I've been a Tampa Heights resident since July of 2004.
I was very excited to move to Tampa Heights, in the very first home for me and my wife. Previously residents of Sulphur Springs, we were attracted to the lower crime rate, cleaner streets and old 1920s bungalows that didn't come with the Seminole Heights price tag.
I'm now very proud to call Tampa Heights home. It's a 3-minute drive with very few stoplights and zero time on the interstate from my home to work in Downtown. I drive less and get out more. Sure, there could be more shops and places to eat closer to where I live, but it's getting better all the time.
There are several neighborhood-specific blogs here in Tampa, but I'd yet to see one for my 'hood and I thought it was time.
I'm not the most zealous of bloggers, but I'll do my best to post news often. Feel free to send me tips at maladrin AT gmail DOT com.
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Hi, great neighborhood. I lived in Tampa Heights in 1989-92. You wouldn't recognize the place. I owned the Ecclectic victorian on Morgan street, across from the park and next to Fernado Mesa's house. We paid $21,000 for the boarded up, unlivable house. I lived in a garage apartment across the street (Yellow brick house with garage apartments in the back owned by Jack, friend of Fernando) while working three jobs trying to fix up. Friends bought the 1898 Victorian on the cornor that we called the Pizza Hut because they put that red roof on it. It is the only single story Victorian to survive in Tampa Heights. Gayle and Lionel bought the house down Morgan and put the double deck porch around it to make it more a Key West style house. Those days were exciting, shootings, prostitutes and all.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately I had to sell as I was in the AF and transfered so sold it in 1992 for $19,000. Miss the place.
I always knew this neighborhood had great potential due to location. We lost a lot of large homes because Mayor Friedman was tearing them down to show she was "hard on crime". There was a lot of drug deals going down then. Then she almost ruined the neigborhood with her plans, tearing up good sidewalks, all sorts of graft ripping off elderly residents putting aluminum windows and siding on their homes. it was sad. They wasted about one million (mostly on Central) and Morgan Street was the model, and being gentrifyed by private money.
I haven't been back since 2000, but it seemed the neighborhood was still struggling, up and then down, and then stagnate, but seems to finally have come into its own.
I wish you the best. Thanks for saving a piece of Tampa's great history.
Thanks for the comment. I think this place has a ton of promise ...
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