Property Owner vs. ARC vs. Construction Services

Well if you ever wondered why businesses have problems getting started in Seminole Heights, see this article by Kathy Steele in the Tampa Tribune about Sports & Physical Therapy of Seminole Heights and their dealings with the Architectual Review Commission and the Construction Services Department (not to mention Code Enforcement). At one point Kathy writes:

Instead, he had to satisfy two bureaucratic masters at odds with one another: the Architectural Review Commission and the city's construction services department.

"It came as a surprise at the end of the commission review that I still had to go through so much more," Clower said. "I would think there would be some way for them to work together so that didn't happen."

and

"One person in the city is saying one thing and the other person is saying another thing," Clower said.

Construction Services needs to keep on top of the issues and work closer with ARC.

A related event happened when several houses were built on Paris St. behind the Family Dollar store. The homes were not built to Seminole Heights overlay standards. The builder and developer should have known better. And it should have been caught earlier by inspectors.

However, it must be noted that I could not find the Overlay District guidelines on the city's land development website. West Tampa's is there but not Seminole Heights.

When the both Seminole Heights and West Tampa overlay's were each established, there were issues about Constructions Services not being up to speed on the districts, thus approving projects that violated the guidelines. With Seminole Heights overlay, this occurred up to one year later.