Tarpon Springs Awarded Grant For Disston Avenue Redevelopment

PINELLAS COUNTY, FL — The Forward Pinellas Board awarded the city of Tarpon Springs a $100,000 concept grant to create design plans to improve Disston Avenue as part of the county's Complete Streets Program.

This project will focus on safety and accessibility for everyone in the community while encouraging redevelopment and economic growth.

“This award will be an incredible opportunity to increase safety and traffic flow for the area,” said Tarpon Springs Vice Mayor Jacob Karr. “We are grateful for our partnership with Forward Pinellas and looking forward to improving the Disston Avenue corridor for the residents of Tarpon Springs.”

The grant will be used to fund planning and design for a concept plan for Disston Avenue.

The project will focus on creating a corridor that will revitalize a portion of the historic Union Academy neighborhood, provide more connections for people on bikes, walking or driving, and encourage desired redevelopment and economic growth.

The city must spend the funds to develop a plan for the roadway over the next year .

Disston Avenue is located in the historic Union Academy neighborhood, one of Pinellas County’s
oldest African American communities and originally settled by workers employed in the local lumber and sponging industries.

The neighborhood is laid out in a traditional 19th-century grid street pattern and portions of the area still contain the old brick streets.

Most of the corridor, including the Union Academy neighborhood, is within Tarpon’s only census tract designated as a federal Economic Opportunity Zone. An opportunity zone is a low-income tract designated by the governor to receive funding and incentives to spur economic development and job creation.

About 25,528 people live in Tarpon Springs and an estimated 20 percent live within a quarter mile of the Disstan Avenue project corridor.

One of the earlier planning efforts in this neighborhood was the Union Academy Neighborhood – A Solutions Plan, completed in April 1997. This plan was a citizen -driven effort to identify transportation, land use, housing, economic and other infrastructure issues and
solutions.

There have been recent redevelopment efforts to infill and revitalize the Union Academy neighborhood, particularly related to providing affordable housing in the neighborhood by building on vacant lots, improving homes in disrepair and demolishing (and redeveloping) dilapidated housing.

The nearby Tarpon Springs Downtown Community Redevelopment Area offers a Building Code Assistance Grant, Façade Improvement Grant Program and a Restaurant Recruitment Grant Program.

Additionally, the city’s Special Area Plan, adopted in 2011, also encompasses the CRA area and provides development options and incentives for mixed uses and infill.

Problems that will be addressed in the plan include:

• Gaps in the sidewalk network; sidewalks that are
• narrow or in poor condition
• Inadequate crossing infrastructure
• Underused open space
• Low-income, transit-dependent population
• Parallel, north-south road corridors in the city are at
• maximum width and will be over capacity in the near future
• Lack of wayfinding to the nearby Pinellas Trail
• Localized flooding on parts of Disston Avenue

Courtesy Forward Pinellas

Over the past four years, the Forward Pinellas Board has awarded more than $5 million toward the Complete Streets Program, which provides opportunities for land use changes by creating opportunities for walkable, bikeable and more livable communities.