The Value of A Strong Membership
By Marilyn Olsen
President, DNA
The Downtown Neighborhood Association over the past dozen years has built a strong membership of Downtown residents, giving us a real voice in major issues. This was never more evident than in the November election, when voters passed an amendment to the City Charter that mandates a Master Plan for the Downtown waterfront.
The association has long advocated such a plan to ensure the protection of what we believe is the city's most valuable asset, and to guide future changes in the best way possible.
With considerable input from our members, in 2009 we developed the Downtown Waterfront Vision, which those members approved unanimously that October. We have met with City Council members individually and made presentations at City Council workshops to share our goals and encourage the development and adoption of a Waterfront Master Plan.
While city staff had begun work on a draft, we felt that the absence of a formal commitment and timetable while major changes are currently being planned, made it imperative that we work through the Charter Review Commission to add an amendment mandating its development and adoption by 2015. The CRC placed our amendment on the ballot and voters in November approved it. It was gratifying that Downtown residents were even more strongly in favor of the Master Plan than were voters citywide.
Without a strong membership we could not have done that. We need to continue to have a strong membership to be a meaningful part of the dialog that guides not only the development of the Waterfront Master Plan, but all the decisions that impact our quality of life and the vibrancy of the entire city.
If you are a current member, we thank you for your involvement and support throughout the year, and we hope that you will renew your membership for 2012. If you are not a member, please join us and help us make a better Waterfront and a stronger community. (Click the "Join DNA" button at the upper right of this web page.)
By Timothy J. Baker
Editor, The DNA News
In 1990, the total population of Census Tract 215 was 3,439. Ten years later, in 2000, it had slipped a little to 3,249. After another decade, according to the most recent Census, the total had inched back upward to 3,333.
The numbers paint a static picture. Over a 20-year period, the population in the district decreased by a grand total of 106 people. That’s a loss of about five people per year. Nothing to write home about.
But wait a second! District 215 covers the north part of Downtown St. Petersburg, from Central to 5th Avenue North, from Tampa Bay to ML King Street. For about half that 20-year period, beginning in the late 1990s, District 215 was a major participant in the housing boom. Heck, some people worried about overcrowding.
In 1990, there was not a single waterfront high-rise in District 215. (The Bayrfont Tower was there, but it is just outside of District 215.) By the time of the 2010 Census, Beach Drive could boast the Florencia, the Park Shore, 400 Beach Drive and the Cloisters. Don’t those places hold a lot of new residents?
Well, a couple of things are worth noting.
• Some of the residents of those high-rises don’t count in the Census numbers because St. Petersburg is not their primary residence. Those people are counted in some other tract.
• The circumstances for each of the high-rises were different. The Cloisters, for example, was built on a vacant lot, and most of its residents came from outside of Tract 215. So, that created a net addition for the district. 400 Beach Drive, on the other hand, replaced a number of smaller apartment buildings, which in total had more residents than the high-rise. So, that project likely created a net loss for the neighborhood.
• When the housing boom came to a crashing halt, numerous projects that had been approved for construction by the city came to a halt. In some of those cases, existing buildings had already been torn down. Some of the displaced residents may have stayed in the neighborhood, but others did not, creating another net loss for the neighborhood. Just one example of this is the vacant lot on the southwest corner of 1st Street and 4th Avenue North. That lot previously held two small apartment buildings.
While the total population hardly budged over two decades, there were definite swings in the neighborhood demographics.
In 1990, the median age of Tract 215 was 62.3, relatively high compared with the rest of the city or Pinellas County. The 90s saw a big drop, however, to a median age of 53.4. In other words, the district got almost 15 per cent younger during that period. In the decade that just ended, though, the pendulum went back the other way and the median age went up to 59.8.
The Census breaks down the population into smaller age groups, so a fine-grain look is also possible. Those numbers overall show substantial increases in residents aged 45 to 65, with decreases of the very young and very old. So, the district grew more towards middle age. Click here for a table showing the specific numbers.
In other parts of Downtown, the picture is not yet clear, as the Census Bureau changed the boundaries of the Census Tracts and renumbered them. New Tract 286 covers the south half of Downtown, plus areas such as Roser Park and the Old Southeast. That area saw a population increase of 26.6 percent from 2000 to 2010. And, new Tract 216, which includes the western part of Downtown, increased by 2.3 percent.
