. We will then ask for public comment. Please state and spell your name clearly if you are here to speak for or against a project. Your time will be limited to three minutes, so take some time now to summarize your comments because three minutes goes by very quickly. The commissioners will then ask questions of the applicant and staff. Next, the applicant will have five minutes for rebuttal. The public hearing will then be closed. After the public hearing is closed, no further testimony can be given. The commissioners will then discuss the case and will make their decision based on Chapter 27 of the City Code of Ordinance, research and reports provided by the administrator, staff, and qualified professionals, and the testimony given at the public hearing. If you haven't already done so, please silence your cell phones, and I would like to have the commissioners introduce themselves starting to my right. My name is Stephen Sutton. I'm a registered architect in the state of Florida. I hold the architectural historian chair for this commission. Susan Swift, and I'm an urban planner. Hi, Ellen. Thank you. And I'd like to introduce the staff, Dennis Fernandez, Elaine Lund, Heather Bond, Jared Vernum, and Attorney Kamaria Pettis-Mackel. And with that, the reading of the minutes from the last public hearing on July 27th, or July 21st, sorry, 2026. Would anybody like to make a motion to accept the minutes? I move that we accept the minutes for the Historic Preservation Commission meeting of Tuesday, July 21st, 2026, as presented. Anyone second? All in favor? Aye. Aye. Aye. Okay, passing. All in favor, none opposed. Good morning, commissioners. Dennis Fernandez, Architectural Review and Historic Preservation Manager. Just a couple brief announcements. First of all, I want to welcome Commissioner Hosey to the commission. He is an attorney by trade and will be filling that position on this particular commission. I, you know, thank you for your perseverance through the designation process. He kind of came in for one commission, and we talked and felt that he was a better fit for the HPC. So we look forward to working with you into your input in the future. Also, I did want to just call to your attention that the 2027 calendars have been distributed. We can provide those to you again digitally if you prefer that. And they do feature the dates of the hearings beginning in January for next calendar year. In your packets, you'll find this month's version of Bricks and Mortar, our reoccurring newsletter that we produce in the office and feature different subject matter dealing with historic preservation each month. This is also the subject of our preservation in progress this month, which is our reoccurring look and presentations on different subjects dealing with preservation or preservation projects. This month we are featuring WPA projects in Tampa, and Elaine is going to present a PowerPoint on that program. Thank you. Good morning, Commissioners. Elaine Lund, historic preservation staff. This month's preservation in progress is a look into the impacts of the New Deal and the Works Progress Administration in Tampa. The New Deal was an amalgam of many programs and agencies created by the Franklin D. Roosevelt Administration and the Congress in response to the Great Depression. These programs addressed a wide range of problems facing our country, stabilizing banks, reforming the mortgage industry, stimulating the economy, creating jobs, investing in public works, particularly in rural and underserved areas, and giving Americans a sense of security and hope. Some of the New Deal programs are well-known. Some lasted only a few years, but some still exist. A few of the New Deal programs that we are most familiar with in the historic preservation field are the Civilian Conservation Corps, the CCC, which put unemployed men to work on rural and park improvements and taught them skills for future jobs. The Public Works Administration, the PWA, which built large-scale projects. The Works Progress Administration, the WPA, which concentrated on smaller projects and put artisans to work. And the National Archives, which is an invaluable repository of historic documents and photographs. Additionally, the 1935 Historic Sites Act gave the National Park Service the responsibility of overseeing the preservation of buildings and sites of national significance, and this paved the way for the federal historic preservation legislation in place today. The WPA in Florida had a significant impact. A 1939 WPA progress report notes the thousands of miles of roads and hundreds of buildings that were constructed throughout the state. It went on to discuss the Florida WPA's efforts in mosquito control, parks and recreation improvements, literacy gains, job training, and school lunch programs. The Federal Writers Project documented local history, superstitions, and folklore in Florida with interviews of residents in places such as Key West and Ybor City. The WPA office in Tampa was located in Ybor City and operated through 1943. Shown here is a WPA sewing room that was housed in the former J. Seidenberg Company cigar factory in Ybor City. We have several buildings of note in the Tampa area that we'll review here briefly, one being the Cuscaden Park and Swimming Pool, which was built as a Works Progress Administration project in the late 1930s. The pool was designed by engineer Wesley Bentz, known for employing a unique, patented, above-ground, ovoid pool configuration. Bentz employed is designed nationwide with different architectural styles for each pool's facade. The construction of the pool brought Ybor City residents much-needed relief from Tampa's summers, and the park offered a field for Ybor City's social clubs' baseball teams, which were actually not only formed by the social clubs, but also many of the factories had their own teams as well. So beginning in 1938, the Intersocial League played at Cuscaden Park, at times with crowds of over 2,000 fans. Several well-known professional baseball players got their start in Cuscaden Park. Fort Homer W. Hesterly is another building from this era. In 1922, the land at Howard Avenue and Lemon Street in West Tampa was donated to the Florida National Guard. Its early development included a wooden boxing arena, along with a mess hall, officers' quarters, and a guardhouse. Colonel Homer W. Hesterly commanded the 116th Field Artillery of the National Guard here, then at that time it was known as Benjamin Field. Hesterly's troops were called into active duty in September 1935 to assist with threats of disorder surrounding the city of Tampa's municipal elections. The WPA project to construct the new armory building was completed in 1941, and the building was named in honor of its commanding officer. The site remained a popular venue for sporting events as well as musical performances and political speeches. The National Guard moved out of the facility in 2005. One of the most visible and long-lasting WPA projects in Tampa was the renovation and expansion of Bayshore Boulevard. From 1934 to 1938, the roadway, landscaping, balustrade, and seawall were reconstructed and lengthened. The four-lane boulevard with its classical iron-shaped balustrade was extended all the way north to the Platte Street Bridge, finally. Two spans of the bridge were removed for expansion of the boulevard, and a pedestrian underpass continued the seawall and balustrade under the west end of the bridge. One other WPA project was the Peter O'Knight Airport on Davis Islands, which served as Tampa's main airport from 1935, at the time of its construction, until 1945. The Coquina Block Art Deco-style administration building, pictured here, was demolished in the 1960s. The interior of the building featured a series of seven murals about the history of flight by St. Petersburg artist George Snow Hill, and these are now located at the Tampa International Airport. Hill artistically interpreted the history of flight through the contributions made by Icarus and Daedalus, Archimedes, the Montgolfi brothers, Otto Lilienthal, Tony Janus, the Wright brothers, and finally a triptych capturing the first scheduled airline flight in history. So you can read more about the WPA in Tampa in this month's Tampa Bricks and Mortar newsletter. Thank you. Thank you, Elaine. As you can see, many of the buildings and structures are iconic in our city, and I think we identify with those as being part of our architectural past and still, you know, contributing today. Just as a side note, we've been fortunate enough to be able to landmark most of those properties so they don't have the fate of the administration building. The Cascade and Pool, the Armory Building, the Seidenberg Factory are all local landmarks. We were just recently working on Bayshore Boulevard as the connection to the Riverwalk is going to engage with it. So there's a lot of care and thought that goes into any modifications to those properties. Moving on, one last mention I wanted to provide was that we wanted to thank and wish Dr. Laura Harrison well. She is relocated out of state to start a business, and so she's obviously not able to serve on the commission anymore, but she did stay on until her relocation and house sale was final, so we appreciate her working with us on that transition. Moving on, we'll now go to the portion of the hearing where we disclose conflicts of interest in ex-parte communication. Good morning, commissioners. Will the commissioner state whether or not they've had any ex-parte communications regarding any of the items that are on the agenda? None. Thank you. I have not. I have not. Also, will the previous... None. None. Thank you. We do not have any continuations to act on this morning, so we'll move to the swearing. Anyone who's going to be providing testimony or public comment at today's hearing, if you could please stand and raise your right hand so Mr. Varnum can issue the swearing. And with that, we'll move on to our first item, which is a request for local landmark designation, and Elaine will facilitate that review. Thank you. Elaine Lund, Historic Preservation Staff. This morning, I'm going to be talking about one of Tampa's oldest neighborhoods and one of the oldest buildings there. We are pleased to have received an application for local historic landmark designation for this building, known as the Fitzgerald Building in Port Tampa. The owners are here today, and we'll have an opportunity to provide you with a little update about their plans for the building at the end of the presentation. So before I begin, I'd like to note that this is an introductory presentation. Today, we are only asking for your direction to initiate the landmark designation review process. We're not looking for this to be the public hearing for you to consider a recommendation to city council yet. So with that, I'll be providing some background, including some history of Port Tampa, which came about as a community distinct from Tampa. It was located about nine miles south of the city of Tampa in the late 19th century. In 1871, the U.S. Army had surveyed Tampa Bay to evaluate what projects would be needed to improve navigation there and had identified an area that they then called Passage Point down at the southwest tip of what we call today the South Tampa Peninsula. This had been identified as an ideal location for a port as it had a natural channel and did not have the higher costs associated with dredging through Hillsboro Bay up to the river at Tampa. It caught the attention of Henry Bradley Plant, a railroad and shipping magnate who in 1883 bought the majority of stock of the South Florida Railroad. Plant already owned the Savannah, Florida, and Western Railway, which he had purchased in 1877, as well as several other small railways further north. Together, along with the shipping business, this was the plant system of railways, steamers, and steamship lines, and hotels. Plant was known for building these hotels at his destination points along the rails, and we'll get to that a little more in a minute. So in 1887, Plant was able to take the South Florida Railroad, which had been planned to extend to Tampa, and, sorry, in 1884, sorry, he extended the line to Tampa. So he was able to take advantage of its potential ports in this way, extending the line in 1887 all the way down to what would become Port Tampa. From there, the Plant's system of steam liners carried mail, cargo, and passengers to Key West and Cuba. Plant built the inn at Port Tampa to accommodate passengers who needed an overnight rest there. He was known for these hotels at the terminus of his railroads and his shipping lines, particularly known for the resort-style hotels, such as the Tampa Bay Hotel, which is now the University of Tampa, which he built to encourage the tourism along his lines and provide locations for the passengers to stay. One of the interesting notes about the inn at Port Tampa was that it was thought that you could just cast your fishing lines out the window and not have to charter a ship or go out and leave your room to be able to catch fish. So the Fitzgerald building, which we're here to discuss, was named for Captain James Jim W. Fitzgerald. He was born in England, we think, around 1839, of possibly Irish parents, who soon immigrated to Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Captain Fitzgerald moved to South Carolina before the Civil War, and he ran steamships along the Savannah River before moving to Jacksonville. At some point, he became associated with Henry Bradley Plant, naming both a ship and one of his sons for him. Fitzgerald operated ships out of Jacksonville before Plant asked him to come with him to Tampa to become superintendent of the Plant steamship line. So pictured here, we have a couple of ships that were part of the Plant steamship line. They look very much like the HB Plant steamship on the left and possibly the Margaret there in the center of the screen. So Captain Fitzgerald, along with Charles W. Prescott, a merchant from Erie, Pennsylvania, purchased land adjacent to the rail line near the new port and formed the Port Tampa Building and Loan Association. They filed the plat for Port Tampa City in 1892, and the city of Port Tampa was officially chartered in 1893. Port Tampa City remained a separate city from Tampa until it was annexed in 1961. While Port Tampa was settled pretty early for our area and is currently only represented in our inventory of designated historic properties by two buildings, the first to be designated by the city of Tampa as a local historic landmark was the Commercial Bank Building, which was designated in 1994. The circa 1926 neoclassical style was initially the Bank of Port Tampa and is now home to the Port Tampa City Library. More recently, in 2018, the city designated the former St. Mark Missionary Baptist Church on Sherrill Street. This building dates from circa 1898 and is representative of the early church architecture in the Port Tampa area and is associated with the African-American history of Port Tampa being the first church building for the black Port Tampa population at the time. So the Fitzgerald Building, which is our subject property, is located at the intersection of Commerce and Kissimmee Streets, shown on this recent aerial map there in the green box. That's the location of the site. And you can also see it here on this 1899 Sanborn map. This Port Tampa City does not appear on the Sanborn Company maps until 1899, so we don't have an earlier one, but the building is believed to date back to circa 1887. It's shown here as a brick structure with a wood frame awning or open porch wrapping around it and exterior stairs on the south side. By 1899, we can see that this block along Kissimmee Street was a little commercial strip with a drugstore to the south, confectionery shops, clothing stores, carpenter shop, a furniture store, and generally supported the bustling small town of Port Tampa. So the Fitzgerald Building, constructed circa 1887, was constructed and occupied as the office of Captain James Fitzgerald, the superintendent of the plant Steamship Lines, and was possibly the headquarters of the Port Tampa Building and Loan Association as well. From the late 1890s to the early 1900s, this was the second location of the Port Tampa Post Office, and later in the 20th century was a commercial retail use, and in the early 2000s did fall into a state of disrepair and was subsequently stabilized by the prior owner. We worked closely with the prior owner to stabilize and re-roof the building and get it out of code enforcement violations. This is how it currently appears. So the building, you can see, had been boarded up for a period of time. It does have a roof on it at this point, but the current owner is in the process of rehabilitating it, and I can speak a bit to that in a few minutes. But you can see the view, the east side is the side that faces Kissimmee Street. But looking around the property there, you can see there's still a stairwell on the south side, probably not the same ones that were there in 1899, but still the same location. And so this building is significant as the oldest masonry vernacular building in Port Tampa. It's associated with the founders of Port Tampa and its early development, and it's associated with maritime and railroad history, particularly as it affects the Tampa area and economy. So today, staff is asking the commission to initiate the local historic landmark designation review process and instruct staff to prepare the necessary documentation for review under Chapter 27, Section 27257 of the city's code. And with that, I'm available if you have questions or wanted to discuss further. Thank you. At this time, we can ask the owner to come forward and talk about the plans for the building. Well, good morning, members of the commission. My name is Brian Griffin. First, I want to start by thanking Dennis and Elaine for putting together a great presentation. It's really neat to see the history of the building presented like that with all of the imagery around it. My business partner and co-owner, Frank Griffin, my father, is here with me. I grew up in Tampa. I remember stories from my grandmother when Port Tampa and Tampa were separated by wilderness. She says they would stop at what is now Britton Plaza with my great-grandfather to go hunting. So these two communities were distinct for a long time, and Port Tampa really grew up with its own history before it became part of Tampa. And, in fact, in many respects, Port Tampa and some of the infrastructure it was creating predated Tampa. So it saw a lot of history there. My dad owns a home in Hyde Park here built in the 1920s, and I like to joke that he's got a new build because I bought a house on Sparkman in Port Tampa, blocks away from the subject property that was built in 1900. And I have very much enjoyed lovingly restoring it and preserving it and calling that my home. And as I've lived there since 2018, I've always passed by this building, the Fitzgerald Building, and had great interest in it. In fact, I've always been interested in history. I was a classical history major at the University of Florida. And I was very concerned as a neighbor as to what was going to happen with this building. I watched it for a long time, and as long as I've been passing by this building, it's been in that state of disrepair that you saw in the pictures. So I befriended the owner. It was Mr. Nicholas Jamal, who incidentally did the rehab of what's now St. Leo University, that cigar factory building. And he was the one who did the structural rehabilitation there. The building, before he bought it, was falling down the brickwork and really not in great shape. So he was able to use all the original brick that he could, and then he used matching brick to have the structure become sound. But then it sat there for a long time, and I asked him about that, and he said he loves historic preservation, too, and he had a lot of other projects that he was focused on. But he wanted to make sure that this building got the attention it deserved by someone who would pay a particular keen mind to the details. And so, you know, eventually I started asking him if I could buy it. And he said, you know, I get offers from developers all the time. Port Tampa, as you know, is experiencing enormous growth. There's townhouses and apartments going up all the time down there. And he wanted to make sure that it wasn't something that was going to get bought, knocked down, and turn into another development. So after a while, I rendered some plans on my own dime and said, hey, if you sell it to me, this is what I'll do with it. I'll preserve it. I'll make it a space that the community can enjoy and use it for commercial retail, and he agreed. And so I went out on a limb and brought my dad in as my business partner, and we've self-funded this project, and we're trying to make it work to save it for the community. We envisioned something there that can be something like a coffee shop or a small retail establishment so that people can come inside of the building and enjoy it. Of course, the building has to have some way to make money and carry the costs. One thing that we are particularly keen on doing is preserving the original historical footprint. Now, this is a pretty small building. It was used as an office space, but it was just one man's office for one particular purpose. So it's not like the modern commercial spaces you'll see today. And commercial rents are largely established by the square footage it has. So we're not adding a bunch of space to this building or changing the historic footprint. We're trying to make this building sustainable, a sustainable project without changing the historic footprint. And that's important to us, and that's why we're coming to you asking for your partnership to be able to make that work and to preserve this for the community for years to come. I've got preliminarily a set of plans that accomplishes these objectives. I've submitted them to Dennis. I look forward to you seeing them. You'll see that all the plans have mines for preserving historic details of this building. We're going to restore those tin corbels that you saw in that old picture, which we have. They've been taken down, but we have them on site so we can preserve them. We're going to use reclaimed wood from the site for the doors. I've got windows that match the windows that you'll see in the picture from that picture you saw was probably about the 1940s, 1950s, so we're going to preserve that and do everything we can to really have this building exist in a sustainable fashion in the form it would have existed in in the late 1800s. And the history you saw presented was great. I would just add that I think this building has seen so much history, and from not only being the headquarters of Captain Fitzgerald where he platted Port Tampa, but he was also the executive director of the Plant Steamship Lines. In fact, I have a document here that shows a ticket with him listed as executive director of Plant Steamship Lines. So I like to imagine that not only was he plating the city there, but he was also helping to run the Plant Empire, making decisions. Maybe Henry Plant visited him there in his office. It also, from this spot – Elaine, could you put up the Sanborn fire map for me? There's great provenance on this building with these Sanborn fire maps. And I'll show you from this particular spot, commercial Port Tampa grew. You see the subject site with the arrow. Look below it. That was the commercial downtown strip right there, the main street, if you will, of Port Tampa. The building below it – I've researched that a bit – that was what they called commercial – brick corner, which was where the early Port Tampa administrative building was. There were retail buildings there. Along the – on the right side here, you see Plant Avenue. Along Plant Avenue, in the early – in the late 1800s, you had troops lining up to embark upon the Spanish-American War, including Teddy Roosevelt. So this building sat there and watched history, and it watched Port Tampa grow around it. In 1908, 1910, according to my research, everything burned in that area, except for the Fitzgerald building. They say there were two buildings that didn't burn, but I can't find any record of what that other building is. Some of the bricks, by the way, on the Fitzgerald building have the remaining singe marks of the fire there. All of that building – all those buildings below, all the commercial core of Port Tampa is gone now. Those are homes now. Brick corner is gone. So really, the only thing remaining down there is the Fitzgerald building. That speaks to the history of commercial Port Tampa. I'll also point out that you'll see above the building, there's a triangular piece of property there. That used to be what was called the ice cream parlor. I think it opened in the 1920s, 1930s, and it was a triangular building set right up there on – this used to be called – you can see Plant Avenue. It's changed to Commerce Avenue now. But that ice cream parlor was a place where people would come, residents would come, and get ice cream and spend time there. That building went into disrepair for many decades. And then just two years ago, I think, a semi-truck coming from the Port ran into it and knocked the whole thing down. So that's gone now, too. So really, we've got the Fitzgerald building left. Now, I will be coming back to you in this project and asking for your help with that triangular piece of property because it is not kept up. I think it would be a great green space, and it would really enhance the Fitzgerald building once we get it restored. But bottom line is, we need your partnership in this. We want it to be a place the community can enjoy. You know, I think kind of watching it for so many years, I finally realized that if I don't step in and do it, no one's going to do it. Not a developer. This is not our full-time jobs. We're just concerned neighbors and residents who want to see this piece of history restored. Father-son team, really grateful for all the help that Dennis and Elaine have given us in putting together the history and making this presentation. In fact, they also have helped us with a letter of endorsement to the Hillsborough County Challenge Grant, which we are applying for for this building, which is why the work has not commenced. That has to be settled before we can start it. There's certain parts of this project where just the footprint of the building are kind of going to dictate what it looks like. I mean, there's only really one place to put a bathroom without expanding the building. You know, we want to keep the original openings. We want to make sure that people can – we've got the necessary infrastructure around this building and the site so that people can park and enjoy it. And we need to have a tenant in there, of course, to be able to maintain the building and keep up the costs. So we appreciate your consideration of all those things. We look forward to this project. I look forward to this being a place that we can all enjoy for many years to come and certainly keep it from – keep the city of Tampa having this piece of history and not lose it to a different project. So thank you very much. Once again, Dennis Fernandez, Architecture and Historic Preservation Manager. I think it's interesting that I have a lot of history with this particular property working with the prior owner, working with code enforcement to have it stabilized and to keep it there until the right situation came along that preserves the building. And sometimes that's my job is to buy time and to, you know, kind of keep good thoughts about something happening to a property as time redevelops around it. And as Brian mentioned, numerous calls about tearing it down and putting other types of development there over the years. And fortunately, you know, that's not what had played out in the end here. But it's interesting to me to kind of see the history come together, the research on this. You're seeing information that the owners provided us combined with information that we have in our photo archives and the Sanborn maps, which are really useful for determining the original footprints of buildings and what was around them. And then going into, you know, further research on newspaper articles and documents that are out there. And that's what we're asking for today is for the initiation of the designation process. Normally, if we have a multiple properties listing or we have had certain properties like the properties downtown that have been routinely prioritized for designation, we have been empowered to just bring those to you directly. But in an area like Port Tampa, where we do not really have a cohesive work program, we felt it was necessary to get your authorization this morning. So with that, I'll turn the discussion over to you. And we're happy to answer any questions that you might have. Oh, I just wanted to say thank you for the presentation. I live in South Tampa, so I see the development all the time. And it would be really nice to have, like, a historic building in the midst of all the development just to have a benchmark, you know, from just to show where the area has been, you know, like it's past and present. So thank you for that presentation. And I think that's a great idea, turning it into, like, a coffee shop or something that the community can use. You'll definitely have a lot of people there. So walking their dogs and the strollers and the whole nine yards. And so I think it will be really useful for the community, and people would enjoy it. So thank you for that. Yes, also thank you so much. That's great to see some preservation in the area. Just curiosity, what is the current uses along Kissimmee? You said it used to be the historic downtown or the commercial street. Are there other residential projects that have gone in there? Are they mostly vacant? Just curious. This building is two blocks away from the library building. And largely, it's commercial and industrial along what's now Commerce there. Commerce terminates in Picnic Island Park. So you have actually a lot of families, especially on the weekend, that drive down there to go to the park. And there's a lot of ambulatory activity. There's so many homes now. People are walking around. I didn't bring it with me, but I put together a map that shows also in this particular part of Port Tampa, which is all the way down the intersection of West Shore and Interbay, how few retail opportunities there are. You have to go up to Hula Bay or Salt Shack or over to Dow Mabry to find a cup of coffee or a place to eat something or just have a retail opportunity. So this is going to be something I think that is going to bring a unique opportunity to the neighborhood to have a place to gather. I've got a question probably for Mr. Fernandez then because I'm uncertain as to the, I guess, the nature of what's being asked of us today, it seems like from what's been presented that the property has a pretty good chance of qualifying for local historic designation based on at least three out of the four national criteria. And so I'm not really sure where we are in the process as opposed to why don't we have an application before us today to ask us to make a recommendation on designation. Sure, absolutely. As I said, the process is normally that you have control over the work program that the staff is focusing on. And we have a couple items on the agenda later that we'll talk about that we brought to you before and initiated and we're giving progress updates on. So we don't presume that the commission's priority is to just stop the work on those applications or those projects and shift to another request. We come to you and get your authorization to begin that work. And that's what we're here to do today. If a link to put the slide up, it gives you some direction on the language that would be appropriate for our motion. And once you do that, then we will begin to develop the designation report, which, as you know, takes quite a bit of time, the legal descriptions, and then to work with the owner on the public noticing that's required for you to actually hold the hearing. Okay, so are you looking at this as a staff-recommended designation as opposed to an application from an owner? Is that the distinction here? Because the ordinance says that, you know, various people can make an application to the HPC, etc. So, sure, I understand why it's not that better than me, but I don't think I've had a situation like this arise. I think that the quirk of this is, you know, we are normally looking at a process where a project is being presented in its whole, some sort of a whole form for designation. What I think is being asked for here, and correct me, please, if I may be wrong, is that we are being asked whether or whether or whether or not this should be placed on the work table of our staff to proceed with the process of moving this forward. That's correct. And we have done this. We have done this process several times in the past. I think the last time we probably did it was with the oldest house. Those properties that just don't fall within our normal areas. In other words, when we brought the John Germany Library to you, because that is focused downtown, we brought that under the multiple properties designation that already had been established. So, we've already got a framework for moving that forward. We're not prejudging the eligibility. That will be really refined more thoroughly when we conduct our research. But we do recognize that on the surface, this application most likely will be eligible. But it's your final determination if you want staff to bring this back to you in the form of a landmark designation recommendation request. If I understand correctly, the question is really about limited staff resources and priorities. Is that correct? And work planning? Oh, yeah. So, I do live in that area because I live on West Shore. And the closest coffee shop is by the marina, which is Quench. And down in that area, there's like a huge apartment, like buildings on the side. And then there's a library. And it is a weird area because it is like industrial, but then you have all this residential. And most of West Shore is getting developed. There's townhouses going up all the time. And they're like $800,000 to a million dollars. So, it's like that whole area is being developed. And there is no social space for people to gather. People have to drive places. There's a lot of people that walk, jog, have their kids. The Air Force Base, MacDill, is down there. So, it's an area that's – there's an influx of people. So, they will need space to gather. And there aren't any historic buildings down there, really. The library sticks out like a sore thumb. It's like the only one. So, I think it will be a great idea because it's like everything else is super new. I'm not saying I'm a fan of the design styles, but, you know, they don't look – they're just very, like, you know. And I think the building is very distinct. The brick is very distinct. It looks very distinct. And it would be a great contribution to the area. So, I do think it's a great idea considering that there are not a lot of social spaces in that area. And going forward, there will be a lot of people there. So, it may develop, but it would be nice to have a historic building for that use in that area. So, thank you. And the designation statuses do open up some funding opportunities for these redevelopments that are important in the business plan. So, we will rely upon each other to get through these processes. And the city will assist wherever we can in not only restoring and recognizing a historic building, but the economic development that's impacted by opening a new business in the area as well. I'll make one more comment. So, as far as thinking this is a significant place for effort, I think that that seems pretty apparent to what we've been shown so far. I would say one question I had in looking at some of the information, and it doesn't have to be answered today, but something maybe to look at. Like, when I looked at the Sanborn maps, it was rather unclear how the platting was and the siting of the building in terms of property lines. And I don't know what the current ones are either. But I think, you know, I'd like to see, you know, when the application comes, some thought about what site is being connected to the building to go together with the designation and kind of figure out how that works in with the history of the city and the building location. And we will bring a legal description back to you, and we can illustrate that legal description, you know, overlaid with the plat as well. I just have one other question. When it comes back, if it comes back, would the full kind of conceptual plans or site development plans be included in the application for designation? Absolutely. And I think, you know, when we get into projects and initiatives like this, there is sort of a leap of faith that we take. And, you know, I think what's really helped is that the prior owner stabilized the building and made it watertight. So now we've kind of got a jump on that to ensure that it's viable for the redevelopment. And so we definitely will include whatever information that we can that's available for your review. Are we ready to make a motion? You can ask for public comments. Okay. Is there any public comments? Okay. Then the public hearing is closed. I'm ready to make a motion unless there's discussion. Would anybody like to make a motion? I'd like to make a motion to direct the staff to initiate the local historic landmark designation review process and instruct the staff to prepare the documentation for review under section 27 to 57. For the property located at 7101 South Kissimmee Street. I'll second that a motion. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Aye. All in favor and none opposed, motion passes. Thank you, Commissioners. We appreciate your support on this. Good morning. Heather Bonds, Historic Preservation Specialist. Good morning. Today I'll be presenting the proposed draft of the updated Ybor City Historic District Design Standards. As an overview of this presentation, I'll be reviewing the overall document format and provide a brief explanation of each section, then review the next step to adopt the new standards and an overall timeline. The reason this is coming before you is to create an updated, unified set of standards that will address the preservation of Ybor City's historic fabric by providing specific guidelines, helpful illustrations, and which address modern and emerging products. One of the roles of the HPC is to routinely review existing design standards and make recommendations to City Council on the adoption of these updates. That said, the existing guidelines were adopted over 40 years ago. Well, actually 40 years ago in 1986. There have been some revisions through the years. The last in 2003, over 20 years ago. The current preservation guidelines have been effective and helpful as a broad how-to. However, as a review tool to evaluate projects going before the BLC, there are challenges with overly broad language and illustrations. Previous staff assessments of the existing guidelines found that there needs to be more emphasis on rehabilitation. It lacks necessary references to the Secretary of Interior standards, which are codified in our code as a review tool. New construction section lacks depth. The overall document is not formatted in a method that is informative and instructional. Some illustrations lack details that are required to be assistance to attend and tend to be extreme as a comparison method. Further development is needed in the consideration of additions, relocations, and demolitions. And there are advances in technology, which necessitate periodic updating. Again, it's been over 20 years. There's been new products and advances in preservation and construction methods that aren't addressed. Additionally, sections should be added to address certain elements, such as color, accessibility, and environmental topics. The primary objective for the update is to create a set of modernized standards and formats that will be codified and adopted to assist owners and developers in meeting their project goals in a historically sensitive manner, provide specific measurements of success, address modern topics, be reformatted and better organized, conform to ADA-compliant fonts for equal accessibility. We have utilized the City of Tampa's style book for fonts, color, and style consistency to stay in ADA compliance, promote maintenance, and encourage rehabilitation over new construction. Currently, maintenance and rehabilitation are one short chapter. These are two very different preservation approaches, so we're breaking those two sections apart. And people should be better informed about historic resources and how to maintain their historic properties. Historic preservation should be maintenance first, rehabilitation second, and new construction as a last resort. We need to include user-friendly tools. We have included project checklists and matrix for easy reference. And overall, the final product should be a usable document. Our goal is that this document isn't just a bound guideline book that people will gloss over when directed to. We want this to have more usability. We've also changed the title from guidelines to standards, which conform with the written language of the code and enforce that these are more than guidelines. These are codified standards. So I'll get into the proposed updates now. All right. We'll go ahead and pass these out to you all. You don't have to follow along, but... Love the cover. So there are six sections to the updated standards. There is an in-depth introduction. Section 1 is a guideline-driven and informative to provide useful information for caring for historic structures. Again, we start with maintenance, as this is the first defense and preservation. Sections 2 through 4 are sections which provide the standards that staff would guide our reviews by rehabilitation, new construction, and setting and site components. Finally, an appendix will include reference materials. The introduction. The introduction has been updated and reformatted with new pictures and text and include the YC7 through YC9 zoning descriptions, which were not currently addressed in our current guidelines. However, I have an asterisk here because our entire zoning code is currently being reviewed and updated, and this includes our historic preservation sections of Chapter 27. Therefore, this section may need to be updated already to include any potential changes to the YC zoning district's descriptions or maps. Therefore, the final draft may change pending code or zoning changes. The introduction will also include useful guidance to the BLC processes and project planning matrices. These are all the subjects that are covered in the introduction and some of our page features. This introduction will serve as the overall introduction to our processes and provide expectations of the review process, project types, information that they need to prepare for a public hearing, the outline of a general agenda as well as the history of Ybor City and its importance as a national landmark district. And you can see an example of one of the project metrics here that can help determine what would be administrative review or what goes in front of the board. That's something that you all can take a look at to see if any of those X's should change around there. Our Section 1 is maintenance. As I mentioned, maintenance and rehabilitation are currently in the same section. We've broken maintenance out to provide specific guidance on maintaining historic structures. These are the preemptive actions homeowners and business owners should take to continuously or annually maintain their historic property. This will also include helpful tips to make historic properties more energy efficient, encouraging periodic home inspections, and basic window maintenance. We also address flood adaptations based on the National Park Service's guidelines on flood adaptation for rehabilitation on historic buildings. Each section or each action section in here will have at least two pages that can easily serve as individual handouts or documents. The front side includes background and guidance as well as recommended actions. A backside will include images of recommended and not recommended examples. As you will see with the other three sections that are the standard sections, in maintenance, those actions are titled permissible and not permissible. However, the language in maintenance is recommended or not recommended as a CA is not required for most maintenance work. And this information is being provided to encourage more proactive maintenance. Also, a standard shall statement, which is in the other three sections, are provided. However, in maintenance, this statement is omitted in each section. Section two starts the standard sections with rehabilitation. Each section starts with a firm shall standard, followed by guidance and listed permissible actions. We then list specific non-permissible actions as well, which are actions that we would not find compatible with historic preservation. In most examples, we've included successful projects from within the district or other historic districts to show how rehabilitation successfully has been completed here in Ybor City. In rehabilitation, we address 14 criteria subjects, with windows having three subsections based on the treatment of those windows, either rehabilitating, replacing, or deleting or adding openings. The first nine criteria subjects address specific general elements of historic structures. We then address specific structure types, including the rehabilitation of accessory structures, storefronts, industrial buildings, and former cigar factory buildings. We also address rehabilitating structures for the purpose of reuse and the use of substitute materials on historic structures. In these sections, we want to emphasize the importance of retaining historic materials and the character of each structure. Therefore, each section is three or four pages. To provide clear examples, we have included several visual examples, which include historic reference, which we often require in applications and examples, such as before and after, as seen in this picture here with a window rehabilitation project in Ybor City. In each of these standard sections, again, rehabilitation, new construction, and site components, we have the following components on each page. We start with the title of the criteria. In this case, we have building materials. Then a criteria standard, which is a one-sentence, specific standard to meet the criteria topic with the word shall to convey its requirement. These standards will be what staff uses to evaluate each project and will be provided on a project evaluation worksheet for both staff and developers to utilize in project planning or evaluation. We then have key terms or definitions to provide consistent understanding between staff, the boards, citizens, and developers. Then we have some context information, such as an introduction paragraph that contains background information or why that criteria is important to Ybor City. We provide guidelines. These are the shoulds or shalls or permissible or not permissible actions and how to meet each standard. These lists of actions provide at-a-glance guidelines to support each standard. The flip side of each page will provide examples such as diagrams, pictures, illustrations, plans, and some AI-generated renderings to convey historic preservation methods. We wanted to use the AI for not permissible so we're not shaming anybody. So we created some of our own images for the not permissible actions. In the rehabilitation section, we've added historical reference of each criteria subject. When presenting to the BLC, we often ask applicants to provide historical reference when proposing alterations or when rehabilitating their historic structures. This provides a base to that requirement. Again, adding to the functionality and user-friendliness of this guide. Section 3 is construction. It's similarly formatted as rehabilitation with codified standards, clear definitions, background and historical relevance, defined actions, and illustrative examples. In the new construction section, each criteria is addressed in a two-page layout which could be printed out individually during pre-application meetings as a single two-sided document. This will help spur the initial conversations between owners, developers, and staff. Again, each criteria is listed at the top with a shall statement. Guidance and lists are provided to clearly indicate the permissible and non-permissible actions and helpful illustrations are provided on the reverse side. Section 4 is setting setting and site components. These will review standards of all other site elements beyond historic resources on the site such as electrical boxes, sidewalk furniture such as menu boards, benches, lights, tables, trash bins. It also includes landscape features covered by the code such as fences, turf standards, and driveways, and parking areas. Setting and site components are the other visual components on a site that support the historic context and setting. They are also usually non-historic elements that support modern needs such as mechanical equipment, solar panels, and other utilities. This section provides the standards to include these components on a site in a manner that does not distract from the surrounding historic resources. We've included signage in this section as a site component which was originally its own section in the current design guidelines. This section includes context, general guidelines, and provides additional visual examples. It adds standards for artificial turf, sidewalk furniture, public utilities, solar panels, and addresses accessibility modifications which are currently not located in our current guidelines. Mirroring rehabilitation and new construction, each criteria is supported by a two-page layout with a shell standard, context and background, text, clear permissible and non-permissible actions, and example images. As I mentioned, we've included signage as part of site components and these standards apply to both historic structures and new construction. We've addressed signage in three subsections as historic signage standards, new signage standards, and we clearly defined the prohibited signage in its own section to communicate what is not appropriate in the Ybor City Historic District. To help inspire new signs in the district, we've included historic references of the various sign types throughout the district. The final section is the appendix. This includes sources, guides, an acronym list because we live in acronyms around here, style descriptions, and other helpful resources for historic preservation planning. So as you can see here, we've provided information and an individual page for each of the four Secretary of the Interior Standards for the Treatment of Historical Properties, the reformatted Ybor City Color Palette, and a style guide of the most popular historical architectural styles in Ybor City. As part of our goal to make this document usable, we've included worksheets at the end of each of the three standard sections. These clearly list each of those shall statements for each criteria. These sheets provide a breakdown to convey expectations evenly to owners, agents, board members, and staff reviewers. And they can be used as part of pre-application meetings, the staff report, or even board review process. So now our next steps. This process is driven by code. Updating these guidelines once the full, well, the full draft is completed, and we now have those in your hand, so you'll have a little homework assignment. Per code, we will begin outreach with the community. Then it will go to the BLC for comments because they are the regulatory board. And then we will take those public comments and comments from you all in the BLC and make any revisions or edits that are needed. And then we will come back to you with that final draft so you all can make a recommendation to city council, and then city council will codify the standards, hopefully. So here is that codified steps in a process list. So again, it's guided by code. We've developed the drafts of each section, and you've reviewed most of those sections individually. You now have the completed draft. So we will next begin outreach with the stakeholders, which are the residents in Ybor City and the neighborhood associations. And then it will go to the BLC and then come back to you all. So broken down into a timeline. So here we are providing you all with that draft. In December, we hope to provide this draft to the BLC. And then in January, we're going to ask to collect those drafts from you all. We ask that you mark them up however you'd like, any suggestions you have, anything you catch in there that we may need to edit. And we'll collect those books back from you all in January and the BLC as well. We will begin public outreach throughout the late winter and spring next year. We will go to the BLC to have any of their final comments. And then staff will complete the final edits. And then hopefully we bring you the final copy in May and then in the summer proceed to City Council for final codification. So with that, if you have any questions right now, we're happy to spur a discussion. I have two questions. Sure. We'll start with the first one, the easy one. Has this draft been posted on your website at this time? No, you were the first to receive it. We were the first to receive it. Thank you very much. We're very privileged. When will it be posted on your website? As we begin the public outreach. So that will be sometime in January? Yes. Okay. I recognize that in a historic district, whether it's an existing building undergoing a significant renovation or change of use, or for that matter, a new project coming on board because of its need to be compatible with the district, where does the element of a negotiation as to what those requirements will be with your office, and how is that reflected within the standards that you're proposing? The standards will be codified, so those will begin our review process. So any project that comes before us will be based off of the standards and the Secretary of the Interior Standards for Rehabilitation. That is also codified. Okay. So that will be both for the existing buildings as well as for new buildings. Yes, sir. In the new document, we have a section for Rehabilitation and we have a separate section for new construction. Thank you very much. Can we get an email copy of that, just that last slide with the schedule with the months on it? And my other question, just so I understand, this will be, this draft will be what we will comment on or there will be another draft for us to comment on? This is your first draft that you will make comments on. We will take your comments, the BLC's comments and public comments and make a full revision and that's what you will be making a recommendation on the City Council. So you will see a final draft after this. Well, it's an awesome document. It's quite, I'm very impressive that it's formatting and I guess a couple of questions about, you know, how it got to here, how it goes. I was wondering, this is primarily a document that appears of great expertise and I appreciate that but has there really not been any input or just years of hearing people complain about the old document or anything? There must be some sort of feedback process that you'll even get atop of your experts. So I guess that's part of, we have this and it looks really good and then I wonder how you will present it though in Fort Reach would be an awful lot for someone in a community meeting to try to absorb it one time just as it has been, you know, a chore for us over the last year or two or however long. We plan to have open dialogue and workshops more so than probably a presentation something that we can work through with the public. I anticipate probably multiple community meetings just so first we can present it to them and then workshop it with the public. Over time, we have had conversations with people because some of the statements in the current design guidelines are overly broad and can be interpreted different ways and I think that that's what spurred these updates is trying to make something more firm. That's why we're using shall because a lot of the wording in the current guidelines is should and that can be interpretive as maybe that's not mandatory. So updating the language to convey what's mandatory and what's not mandatory. So yes, over, I'd say, a 40-year period we've taken some of those issues and tried to solve them with these. That was a big file cabinet. Once again, Dennis Fernandez, architecture review and historic preservation manager. A couple of things that kind of predates Heather's position. We've been out to the community a couple of times with this. There was a large meeting that was part of the VM-Ebor neighborhood meeting and then a second one that was held at Hillsborough Community College when we just started to kind of scrape the surface of beginning to get input about what the public particularly was looking for. We hear a lot from professionals routinely because we're dealing with professionals on a routine basis and they're inquiring or commenting on the guidelines. And the guidelines that we're working under currently were really developed with a different image of Ybor City in mind because they developed when it was a rehabilitation centric time and not new construction. And what we've seen and one reason why we've taken quite a while to bring this to you is that the type of development has changed over my tenure with the city. I've seen it go from primarily rehabilitation and modest single family to larger developments utilizing which we would have never envisioned which is truly an accomplishment for the historic district and for those in Ybor City that are promoting the validity and the worth of Ybor City. We've seen large swaths of land that were cleared during urban renewal now are being cleared and new development is going in. But that new development is really a unique vernacular that wasn't previously represented in Ybor City. So it's kind of like trying to paint and run at the same time because things are happening so quickly. When we began this we didn't know what gas works was. Well we came to understand what gas works is and instead of us reviewing that incrementally using a set of guidelines that were really ill-equipped to handle that and relying on the Secretary of the Interior standards or other resources we felt that we had to kind of pump the brakes on this and put language into this draft that you're going to review that does represent that type of development. So although the timeline is there to kind of give you an idea of it's always kind of got neat and clean lines this has not been anything of a clear process because we've been going to the neighborhoods we've been meeting internally we've been talking to members of the Barrio Latino and developing essentially what you see here this morning. I do want to take just a moment and give a lot of thanks to Heather who has done a lot of heavy lifting on this particular project and it's been a great outcome so far we'll continue to develop that the rest of the staff has pulled together this is a group effort kind of goes to where we were talking about earlier with the prior action is that you know we're doing this and we're also moving forward the other initiatives and applications that we're responsible for so this is really sort of the planning component for historic preservation which hopefully will pay dividends for many years so we will post this on our website it may be a little prior to January because once we start publicizing it people are going to want to see it and it's all public record and we'll set up a avenue to receive input on our website as well we've done that prior when we did some of the expansions and whatnot of the historic districts and it was an effective tool and then we'll have that dialogue with the barrio because they're the ones that ultimately have to implement this along with the staff and I think we'll have a productive dialogue that will get us to the point where we can achieve those summer 2027 processing at city council and hopefully you know kind of wrap wrap this up next year it's been a long initiative and we've got three other sets of guidelines that we need to look at with the architecture review commission so appreciate any input we can send you this digitally we felt that just having a written version allows you to kind of go to it and leave it for a week and come back to it and we'll do the work on interpreting your notes but it's important important work it's going to come back to you in different phases at this point but this is the real kind of kickoff that we were hoping for thank you it's amazing and I mean it looks good at it I think it really touches all your goals for it I mean and I was just going to add one thing the the front end I think the beauty of this process is the the front end public involvement and you all see these things on a daily basis and then we're kind of at the end but all the kind of true thing ground true thing of this is the barrio latino commission deals with this on a monthly basis so the the public who comes to those meetings the developers and architects who come to those meetings who have applications and the barrio do this negotiation or this interpretation on a monthly basis or find that oh the code or the guidelines that we really need to say this better or say this differently or we don't want to allow this anymore so I think this is this process is has more input over the years and months then you know even like another code update would so I think I think there's so much that's gone into it for you guys to kind of keep whatever glitchless or whatever that I feel good that there's not going to be at this at the end of this process I don't think there's going to be a lot of any controversy or a lot of changes because I think you've been probably getting that on a monthly basis from the barrio as they have to deal with that so it it's great so I look forward to diving in sadly will be very interesting thank you so I have more of a basic question because it's my first meeting so I'm not really sure but so from my understanding it's additional standards being added to the guidelines and stuff like that but watching a meeting last night trying to get prepared for this meeting I had a question of whether there are extensive substantive changes being made to the existing standards or if it really is a clarification and updating of those standards with additional standards being added or is it really a combination of two it's a combination it's an overhaul we've used the current design guidelines as a basis a lot of the language is the same but we've added components that weren't there 40 years ago like solar panels aren't currently addressed so we get a lot of questions like when we issue a certificate of appropriateness on solar panels and we have comments about it not being visible visible people say where is that in your guidelines or if we say no vinyl fences where is that in the guidelines vinyl fences weren't around 40 years ago so it's pretty much overhauling it but addressing modern topics that were not around 40 years ago thank you also in relationship to that and I do wish to thank you very much the language has been cleaned up the sections have been expanded not so much for more information but it contains those tables those photographs that explanatory language that the original standards just really did not have a great handle on there's just so much more of that involved in this document that I could see just going through it very briefly that will make a lot of people's lives a lot easier in my opinion two questions based on the schedule looks like we'll provide comments the burial provide comments will those be incorporated before you go back to a public draft or is the intent just this is the draft until you get all of the comments I think it depends on how many comments we we get we'll try to incorporate as many revisions as possible like we'll look for the major ones and try to address the major ones prior to making this public okay great and the second question I just haven't thumbed through this quickly enough I'm curious if there are any kind of like public realm standards like you talking about like you know what's going on in the physical property but within the district itself are there any kind of historical features in terms of streetscape where parking goes on the curb or drop off for rideshare or any of that kind of like micro mobility are there any of those things kind of baked in here in terms of that public realm we've addressed public realm within site and setting components so we do address things like sidewalk cafes those large areas with utilities those lots where you'll see utilities add we've addressed that and how to screen them pushing them back on the property parking parking has been a big issue for about two or three years in Ybor City so we've done some extensive overhaul of our parking standards parking lots so yes the public realm is included thanks I get I guess as a follow-up to that I know like through the gas works they were kind of coming in and reconnecting the street grid so that was just kind of also on the forefront of my mind if there's any like conversations about reconnecting you know dead ends or things that have been you know cut off by was it Nusio or anything like that I'm just curious we do promote keeping or restoring the grid we do in new construction we have the the very first section is buildable lots and so we discuss what we consider what is a buildable lot if it's got an alley restore the alley so we yes we do promote the grid system in Ybor City do we actually have a homework assignment due date yes so your your homework assignment yes the document in front of you we ask that you return it at the January meeting with your comments thank you for your attention to that I know it's a it's a quite an undertaking and we we hope that you you get through it pretty efficiently we've reviewed this thing probably so many times that we we can just kind of recite you know page and verse but next we are going to kind of transition to another item that we've briefed you on in the past this was a previous undertaking to try to clean up and provide clarity to some of the boundary lines in the Tampa Heights historic district and while doing so also update the inventory of the map which is has not been done in almost 10 years so with that I'll ask Elaine to provide that update for you and let you know about our next steps on the Tampa Heights map update and boundary clarification project thank you Elaine Lunt historic preservation staff this year staff has been working on updating the Tampa Heights historic district map I'm going to review some of the information that most of you have seen before we do have some people who are newer to our board so they may not have been treated to all this yet so to begin with I'll sort of summarize the project as we've been working on it to date here and so the Tampa Heights historic district is just north of downtown was established as an early suburb of Tampa in the late 1800s the area is primarily residential with a few commercial corridors you can see here on this aerial map with the local historic district boundary in red and the blue historic district boundary for is the blue one is for the national register historic district you can also see that the local historic district for Tampa Heights it is a little broader than the national register historic district boundary it overlaps a bit with the upper north Franklin street commercial historic district that's on the national register and there are a few satellite sites for the local Tampa Heights historic district which are located in the western part of the Tampa Heights neighborhood there and then on the other side of the interstates on the other side of I-275 and I-4 you can see on the other side of I-275 you can see how closely Ybor City is located to Tampa Heights so this area is very very has some very old resources in fact some of them date to as early as at least 1890 and the historic period of significance for the district goes all the way to 1945 so it's also one of the broadest periods of significance of our historic districts that we have that are locally designated in the city so with that broad period of significance district reflects a wide variety of architectural styles we have free classic Queen Anne's classic craftsman bungalows and more modern construction throughout the district as well of course some minimal traditional buildings and some commercial buildings along the Florida Avenue corridor the national register district was established in 1995 and the local historic district was designated by the city in 2000 it's geographically one of our smaller historic districts and has about 500 plus buildings with those numbers growing every year and prior to at the last map update it was approximately 60% contributing buildings in the district so some of the new construction that we've seen in the historic district this is there's been plenty of it in the last decade so you can see some of that up up here in this the northern section of the historic district this is the block on Adley Street that was previously sort of an auto industrial lot auto parts industrial lot and the routine inventory updates that we do will reflect these changes on the map so we will be showing on the revised map the updated locations of the new construction as well as any other changes that have happened within the district so there have been also some a few demolitions and some changes and status and a couple of relocated buildings actually as well within the district boundaries so we've done some some research into our data with our permits and our tracking and based on the all this information that's been compiled into our GIS files the we do have some estimated changes to the inventory here so approximately there are about 50 new buildings in the district that have been added since 2017 to have been relocated such as this property on Francis Avenue that was picked up and moved one parcel over from 604 to 602 East Francis due to the the expanded ultimate footprint of the the interstate interchange there you can see how it's right by the interchange between I-275 and I-4 on that map and there have been several demolitions mostly of non-contributing structures about 75% of the demolitions have been non-contributing structures but the others have been primarily buildings that have had extensive fire damage or that were damaged during the 2024 tropical storms so the district boundary for the local historic district as I kind of touched on is a little different from the national historic district boundary when we designated the Tampa Heights historic district by as the city in 2000 the boundary line was drawn to encompass largely the same area as the national register district but expanded in certain areas to capture the neighborhood a little more cohesively allowing for district standards to be applied consistently along blocks and then the local district and grew in certain areas especially to the north here and to accommodate certain significant structures and then the satellite sites have been added like the Gardner house on West Palm Avenue there just as significant sites that were not didn't quite rise to the level of being individually listed but were definitely notable houses in the neighborhood that's the greater neighborhood that's thought of as Tampa Heights so looking closely at this north end of the district this is kind of where we've been concentrating our efforts on the looking at the boundary line for the district we've had a few instances come up recently where we've seen some redevelopment in this area like the the whole block of houses on Adelaide that were shown earlier but also there's been some new construction going on in the north Florida Avenue corridor this area is undergoing a lot of redevelopment there's several vacant or underused parcels here so we've seen a lot of interest in these properties and when people come to us and say well I've got a parcel that's somewhat in and somewhat out of the historic district how do we treat that and it can get a little confusing for both the the property owners and for staff when we're working with those situations so here we've highlighted and green the parcels that the current boundary line kind of cuts through so you can see how the parcels don't quite line up with that line along the Florida Avenue side so as the area continues to develop this is really where we're seeing more intense development in this area here so what we're looking at or what staff's looking at is not only updating the inventory and reflecting that accurately on the map but also at pushing the boundary line just a little bit over to align better with these property parcels or alleys just to make it make a little more sense where it lines up so that will include updates to the legal description of the historic district as well so we've been doing a field work this year and we're about maybe halfway finished with the the field work that we're doing to verify the field works necessary to verify the data that we have in the office so as we go through this process we've done the majority of the research necessary we're continuing to finish up the field work and you know the winter months are much nicer to us when we're out in the field to do that we have community outreach planned we'll be meeting with the Tampa Heights Civic Association at its regular meeting in January and that's January 27th of 2027 and as we move through this process it's important to note that while the inventory update to the map is a staff function that we usually present to the HBC typically when we update the maps and we're not updating the boundary just the map and the information about which properties contributed and which ones don't and which ones are new construction and which ones have been demolished usually we will bring those maps back to this board but in this case and that's it that's the end of the process there once this once the board accepts the revised map in this case since we're also looking at doing a district boundary alignment change that's why we're also reaching out to the neighborhood association and while why we will also be taking this through the process to go to City Council so what we're looking at doing right now finishing up our field work our community outreach and that production we will have a noticed public hearing for the community to attend and comment at and hopefully May of 2027 and that will be for them to review and comment on the changes to the the boundary line the Planning Commission does a staff review which takes about 30 days for them to turn that around and then we will take any final recommendations from this board as to the final boundary line and legal description and present that to City Council at notice public hearings and we plan to have that done by summer of next year so if there are any questions or comments on this project at this time I'd be happy to take those thank you yes thank you I have a question about the boundary issue that map you showed us with the lots that are awkwardly split by the local boundary that's a really unfortunate situation so I just wondered do you all have any current conception of whether the boundary will be adjusted to include more or exclude more or will it be on a parcel by parcel basis and I guess definitely my recommendation would if we're going to adjust boundaries make them follow ownership parcels because otherwise yeah I can see a whole lot of angst and I had with staff and owners everyone involved certainly yes sir what we're currently considering is in this historic district on particular on the north end since the west side of Florida Avenue is not included we didn't we have been discussing at a staff level and also since the majority of parcels on this east side Florida Avenue aren't directly included it seems that the intention here was to you know just looking at it it seems that the intention was not to include those parcels along Florida Avenue in their entirety because otherwise the boundary long line would have been drawn straight up the middle Florida Avenue so we're looking at taking out the taking moving the line a little bit to the east to remove the parcels that front Florida Avenue there are a couple of situations where it's a little trickier and we'll probably be looking at the platted lot lines perhaps in some of those cases where it's a little more difficult to discern whether the whole parcel should be in or out just simply because a lot of the redevelopment we see in this area is residential and we have seen some of these larger parcels that have been occupied by commercial or industrial light industrial commercial uses to be divided up to for residential development and I guess the other part of that would be you'll look at them of course to see if in fact there are any historic resources on any of these sites that you'd like to get specifically put into the bound within the boundaries is that actually a possibility also I don't know that strip so I don't know if there's anything there or not right I don't think there actually is anything that has been considered contributing or potentially contributing to the district on those lots most of them are vacant or have later like masonry vernacular buildings on them for the properties on Florida Avenue are there are they mostly for any redevelopments coming in are they developing under the the current zoning or are they coming in with plan developments I'm just curious about if there's any like transition standards for the rear of the lot that could be helpful for transitioning back to a residential historic neighborhood when we our division reviews all applications that come in for plan developments to answer your question I believe most of this area does have just commercial zoning but the anything that comes in as a planned development we do review and and for example one of these sites we have were able to work with the applicants to keep all of the vertical construction outside the historic district boundary and we have worked with them on keeping things like the fencing and the buffering away from the that's adjacent to the historic district as appropriate for the district as possible so with that that does conclude our staff presentation seems like we may have answered the questions so we will continue to update you on this and you'll be seeing this again at a future hearing in 2027 a lot going on in 2027 so it's exciting these are you know it's these are staff intensive projects they involve a lot of research a lot of field work a lot of time uninterrupted time in between phone calls and teams meetings and whatnot to be able to produce this so our weekly meetings that we have internally with my team we address these projects see where they're at see where we have the time to really have multiple staff members working on it for instance we have a historic preservation inspector that is not really engaging that much with this particular commission but he's assisting Elaine with a lot of that field work and photography that we're doing as part of the map update so it's good effort and necessary steps to ensuring that you have a effective historic preservation program which is you know something that we strive for obviously all the time for not only being effective but being efficient with our use of time and with the public's investments in these areas so I believe we can move on now to motion to receive anyone anyone would like to make a motion to receive and file submitted documents and exhibits I will make a motion to receive and file submitted documents at today's commission meeting and I will second that all in favor aye aye aye aye okay all in favor none none opposed motion passes forward so our next meeting is on January 19th uh 2027 sounds a little funny to say but that's uh when we meet next and I did want to let you know that we are anticipating a pretty robust agenda on that day uh most likely would be a longer meeting than um we're typically experiencing I would you know know and this is just an estimate I would say it could go to like 12 or one okay so uh if you have any issues with that if you could please let us know we have multiple things kind of converging on that particular day that are going to be most likely on the agenda thank you okay with that okay with that um the time is 10 45 and the public hearing for the city of tampa historic preservation commission has been adjourned