Tag: wetland

Tampa City Council members struck down a developer’s rezoning request Thursday, delivering a win to neighbors long opposed to the Hillsborough River housing project.

The lengthy hearing stirred a larger conversation among city leaders about how Tampa should approach future building in the aftermath of the hurricanes that walloped the region last year.

To some activists in attendance, the council’s rejection of the plan is an early sign of a city finally curbing development after storms flooded areas that were not previously thought to be vulnerable to rising water.

More than 50 residents who crammed inside the city’s Old Town Hall in downtown Tampa cheered and hugged after hearing the final vote cast.

Many donned matching green and gray T-shirts with a message: “Save our wetlands.”

Following a public comment period that lasted more than two hours, they felt council members had voted to do just that.

The council voted 5-2 to deny multi-use housing on the parcel of land zoned for single-family homes. The decision killed a ruling made in August that would have allowed developers to fill a 5,000-square-foot wetland on the property.

It was an unlikely victory for residents in Tampa’s Riverbend neighborhood who have fought an uphill battle against developers and county environmental regulators for more than two years.

Last summer, the Hillsborough County Environmental Protection Commission granted developers a wetland mitigation permit that allowed them to fill in the sensitive habitat as long as another was built in its place.

In exchange for Riverbend’s wetland, another one had been slated for preservation in the Fox Ranch Mitigation Bank area, about 50 miles up the river in northwest Polk County.

But the ruling hinged on Thursday’s rezoning hearing. Now that council members have rejected their request, the property owners are barred from destroying the wetland.

Hank Cramer, president of the Riverbend Civic Association, said he had been confident city leaders would side with neighbors.

“People genuinely were ready to fight this. It’s unbelievable. Unbelievable,” he said. “We got an awful lot of support, as you can see, and it was effective support.”

Developers had intended to construct 42 townhomes and three single-family homes on the 4.6-acre property at 6111 N Rome Ave. Neighbors, angered by plans to fill in the sensitive wetlands along the river and cut down mature, code-protected “grand trees,” quickly organized against developers.

Elise Batsel, a lawyer representing the developers, said the company took residents’ concerns to heart and had redesigned the site’s stormwater plans, added stilts to the single-family homes and increased the size of drainage ponds.

She pleaded with council members in her closing remarks.

“We’re exhausted from this project, to be honest, and I think your staff is exhausted, too,” she said. “This application has taken longer to get to you than any other application in the city of Tampa that I’ve ever been involved with.”

“We thought we had a thoughtfully designed project that will be a treasure — a future gem,” she said.

Developers had originally planned to cut nearly 90% of the property’s 260 trees, including eight grand trees, the Tampa Bay Times previously reported.

Kevin Reali, another lawyer representing the developers, said five grand trees were to be preserved in the latest iteration of site plans. He also promised a sixth tree, made hazardous after damage from Hurricane Milton, would not be chopped down as part of efforts to conserve wildlife habitat.

Reali said the property, which had previously housed the German-American Club of Tampa, appeared overgrown and neglected when developers Mize and Sefair bought the land in 2023 for more than $3 million. The company, who has close ties to the largest corporate investors in the state, specializes in build-to-rent homes.

Some trees are healthy, but many are invasive species, Reali added. He, too, highlighted the lengthy process of litigating the project.

“We hired more experts than I’ve ever used on a zoning,” he said.

Lawyers also emphasized that the development met every city code.

But for a city now rethinking how it should build and rebuild in the wake of an unprecedented hurricane season, it would be a mistake to destroy more natural features that could curb future floodwaters, said council member Charlie Miranda.

“The code is something on paper, but we just went through hell. Places that were never going to flood, they flooded,” he said. “You’re not going to get what you want doing the things we’ve done normally for the last 100 years.”

“It does not work any longer,” he added.

Riverbend neighbors showed the council images of neighborhood buildings flooded by Hurricane Milton’s near-record rainfall. They argued more concrete and stucco would lead to floodwaters washing out nearby homes, including the proposed townhomes.

A Tampa sewage lift station adjacent to the Rome property flooded during Milton, though floodwaters did not cause the facility to fail. The nearby Police Athletic League building also took on 2 to 8 inches of water during the storms, Cramer said.

“That’s what happens when you stop a wetland,” Cramer said. “Water always wins.”

Cramer, echoing some council members, said the destruction of the Rome development’s wetland would be problematic as hurricanes, fueled by human-caused climate change, grow more intense.

He cast doubt on developers’ plans to build stormwater ponds to handle rain runoff in place of the natural wetland.

“I don’t know if that’s enough,“ Cramer said. “Does anybody know if that’s enough to handle that flow that’s going to come from these intensive storms — these volatile and vicious and bigger storms that we’re getting?”

The council’s decision flew in the face of recommendations made by city staff and the planning commission, who argued developers’ plans were consistent with Tampa’s comprehensive plan, the city’s master planning document.

Council members Gwendolyn Henderson and Luis Viera voted in favor of the rezoning. They argued the council’s decision should support the collaboration between builders and city staff.

“You can clearly see that the applicant put in the work, even though you don’t like it,” Henderson said, addressing Riverbend residents.

Council member Lynn Hurtak suggested the comprehensive plan should be amended, particularly where building on coastal high-hazard areas is concerned.

“This does not promote the efficient and sustainable infrastructure with careful consideration of potential adverse impacts to onsite natural elements,” she said, citing the planning document.

With owners’ plans for development foiled, the Rome property’s future is unclear.

Despite Thursday’s victory, Frank Greco, a neighborhood association member, said he doesn’t expect the battle is over.

“They’ll come back with something else, I’m sure,” he said. “They’re not going to let the $2.5 million they spent on this go away.”