West River Redevelopment — Tampa, Florida

West River is the rebuilding of a stretch of Tampa's west bank, north of Interstate 275, where the North Boulevard Homes public housing complex stood for about seven decades. The City of Tampa and the Tampa Housing Authority, working with the developer Related, are replacing it with a mixed income neighborhood of apartments, senior housing, townhomes and shops, and the effort now also covers the 18 acre Rome Yard, a former city maintenance yard just to the north. The West River Redevelopment Plan sets the goal as a genuinely diverse and economically integrated community open to the Hillsborough River.

The project has been measured several ways since it began. The city's plan describes 120 acres and more than 1,600 new homes; press accounts from 2017 to 2022 describe a West River neighborhood of about 150 acres; and housing counts in published plans have ranged from about 2,100 to 2,200 units. Each figure below carries the date and source that reported it.

The city defines the West River plan area as 120 acres bounded by Rome Avenue, Columbus Avenue, the Hillsborough River and Interstate 275. The plan recommends reconnecting the district's streets and blocks, strong ties with public schools and community services, and links along the river south of I-275 into North Hyde Park and on to Tampa Bay. The City of Tampa posts a West River executive summary dated January 2014 and a revised redevelopment plan dated February 2016, both products of the InVision Tampa master planning process that 83 Degrees Media dates to 2011.

Physical changes were part of the 2017 West River design. 83 Degrees reported that August that streets once dead ending at the North Boulevard Homes fence would be connected, that a multi use trail would run along the west side of the river from Columbus Drive to the University of Tampa, and that a land swap with Hillsborough County Public Schools would move school athletic fields away from a riverfront spot to open it for development.

North Boulevard Homes was the starting point. 83 Degrees Media described it in March 2020 as Tampa's oldest public housing project, a complex of barracks style buildings that held more than 800 apartments. Before demolition, the Tampa Housing Authority spent 2015 and 2016 relocating 811 families to other affordable housing in Tampa, including the ENCORE! Tampa development near Ybor City, which served as the model for West River. Former residents were promised the option of returning to one of roughly 840 affordable apartments planned on the site.

Demolition began in 2017, and by March 2019 83 Degrees reported that crews had taken down the last 1940s era barracks building left at West River. In February 2019 FOX 13 quoted then Mayor Bob Buckhorn calling the effort the most aggressive and ambitious repurposing of a Tampa neighborhood the city had undertaken, and reported that more than 40 acres of the former North Boulevard Homes land and eight acres of city land once used by the Water Department and Parks and Recreation would be redeveloped.

Senior housing came first. The Renaissance at West River, a six story, 160 unit building for seniors at Main Street and Rome Avenue, broke ground on May 10, 2018, at a cost of $46 million, according to 83 Degrees, and a renovated Mary Bethune Apartments for seniors followed. In March 2019 the Tampa Housing Authority began the first of five fully funded mixed income West River buildings totaling 796 apartments.

The next Tampa milestone was Boulevard Tower. On March 10, 2020, officials broke ground at North Oregon Avenue and West Main Street on three buildings with 371 apartments and a little over 6,300 square feet of ground floor retail. In June 2022, Mayor Jane Castor broke ground on Canopy, which FOX 13 called the newest phase of a West River redevelopment covering 150 acres, with nearly $200 million in public and private money committed to mixed income housing and a Publix supermarket announced by Related for the neighborhood.

Rome Yard is the northern piece of West River. In October 2020 the City of Tampa sought proposals for about 18 acres of city owned land west of the Hillsborough River, east of Rome Avenue, south of Columbus Drive and north of Spruce Street, inside the West Tampa Community Redevelopment Area. Six proposals arrived by the December 15, 2020 deadline, and in February 2021 the city's selection committee advanced three finalists, one of them Related Urban Development Group with the Tampa Housing Authority, with the West Tampa CRA Community Advisory Committee taking part in selection.

Related won the site. On May 21, 2024, the City of Tampa broke ground on Gallery at Rome Yards, the first phase: 234 apartments, 80 percent of them reserved for households at or below 80 percent of Area Median Income and the remaining 20 percent for workforce housing, plus five live and work units and a workforce training center. The city expects Gallery at Rome Yards to be completed in December 2026. At build out the Rome Yards master plan calls for 954 mixed income units, new green space, a community amphitheater and a brick observation tower styled after West Tampa's cigar factories. 83 Degrees reported in March 2023 that 40 percent of the Rome Yard development budget, an estimated $75 million, would go to minority and women owned businesses.

The river is the organizing idea. Julian B. Lane Riverfront Park, rebuilt on 25 acres and reopened in May 2018, sits between West River and the water, and the city's 2020 Rome Yard announcement noted that the west bank would soon gain an extension of the Tampa Riverwalk paid for with a $24 million federal BUILD grant. Those links put West River across the Hillsborough River from the Straz Center and downtown Tampa's office core.

The Tampa project also sits inside a citywide housing push. In the 2026 State of the City address, Mayor Castor reported more than $100 million in city affordable housing investment since 2019, including 8,300 new affordable homes, and listed West River and Rome Yards with The Marquee, Bel-Mar, Robles Park and the Army Navy site in north downtown as developments redefining affordable housing in Tampa.