Valerie Bullock is old enough to remember when Black-owned businesses thrived on 22nd and 29th streets in East Tampa. Until the late 1960s, segregation-era policies forced Black residents to live, shop and invest in redlined communities like hers.
Today, not many of those businesses remain. She walks down 29th street, off of Martin Luther King Boulevard, in East Tampa. The street runs parallel to the railroad tracks that divides Belmont Heights to the west and Jackson Heights to the east.
“It was a separate community, but we had everything we needed right here,” she said.
The First Baptist Church of College Hill is still there across the street from a grass lot, where a strip of businesses once stood. The sidewalks are in disrepair. Most people walk or bike around the neighborhood. In the short time Bullock is outside, though, several police cars drive by.
These areas in East Tampa need investment, she said.
“One thing you can find over here, you’re going to find liquor stories. You’re going to find an Amscot. That’s what’s prevalent over here,” she said.
'A live-learn community'
The Tampa Bay Economic Development Council, along with the city of Tampa and other partners, is leading a new project to improve economic conditions in East Tampa.
The industrial district — one block north of where Interstate 4 cuts through Ybor City — will be a corridor for economic development by 2027, according to project summary materials. That includes parts of the College Hill, Jackson Heights, Highland Pines and Grant Park neighborhoods. Although the proposal is expected to benefit residents in other parts of East Tampa, too.
The estimated $80 million project is expected to bring affordable housing, a vocational training center, space for commercial businesses and infrastructure improvements to East Tampa by 2027. In January, the city approved a land-lease agreement to allow the development council to develop and manage the projects.
The housing and job-training aspects will be combined on one site — in what’s being called a “live-learn community” — where 117 affordable apartments will be offered next to the East Tampa Innovation Center, a planned 65,000-square-foot training site.
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“I say affordable, meaning that they’ll be affordable to families that make less than $56,000 a year, and even further down the income scale, depending on the household size,” said Tony Brown, vice president of community development for the development council.
The innovation center will be home to new and relocated training programs, including the University of South Florida’s Smart Manufacturing Innovation Insitute, a culinary arts teaching center with Hillsborough Community College and a fabrication lab for prototyping equipment and incubating business start-ups with the Corporation to Develop Communities of Tampa Inc, according to project summary materials.
An opportunity zone
Brown said the goal for the development is to create local employment opportunities for East Tampa residents with a primary focus on construction, manufacturing, food services and transportation.
“This whole effort started three years ago when our CEO … and members of his board and donors to our foundation wanted to have an effective program that would really attract companies and jobs into an opportunity zone,” Brown said.
An analysis of the target area, comprised of 20 census tracts, shows there are fewer career opportunities among working-age people. Data show 35 percent of the hirable population is unemployed — 10 times the unemployment rate in Hillsborough County.
“It is very depressing to sit on your porch seeing properties get built that the people will not employ you, and once the property get built, you can't even afford it."Valerie Bullock, lifelong resident of East Tampa
Black residents make up 64 percent of population in the East Tampa Industrial District. That’s compared with 17 percent in citywide.
Brown said the development plans were designed in line with priorities the East Tampa Community Redevelopment Agency has for the district.
“We came in at the time that the residents were updating the East Tampa CRA strategic plan, and we listened as the residents were focusing on ideas to revitalize the neighborhoods,” he said.
The proposal has been guided by input from several public workshops and community surveys of business owners in East Tampa.
Back on 29th Street, Bullock stops to talk with neighbors who gathered on a corner. There’s cross talk among the group — some friends, some strangers and a couple of guys in a pickup on a lunch break.
“What do you remember?” Bullock asks.
“Lincoln Grocery Store right there.” “Uh huh.” “Rabbit Foot Bar.” “Right there was the CDC.”
“That used to be our little shed down there … all that used to be down there by the alley a little past the four-way. You know, it ain’t nothing like it used to be,” East Tampa resident Billy Boston said.
Early economic success
Until the late 1960s, Black-owned businesses dotted 22nd and 29th streets in what’s considered East Tampa today.
The early economic success in this area can be traced to Lee Davis, one of Tampa’s first Black millionaires. He was a community leader and businessman who owned and invested in lots of property in East Tampa.
“You had the churches, and you had mom-and-pop businesses, beauty shops, barber shops. A little bit of that exists, but so much of it has just disappeared over the years,” Fred Hearns, curator of Black history at the Tampa Bay History Center, said. He grew up in Belmont Heights.
In the mid-1900s, urban renewal projects were underway in many parts of the country, including Tampa. Many historically Black communities were razed to make way for new public housing projects and interstate highway expansions. That was the case with the Central Avenue business district, just south of East Tampa, that was wiped out.
It’s known that urban redevelopment strategies, though designed to improve living conditions, displaced Black families and businesses -- often exacerbating poverty and leading to greater housing instability.
By the 1980s, open drug sales on street corners in East Tampa fostered a bad reputation for the neighborhoods. A 1998 Tampa Bay Times article reported that young drug dealers in the area had become “part of the landscape.”
A once-active corner was at 29th Street and Lake Avenue, where Bullock stands now with some neighbors.
High hopes
Boston, 64, has been out of jail for six years. He said the programs planned for the live-learn community are not for him, but he thinks it could help young people stay off the streets.
“I know I'm a little bit too old for it. … I have my kids, my grandkids — they could use it. … But I try to keep them away from what I went at. And I know the streets real good, so that's why I try to keep them away from that,” he said.
Bullock said that she’s skeptical about how the development will address the systemic barriers some East Tampa residents face, like a lack of high school education or having a criminal record.
“It is very depressing to sit on your porch seeing properties get built that the people will not employ you, and once the property get built, you can't even afford it,” Bullock said. “It just gives you an empty gut feeling. The original residents of East Tampa are the forgotten residents, and we don't matter.”
Hearns, the history center's curator, said he has high hopes for the development. He recently moved back to the area after 40 years.
“There are a lot of folk who need opportunities, who want opportunities, more than those that are currently available. This project has great potential, I think, to do that,” he said.
The plan would mark a historic investment in the area. Hearns said it's key that the investment helps to retain lifelong residents rather than pushing them out.
“And I would hope that when jobs become available and training opportunities become available that the people who live in that community get the first option to take advantage of those.”
Construction on East Columbus Drive could begin as early as 2026.
Gabriella Paul covers the stories of people living paycheck to paycheck in the greater Tampa Bay region for WUSF. She's also a Report for America corps member. Here’s how you can share your story with her.
