How can we grow sustainably? 4 takeaways from Spotlight Tampa Bay event

Yahoo

08-05-2025

Just a day before leaders in planning and development gathered to discuss how Tampa Bay can grow sustainably, emergency vehicles surrounded a 12-story Sand Key condominium complex.
Residents were evacuated due to potential structural issues, calling to mind South Florida's Surfside condo collapse in 2021.
That disaster, plus last year's storms, have made one thing clear: sustainable development can make the difference between life and death, between destruction and security. Thousands of Tampa Bay residents have been asked to rebuild their homes to be more resilient against hurricanes.
At a Spotlight Tampa Bay event hosted by the Tampa Bay Times and sponsored by Tampa Electric Wednesday night, panelists discussed how the region can balance its breakneck growth with residents' quality of life and protection against storms.
There are now more than 860,000 residences and homes in the region, and those numbers continue to grow, said Stephanie Smith, vice president of state and regional affairs at Tampa Electric and Peoples Gas. Roads, amenities and community resources must keep up with a surge of new residents and neighborhoods.
Here's who participated in the panel:
Moderator: Rebecca Liebson, real estate reporter
Kartik Goyani, principal at Metro Development Group
Melissa Zornitta, executive director of Plan Hillsborough
Taylor Ralph, the president and founder of Real Building Consultants LLC
Casey Ellison, CEO of Ellison Companies
Abbye Feeley, administrator for development and economic opportunity with the city of Tampa
Panelists weighed in on the future of Tampa Bay, particularly focusing on how to build more densely in a region defined by sprawl. Here are four takeaways from the event.
People should be able to choose: do they want an urban, suburban or rural lifestyle while living in Tampa Bay?
That's what Zornitta, the Hillsborough planner, emphasized.
Hillsborough County is expanding its urban growth boundary, called an urban service area.
But Zornitta said the county still wants to preserve a rural lifestyle for those who want it.
In suburbs like Brandon and Town 'n Country, the goal is to introduce more mixed-use concepts and connectivity with the rest of the region, she said. That's true for growing suburbs in places like Plant City as well.
Meanwhile, developers on the panel highlighted the need for more dense housing in urban Tampa, like the upcoming Gasworx project in Ybor City, for those who want true city living.
'In our urban markets, the more density, the better,' Ellison said.
Tampa's Riverwalk and other pedestrian amenities are some of the most important advancements the city has made in recent decades, Ralph said. The market craves more urban housing stock than developers are currently supplying, driving prices up in the region's downtowns, he said.
Goyani added that suburbs fulfill an important role: they can offer cheaper rents than the urban core. And they can be walkable, too, he said.
Panelists said it's not just a local government problem: developers have a responsibility to help protect residents against storms, too.
The city of Tampa is preparing permanent and temporary water pumps, and placing generators high up, to ease flooding and power problems the next time a big one strikes, Feeley said.
It will take private-sector redevelopment in places like the University area, where flooding was widespread after Hurricane Milton, to fortify the area, Zornitta said.
Building regulations are stronger than ever in terms of protecting structures against flooding, Ralph said. And developers are getting creative about the features they install.
At The Central in St. Petersburg, a 2.1-acre project that will include a hotel, office building, retail space and workforce housing, Ellison is putting greenery on the top floor of the parking garage and roofs to prevent stormwater runoffs. Ralph, at the Gasworx redevelopment project, is putting utilities underground so they don't get swamped with floodwaters.
New development will help make the region stronger against storms, Ralph said.
'New development and redevelopment should not be a bad word,' he said. 'Bad development should be a bad word.'
Panelists shied away from saying there are parts of Tampa Bay, like its vulnerable barrier islands, where future development should be discouraged due to hazards from hurricanes.
'I don't know that there are places that are too risky to develop,' Zornitta said. But local governments discourage adding more density in the first places to evacuate, known as the 'coastal high hazard area,' she said.
Insurance companies help inform consumers about the risks where they live, Ralph said.
'It's one of the first questions we get from our builders,' Koyani said. ''Hey, will our future homeowners have to pay a flood insurance premium, or did you raise the home high enough?''
One audience member asked about how old development factors in to all the buzz about new development.
Zornitta said planners are updating the code so builders have more requirements to balance the look of new homes with the rest of the neighborhood.
'There's nothing wrong with old neighborhoods,' Feeley said. 'They're great. Protecting what is there is important.'
Feeley recounted a small business's struggle to bring an old Ybor City house up to code in order to open a bookstore there. She suggested local leaders should put more thought into how to find new uses for places that are no longer livable.
At Gasworx, residents can walk into an apartment building and read about historic Ybor City, Ralph said. He's also fought to preserve old buildings near the development, he said.
'That sense of place and those historic designations bring value to the community,' he said. 'What do you protect and what do you not protect?'
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Find more information about our Spotlight Tampa Bay series, including video recording of Wednesday's event here.