Drew Park — Tampa, Florida

Drew Park takes its name from an airfield. According to the City of Tampa neighborhood profile, Drew Park was originally Drew Field, named for cattleman and land developer John H. Drew. The city describes the field as Tampa's first municipal airport, a 130-acre grass airfield that opened in 1928. The Tampa International Airport newsroom gives the exact date: the field was dedicated as Tampa's municipal airport on February 22, 1928, on land that John H. Drew owned.

That airfield is the direct ancestor of two places on the modern Tampa map. Its runways grew into Tampa International Airport, and the land along its eastern edge, where the Army later built barracks and offices, became the Drew Park neighborhood. The name therefore survives twice in northwest Tampa: on the neighborhood and its street signs, and in the history of the airport that the Hillsborough County Aviation Authority operates next door. The airport notes that it is approaching its 100th anniversary, counted from that 1928 dedication.

The City of Tampa states that at the onset of World War II the federal government took over the field and developed a military base containing airstrips, barracks, field hospitals, and a German and Italian POW camp. The Museum of Florida History, part of the Florida Department of State, records that Drew became a separate base and headquarters for the III Fighter Command once MacDill was complete, encompassing fifteen square miles and hosting as many as 25,000 personnel.

The museum reports that one thousand ten-man combat bombing crews trained at Drew during the war, along with signal air-warning and engineering aviation training. It also documents the prisoner camp three miles from Drew Field, which held 395 German prisoners between August 1944 and March 1946; they had been transferred from Camp Blanding to work in quartermaster workshops, kitchens, canteens and warehouses at the Tampa base.

The war also left a road. The City of Tampa states that Dale Mabry Highway was built in 1943 to link Drew Field with MacDill to the south, which is why the highway that now forms the eastern edge of Drew Park runs the length of the Interbay corridor between the two airfields.

After the war the land went back to local hands. The Museum of Florida History states that Drew Army Airfield was returned to the City of Tampa in 1946 and became Tampa International Airport, and the airport reports that the first international flights began on December 15, 1946. The airfield kept flying; the base buildings on its eastern side took a different path.

Tampa International Airport describes that eastern strip directly: on the east side of Drew Field, the federal government developed a military base complete with barracks, field hospitals, and military offices, and today that area is known as Drew Park. The same article notes that propellers appear on signs marking the entrance to the Drew Park neighborhood and are even pressed into the sidewalks, and that some original World War II structures still stand, including the original base theater at the corner of West Alva Street and North Hubert Avenue.

The airport history also points to a surviving fragment inside the airfield fence: a patch of cement just north of the touchdown zone of runway 19L that was part of the original Drew Field airfield, now used for testing paint equipment and for training airport police K-9 teams.

Drew Park is one of the City of Tampa's Community Redevelopment Areas. The City of Tampa CRA FAQ explains that Florida law, Chapter 163, Part III, lets local governments designate a CRA where conditions such as substandard structures, a shortage of affordable housing or inadequate infrastructure exist. A redevelopment trust fund then collects tax increment, the growth in taxable value after the CRA is created, and the FAQ states that all such funds must be used for redevelopment purposes within that area. The city counts over 140 CRAs statewide.

The Drew Park CRA legal description draws the district in Sections 4, 5, 8 and 9 of Township 29 South, Range 18 East, Hillsborough County. The boundary starts where Dale Mabry Highway (S.R. 600) meets Tampa Bay Boulevard, works west and north along Woodlawn Avenue, Lauber Way, Ohio Avenue, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Boulevard, Hesperides Street and Crest Avenue to West Shore Boulevard, runs north to Hillsborough Avenue (S.R. 580), and returns east to Dale Mabry Highway.

The Drew Park CRA page, updated May 7, 2026, frames the district's pitch around location: proximity to Tampa International Airport, Hillsborough Community College, professional sports facilities and major employers. It calls Drew Park one of the few remaining areas in Tampa with affordable industrial land and space, and reports that Electric Supply recently completed a 35,000-square-foot expansion while streetscape work proceeds on Lois Avenue.

The Drew Park CRA Programs page, updated September 24, 2026, lists three projects. The largest is the Lois Ave and Grady Ave Landscape, Streetscape, and Safety Audit Improvements Project, covering N. Lois Avenue from W. Tampa Bay Boulevard, including its roundabout, to W. Hillsborough Avenue, and N. Grady Avenue from W. MLK Boulevard to W. Crest Avenue. Its CRA investment is $2,486,797 and its status is construction underway.

The second is the Drew Park Connectivity Sidewalk, Safety, and Mobility Project, a $592,000 CRA investment to identify sidewalk gaps and safety improvements in public rights of way across the Drew Park CRA, run with the city's Mobility Division and Parks and Recreation Department; plans had been submitted for a right-of-way permit. The third is a proposed Hubert Avenue Neighborhood Park, a CRA investment of $850,000 for which conceptual design has been completed.

The City of Tampa neighborhood profile adds two capital entries in Council District 6: a Drew Park CRA Mobility, Connectivity, and Safety Improvements project with an estimated cost of $9,504,000 funded by the Community Redevelopment Agency, and resurfacing of MLK Boulevard from Air Cargo Road to Dale Mabry estimated at $950,000 from the Local Option Gas Tax.

The City of Tampa profile sums up the land use: auto dealerships along much of the eastern Dale Mabry Highway boundary, shopping and restaurants on the northern Hillsborough Avenue boundary, and, because of mixed-use zoning, a core of light industry along with housing. The same profile states that Drew Park encompasses the main campus of Hillsborough Community College.

Baseball is the district's best known tenant. According to MLB.com, George M. Steinbrenner Field was built in 1996 as a 31-acre complex and serves as spring home to the New York Yankees and summer home to the Class A affiliate Tampa Tarpons. It was renamed on March 27, 2008, following unanimous resolutions by the Hillsborough County Commission and the Tampa City Council; the older city profile still uses its first name, Legends Field.