Urban Removal: Ybor City Before & After Urban Renewal

Not since its founding in 1886 has the landscape of Ybor City been so drastically altered as it was in the 1960s as a result of the federally funded Urban Renewal program. The founders of Ybor City platted streets, constructed cigar factories, and built homes on 40 acres of empty land northeast of downtown Tampa. As the cigar industry flourished, as workers and residents immigrated to the area from Cuba, Spain, and Italy, Ybor City transformed Tampa and Hillsborough County into Florida’s most ethnically diverse region of the early 20th century. Immigrants constructed massive clubhouses for their mutual aid societies, establishing bakeries, grocery stores, schools, and other commercial enterprises. By 1920, Tampa was home to about 9,000 foreign–born Cubans, Spaniards, and Italians, most of whom resided in Ybor City. The “city within a city” was one of the nations biggest producers of hand-rolled cigars, an active center for political and labor movements, and a vibrant commercial center with businesses owned and operated by its immigrant population. In 1929 Ybor City’s production of hand rolled cigars crested at 410 million.

The cigar industry was a thriving financial engine for Tampa and its “Latin Quarter.” However, by the time the city of Tampa adopted its third Urban Renewal plan, Project R-13, The Ybor City Project, in 1964, the industry had been in a 20–year economic decline. As high paying jobs dwindled and people moved out of the barrio, civic leaders and city officials searched for ways to rejuvenate the area. Ultimately, the Urban Renewal philosophy and its aftermath forever changed the physical and social character of the old neighborhood. So dramatic and long-term were its effects that there are, in fact, two Ybor Cities–one before, and one after Urban Renewal.

By the 1930s, things were already beginning to change. The explosive growth, which began in the 1880s and peaked in the 1920s, in the 1930s began a very slow but marked decline. The cigar industry, on which nearly everyone in Ybor City depended, was beginning to falter. Between 1928 and 1938, 19 cigar factories either closed, moved away, or consolidated.

Between 1945 and 1970 Ybor’s population decreased 57 percent from roughly 26,000 to 11,000.

Ybor City’s residential decline mirrored its industrial decline and the out-migration of Ybor residents accelerated after World War II. The allure of open suburban spaces, particularly in West Tampa, attracted Ybor’s increasingly middle-class Latin community. Between 1945 and 1970 Ybor’s population decreased 57 percent from roughly 26,000 to 11,000. The residential decline of Ybor City was not unique. In fact, the 1940s and 1950s was a period of decline for almost all of America’s central cities. Between 1930 and 1940, eight of America’s biggest cities experienced a decline in population or experienced below average growth. This trend continues today as suburban residential growth continues to outpace that of the majority of America’s major cities.

The reasons for the decline are varied. They include the high cost of land in the central city, perceived public health dangers, environmental concerns regarding air quality and pollution, and the availability of inexpensive land located in outlying areas surrounding the city’s urban core.

One of the major reasons for central city decline nationwide and in Ybor City was increased mobility. In 1928, for example, there were 38,932 passenger cars registered in Hillsborough County.

In 1940 there were 48,323, meaning there was one car registered to every household in the county. As automobiles gained popularity, it was no longer necessary for people to live close to where they worked and as the use of automobiles increased, so too, did traffic.

Ybor City was a victim of “the era of the motor.” Houses in Ybor lacked driveways and the neighborhood’s brick streets were narrow. The streetcar, once an asset, now took up valuable road space along 7th Avenue and local businesses lacked adequate parking. Cars–and what to do with them–have been one of the most consistent motivating factors in the ongoing revitalization of Ybor City.

Interstate

In 1962, construction began on Interstate 4 and Interstate 275. The path of the new super highway literally cut Ybor City in half, leveling homes and separating residents living north of the interstate from the 7th Avenue commercial district to the south. The goal of the federal interstate system was to connect outlying suburban areas with the city’s commercial center. However, rather than facilitate access to the urban business core of the city, interstate systems throughout the U.S. encouraged suburban growth as people and businesses abandoned traditional urban business hubs in favor of suburbia’s cheaper land, convenient parking, larger homes, and cleaner streets.

In an attempt to compete with the allure of the suburbs and address the needs of an increasingly car-focused population, one goal of the Urban Renewal Agency and Tampa’s city planners was to assemble parcels of land for use as parking lots. In addition to parking, the Urban Renewal Agency of Tampa added roadways, widened existing streets, and closed rights of way on nine streets and avenues in the Urban Renewal Area, disrupting Ybor City’s original street grid system in an effort to address an increase in car traffic in the area.

Race also played a role. Part of the perceived “problem” in Ybor City was the influx of African Americans into the traditionally “Latin” district. As the children of Ybor’s City’s early immigrants became part of the American middle class, they began to move from the Old Neighborhood into other areas of suburban Tampa, especially West Tampa. African Americans became tenants in Ybor’s shotgun shacks and casitas vacated by the slow exodus of the Latin community. The following appeal, dated October of 1936–30 years before Urban Renewal would begin demolishing buildings in the area–illustrates the role race may have played as a catalyst for such a drastic clearance program:

 To the Honorable Board of City Representatives

Gentlemen: The undersigned citizens, residents, and taxpayers of that portion of the city, which bounds on 14th Street between 9th Avenue and Columbus Drive do most sincerely petition your honorable body that some act or Resolution be adopted eliminating Negros living in this boundary. We respectfully solicit the aid of the authorities to stop the intermingling of Negros with the white population avoiding thus that our children, wives and immediate families be embarrassed with such a condition…”

 -Signed “Latin American” property owners, October 1936.

In April of 1959, Roland Manteiga, editor of the influential multi-lingual newspaper, La Gaceta, wrote a series of articles on “The Vanishing Latin Quarter” in which he stated that African Americans had become an “unavoidable factor” in the “deterioration” of Ybor City. Tampa’s first Urban Renewal project area, Maryland Avenue, drastically affected the city’s African American population. Maryland Avenue, which focused on an area between downtown and Ybor City known as “the Scrub,” was almost completely leveled. Once demolition of the Scrub began, many displaced residents relocated to Ybor City, creating tension between the neighborhood’s original ethnic population and newly arriving African Americans, many of whom became tenants in Ybor’s aging wood-frame houses.

The Urban Renewal Agency of The City of Tampa

Urban Renewal was a federally funded program administered by the Department of Housing and Urban Development. The goal was to improve America’s struggling central cities through physical improvement of the built environment.  Beginning in 1949, HUD grants were available to cities across the country to conduct Urban Renewal projects. Under the program, HUD grants covered two-thirds of the proposed project costs with the city covering the other one-third. With the funding provided, cities could purchase and clear “blighted” property and install improved infrastructure such as sidewalks, streetlights, and sewer lines.

The city council formally established The Urban Renewal Agency of the City of Tampa in 1957. City planners, elected officials, and business leaders in cities across the country and in Tampa believed Urban Renewal could fix the economic and social problems of the inner city by physically clearing away old structures and building anew.

The stated goal of Urban Renewal was the elimination of “blight” and the method of rehabilitation was almost always “slum clearance.” Once an area of the city was legally declared a “slum area,” it was eligible for federal funding. Tampa City council approved three million dollars for its first urban renewal project, Maryland Avenue. The Maryland Avenue Project, situated between Ybor City and Downtown Tampa, was the first of several urban renewal projects in the City. Begun in 1959, it was followed by the Riverfront Project in 1963, and Ybor City in 1965. Each of these areas was subject to extensive “slum clearance.”

“The Cuban Quarter”, first suggested in 1939, was followed by the “Latin Plaza” project in 1957, while a “Barrio Viejo” complex was part of the original 1965 Urban Renewal plan.

In Ybor City, the plan called for the demolition of 708 structures or 60% of the 70- acre project area. Over 1,100 people were relocated. As a result, the population of Ybor City dropped from 19,000 to 11,000 between 1960 and 1970, a 42% drop.

Just as the town’s namesake, Vicente Martinez Ybor, and his civil engineer, Gavino Gutierrez, planned their grand vision for Ybor City in 1886, 60 years later the Urban Renewal Agency used federal funding, zoning and land use changes, legal decrees, and economic forecasts to almost completely re-make Ybor City. The street grid was changed, roads widened, bricks streets paved over. Entire blocks of residential units were demolished and new construction projects were planned.

The Ybor City Urban Renewal project boundaries were Interstate 4 to the north, 22nd Street to the east, Nebraska Avenue to the West, and 4th Avenue to the south. Improving housing conditions within the project boundaries was one goal of the Urban Renewal Agency. The 1960 census concluded that 65% of the housing units in the project area were either “deteriorating” or “dilapidated.” Residents living within this area were sent a notice informing them that they had to sell their property to the Urban Renewal Agency at a price determined by the City of Tampa or face court-ordered removal. The Agency provided money for moving expenses. For instance, a three-room furnished home received about $74.00 in 1968 dollars to pay moving costs.

There were several problems with the Urban Renewal Agency’s relocation efforts. First, demolition often started before plans for new housing were drawn. Second, removal of a house or building did not necessarily depend on the condition of the structure but on whether it was within the pre-determined boundaries of the Urban Renewal Project Area. This meant that even houses and buildings in good condition could be legally demolished.

Land purchased by the Urban Renewal Agency belonged to the City of Tampa and, once cleared and improved, was offered for sale to the public. Anyone could purchase Urban Renewal plots as long as they agreed to certain terms. According to the 1965 Urban Renewal Plan for Ybor City, those requirements were to, “prosecute the construction of the improvements…within reasonable time,” and “not to...resell or otherwise transfer the land… prior to the completion of improvements.”

However, a report in The Tampa Tribune, circa 1989, revealed that many Urban Renewal parcels were still undeveloped and had changed hands many times, violating these two basic provisions of the Urban Renewal contract. After the Urban Renewal Agency was dissolved in 1974, there was apparently no accountability regarding lands and properties sold through the Agency and thus, no way to enforce the provisions of the Urban Renewal Plan.

The success of Urban Renewal relied heavily on the private sector to invest in and develop the properties and plots acquired and cleared by the Agency. The benefits and opportunities for commercial and real estate developers were touted in a brochure produced and distributed by the Urban Renewal Agency in 1968. It tells potential developers that they “can go ahead and make improvements with security. He can know that his investment is part of an area-wide action program. He can be sure that he will realize full value for his investment, since the area is being vastly improved.”

However, very little private sector investment occurred following Urban Renewal’s slum clearance. The area remained economically depressed and the new stock of barren lots only heightened the area’s blighted aesthetic, a condition Urban Renewal was meant to remedy. Ultimately, insurance agencies “redlined” the area, refusing to write policies in Ybor City, and few developers wanted to risk investing in Ybor City.

In 1972, city council amended the original Urban Renewal Plan, adding “college” as an eligible land use category that already included “town and patio housing,” “parking” and “warehousing.” In 1971, Hillsborough Community College purchased 22 acres of Urban Renewal land from the city. H.C.C. would eventually own as many as 51 acres within the Urban Renewal project area. In a 1979 interview, the Assistant Director of the Urban Renewal Agency suggested, “H.C.C. coming in the way it did was a lifesaver [for the Agency]” because, “we had been unsuccessful in our attempts to attract developers to the area.”

However, the college was beset by early problems. Opened in 1974, by 1979, it had failed to meet its enrollment projections and no new construction was planned until an increase in the student population merited it. As a result many of the lots H.C.C. acquired from the Urban Renewal Agency remained undeveloped, compounding Ybor City’s revitalization problems. One community activist remarked at the time, “Since most of the housing has been removed, I don’t see how they can call it a community college. It seems to me that if there was more good housing, there might be a larger number of young people available to take classes there.”

Tourism

As early as 1939 city leaders and urban planners believed tourism was the answer to Ybor City’s economic downturn. A 1939 study prepared by the University of Florida proposed the construction of a “Cuban Quarter” that would resemble a “typical Cuban town.” More than two decades later, a 1965 economic study concluded that a re-developed Ybor City would attract an estimated 2 million visitors by 1970 and 3 million visitors by 1975.

The most consistently proposed idea was that of a large plaza or outdoor mall. The plaza concept required the accumulation of large parcels of land and ample parking, which fit well with Urban Renewal’s philosophy of large-scale land clearance. The outdoor mall proposal had many incarnations and was a surprisingly consistent theme in the proposed revitalization of Ybor City. From 1939 until 1998, nearly every major revitalization plan involved some form of plaza or mall area.

“The Cuban Quarter”, first suggested in 1939, was followed by the “Latin Plaza” project in 1957, while a “Barrio Viejo” complex was part of the original 1965 Urban Renewal plan. A “Walled City” concept, in which there were to be “bloodless” bullfights was explored but abandoned in the mid-1970s.  In 2000, Centro Ybor, a large outdoor entertainment complex, was constructed between 7th and 8th Avenues at 16th Street.

One Man Fire Department

The drastic clearance and demolition undertaken by the Urban Renewal Agency was certainly a motivating factor behind the preservation of Ybor’s remaining structures. Tony Pizzo, a community activist, historian, and founder of the Tampa Historical Society recalled “working like a one man fire department trying to save things” in the wake of Urban Renewal. In 1974, Ybor City was placed on the National Register of Historic Places. In 1989, the area making up the original 70-acre Urban Renewal project area was named a National Historic Landmark District, one of only three such designations in the State of Florida.

Ultimately, the Urban Renewal Agency of the City of Tampa succeeded in very few of its intended goals. “We just cleared the land. We did a bang-up job on acquisition and clearance, we just didn’t do a good job at all with keeping the program going,” recalled the Urban Renewal Agency’s assistant director in a 1979 interview. Although Urban Renewal sought to improve living conditions in Ybor City by eliminating the “dilapidated” housing stock and replacing it with modern structures, only one low-income housing project resulted from Urban Renewal. The Haciendas de Ybor, a partially subsidized senior living community was constructed in 1972. Many more parcels of land acquired and cleared by the City of Tampa’s Urban Renewal Agency were either turned over to county agencies or remained vacant until the late 1990’s.

Featured in Cigar City-Issue 16-2008