Height Limits For Downtown

[TallTampa]

highrise limits

[JoseGaspar]

What is there to fear re: highrises? Clearwater's mayor doesn't like the height of the Acqua project, Tampa's Council didn't like the height of the Kress project, and St Pete is up in arms over imposing a height limit.

What's the alternative, people? Sprawl. The Tampa Bay area is growing at a pretty healthy rate, and you can either build up or out.

I'll take some a few extra gleaming towers in the CBDs any day over miles and miles of endless strip malls, gas stations, subdivisions and chain restaurants.

[I-275westcoastflorida]

I also want to see a big downtown the rest can be suburbs but a downtown is known more than the rest of the city in pictures and everthing.

[bobliocatt]

Building heights only go up, because the land values have risen too high in certain areas to go low-rise. Make no doubt about it, establishing height limits will eventually stunt the growth of the downtowns.

I think the residents need to decide what they want and stop straddling the fence. Do they want a vibrant world class core, as an alternative to never ending sprawl? Or would they like everything to revert back to the 80's/90's when traffic congestion and suburbs totally dominated the scene.

[TallTampa]

I couldn't agree more, the civic group spear-heading this effort is looking for 300 ft limits, but seems open to allow up to 400 ft for the CBD. If this winds up being the case, I don't feel this would be too damaging to St.Pete's booming downtown.

400 feet would make sense with Albert Whitted Airport being so close.

[Aporkalypse]

I think Tampa's downtown will shoot straight up because it's on a peninsula with little land available nearby. There shouldn't be any height constraints there (and thankfully it seems the city leaders realize that). I think you're going to see a classic skyline develop in Tampa.

St Pete really has more of a friendly, pedestrian downtown and there's plenty of fringe land available for offices so I'm not sure height restrictions are a bad idea there. What you don't want are tons of empty buildings in an area with 10 50-story buildings. Driving around downtown in an area like that is terrible and St Pete really has such a nice downtown as it is. It reminds me of Austin, where coincidentally there is a height restriction - no building can be taller than the state capitol.