Over the last several years, redevelopment has transformed downtown Tampa’s Channel District, its riverfront and the Central Park neighborhood. Meanwhile, the city’s original bustling main street, Franklin Street, has not attracted anything close to that type of private interest and redevelopment.
Moving north along Franklin from Tampa’s downtown core up into Tampa Heights, there are empty storefronts, vacant buildings and lots, aged infrastructure and a general dearth of business activity and foot traffic. The Tampa Downtown Partnership has spent years working with the community to develop a game plan for revitalizing Franklin into a modern-day “shop, dine, stroll” corridor while honoring and preserving its history. The plan mixes “light touch,” short-term projects to make the corridor more inviting for businesses and pedestrian traffic and recommendations for more long-term transformational projects.
Now, the Downtown Partnership will get $6 million in funding from the City of Tampa’s Downtown Community Redevelopment Area to get to work on those short-term projects. At a November 14th meeting, the Tampa City Council, in their role as the Tampa Community Redevelopment Agency board, unanimously approved the funding in three annual $2 million installments. During the meeting, Tampa Downtown Partnership Senior Director of Transportation & Planning Karen Kress describes the infusion of CRA money as a “generational investment to bring a once thriving corridor back to life.”
A downtown priority
The Downtown Partnership’s focus on revitalizing Franklin Street stretches back to 2018, when the Special Services District the nonprofit organization administers for the City of Tampa expanded to include areas of Tampa Heights north of Interstate 275. A 2020 visioning document looking at Franklin Street’s future potential was developed with input from community groups, residents, property and business owners and city officials.
![]()
Tampa Downtown PartnershipRendering of proposed improvements along Franklin Street on the block running from East Estelle Street and East Henderson Avenue“Franklin once was Tampa’s main street,” Kress says in an interview. “We believe it can be again. But it has not had enough attention in years. When we did our community outreach, the public feedback was ‘Yep, this is what we want.’ People want that vibrant main street. We also heard loud and clear from the public that they really value the history of Franklin Street. There are 61 buildings on or near the corridor that are 100 years old or older.”
While working with community stakeholders on detailed strategies to improve and reenergize Franklin Street, the Downtown Partnership launched programming to generate activity and create a sense of place. The organization funded mural art installations, pop-up alleyway art shows in Tampa Heights and established a storefront improvement grant program for downtown that awarded $11,000 to Franklin Street businesses over one six-month period.
The CRA funding will go toward short-term projects and improvements included in a 2023 action plan that maps out strategies and recommendations to implement the vision for Franklin Street. That action plan breaks down the corridor into four segments - the downtown core from East Jackson Street to East Tyler Street; historic Franklin Street from East Fortune Street to East Scott Street; the I-275 overpass; and the area north of I-275 in Tampa Heights dubbed “Yellow Brick Row.”
Some projects and strategies focus on specific blocks while others look at the entire corridor. Some examples include adding to the tree canopy, upgrading plant beds with borders and better irrigation, fixing uneven sidewalk pavers, additional street lighting, intersection improvements, upgrading street furnishings like benches and taking a different approach to trash management to address the rows of trash cans that line some blocks. There’s also a plan to replace traffic lights with four-way stop signs to make a more pedestrian-friendly corridor.
There’s discussion of adding more opportunities for sidewalk cafes in the downtown core area and in Tampa Heights by repurposing some on-street parallel parking spaces. Kress says some on-street parking spaces could be converted to loading zones to make the corridor more pedestrian-friendly and cut down on delivery trucks stopping in the road. While the plan looks to establish Franklin as a pedestrian priority corridor it does not recommend shutting the road to vehicle traffic. One of the more long-term transformational project recommendations proposes opening Franklin Street to traffic at a redesigned and repurposed City Hall Plaza.
“We’re also looking at the long game,” Kress says. “What’s the right mix of uses on Franklin Street? Right now, we do have people living there. We have people working there. There are a few restaurants but it’s not really the shop, dine, stroll, browse main street people want it to be. What can we do about the vacant buildings? I refer to those as the missing teeth in the smile. Is there a possibility to add more greenspace, more outdoor space for people to hang out? Another move is we would like to replace more traffic signals with four-way stops. Aesthetically, it looks a lot better and it makes for a more pedestrian-friendly corridor. There’s a whole lot we can do, we’re going to stretch the money out as far as we can.”
The property tax revenues generated by the increase in property values in a CRA district fund projects and programs within that area. Since I-275 is the northern border of Tampa’s Downtown CRA, the Downtown Partnership will not be able to use any of the $6 million on projects in Tampa Heights.
“It’s up to us to go after grant funds to help what’s referred to as Yellow Brick Row on North Franklin Street,” Kress says.
Hidden Springs Ale Works brewery is a destination that draws people to the area. But Yellow Brick Row was dealt a blow when the Hall on Franklin food hall closed in late 2020. Kress says it’s a stretch of Franklin that would benefit from more restaurants.
Transformational projects
The historic Tampa Theatre is a landmark the city nearly lost nearly 50 years ago. Saved from demolition by a 4-3 City Council vote in 1977, it’s an example of how to save and restore a historic theater. It's also a venue that draws people to Franklin Street. Redesigning the 700 block of Franklin to host more special events connected to the theater is one transformational project proposed in the Downtown Partnership action plan.
During the November 14th CRA meeting, Tampa Theatre CEO and President John Bell says in nearly four decades on the job he’s “had a front-row seat to watch downtown’s transformation and I can tell you Downtown Partnership has been a true partner” in that boom and the process of asking the community’s input on the plan for Franklin Street’s future.
“Built into this plan are improvements that reflect our belief that the Tampa Theatre block, the 700 block of Franklin Street, should be transformed into and recognized as Tampa Theatre’s arrival plaza,” Bell says. “That’s what it is. But improved streetscaping and other improvements there will allow us to activate that block for the benefit of our neighborhood with more pre-function events, block parties and safer arrival for school children and buses arriving on field trips.”
Looking long-term, other transformational projects eyed for the stretch of Franklin in the downtown core include a redesign of City Hall Plaza, relocating Tampa Police Department’s headquarters to open up the current location for adaptive redevelopment, and using incentives to accelerate the historic renovation and adaptive reuse of the F.W. Woolworth Building and the Kress Building.
Farther north on Franklin, there’s a recommendation to use incentives to spur redevelopment at a vacant lot off East Harrison Street and Franklin and one to establish a food truck court in Tampa Heights.
Bringing back a thriving corridor
Speaking during the November 14th meeting, Tampa Bay History Center historian Rodney Kite-Powell describes Franklin Street’s place in Tampa history. The city, Kite-Powell says, has actually had four urban centers in its history - the downtown core, Ybor City, Central Avenue and West Tampa’s Main Street.
“But the first one of those is downtown Tampa and that first corridor is Franklin
![]()
USF LibrariesFranklin Street in the 1920s. Street,” he says. “The very first map of Tampa from 1847 has 12 streets on it and one of those is Franklin. It was the main thoroughfare that connected Fort Brooke, just south of Whiting Street, to the fledgling town of Tampa.”
The Downtown Partnership highlights several significant Tampa firsts that happened on Franklin Street. It was the city’s first paved street and had Tampa’s first theater, first brick building and first multi-story department store. But in the second half of the 20th century, the decision to install parking meters on Franklin to generate some revenue and the subsequent rise of suburban shopping malls, with their free parking, helped bring about Franklin’s decline as the city’s main commercial corridor, Kite-Powell says.
Speaking at the CRA meeting, Omar Garcia, the majority owner of 220 Madison, discussed how his group renovated a nationally designated historic building that stood empty and “in serious disrepair” into boutique apartments for University of Tampa students over a ground-floor CVS.
“It’s radically changed the area, we believe,” he says.
Garcia says the investment of CRA will help the revitalization of the once-thriving commercial corridor from an area held back by closed businesses and fire-damaged buildings into an inviting place for business investment and pedestrian traffic.
“As a city, we have an opportunity to restore Franklin Street to its former glory, an area that residents can be proud of and visitors can admire,” Garcia says.
At that CRA meeting, activist, author and downtown resident Gloria Jean Royster says fixing uneven pavers, improving street lighting and adding to the tree canopy will benefit the older residents living in the area.
The Franklin Street plan will protect a vulnerable population, seniors,” she says.
At the meeting, Tampa City Council member Gwen Henderson, the chair of the CRA board, points out the city has committed significant Downtown CRA funds toward the renovation and expansion of the Straz Center for the Performing Arts and the Tampa Museum of Art. Now, it’s time to address Franklin Street, she says.
“To ignore it would be the biggest crime,” Henderson says. “That would be a crime to ignore Franklin Street in all that we’re trying to do to improve slum and blight in the Downtown CRA…We’ve taken care of our cultural institutions. To me, this is a small ask for what is going to be achieved.”
For more information, go to Franklin Street action plan