Public Meeting 2

I attended the East Tampa Community Revitalization Partnership Subcommittee Meeting. It was a very small meeting located in the Suncoast Schools Federal Credit Union which is in the heart of the area the committee focuses on.

The Committee in itself is focused on revitalizing the area in order to lead it in a move forward from its current standing. The subcommittee is in place in order to help the committee move forward in its efforts. The chair of the subcommittee is Ernest Coney, and he works closely with Juan Davis who is a local business owner of Tampa T-shirts. Davis informed me that he got involved when his business relocated to East Tampa, “I knew it was a redevelopment area and I wanted to be involved with that process and the subcommittee allows us to take a little legwork out of the committee”.

Ernest is the Chief Operations Officer of the Corporation to Develop Communities of Tampa, also known as the CDC. The corporation works to provide affordable housing as well as commercial housing and does a lot of work in East Tampa. “It’s an area that is surrounded by small businesses and many of them consist of pawn and cash now shops so we actually own the building Suncoast is in, and we lease it to them. This is in an effort to educate the people in the community on legitimate banking and provide other options for them.” The CDC is working to bring in other institutions to continue their effort, and Fifth Third Bank will be opening in the area soon.

Throughout the meeting they discussed many of the programs they are currently working on and how several of them are no longer on schedule due to much beauracracy and the need to have city administrators finalize everything. However, they saw this as an opportunity to do workshops to inform businesses of the revitalization in an effort to bring other new businesses in as well.

Overall, I got the feeling that many people are leaving behind the area because of its current condition and viewing it as a priority. In this economy it is hard enough for people at the top of our county government to get what they need, and projects like these may continue to be put on the backburner.