Archive: July, 2003

Latest News (July 12th, 2003)

On Wednesday, June 25th City of Temple Terrace Community Redevelopment Director R. Matthew Shannon (Downtown Revitalization Project Manager) resigned his position as our first CRA Director, effective immediately. The City has placed an ad to hire a new CRA Director with the knowledge and experience to manage the Downtown Revitalization process.

Ideally, our new CRA Director would have experience with:

  • Both the public (political) and the private (entrepreneurial) sector
  • Planning, and implementation of New Urbanist projects of the highest quality
  • Professional real estate marketing, negotiation, and brokerage
  • Commercial property acquisition, sales, and leasing
  • Construction and property management
  • Development, developers and development teams

We anticipate there will be a new TTRA Director Selection Committee to assist the City Manager in selecting our new TTRA Director from the applicants.

On Monday, June 30th, the Town Planner Selection Committee met for the first time to begin the process of creating the short list of three Town Planners from the original list of fourteen. The City Manager is overseeing the selection committee. The Committee will meet again on Monday, July 28th to review the short list recommendations. Once the TTRA approves the short list, interviews, portfolio reviews and negotiations will commence for the three Town Planners.

Since the property appraisals have been received for Terrace Plaza and the Burger King parcel (see below under June 17th news), we hope the negotiation process proceeds without delay. We remain optimistic that we may yet avoid the costly, complex, and less-than-ideal “eminent domain” or “quick-take” scenario.

The property appraisals for Beacon Plaza, Regions Bank, and the Chevron Station parcels have been more difficult to obtain, as the appraisers/inspectors have not been able to access some of the properties. We hope this problem can be solved quickly so the City can continue the assemblage of the TTRA (Temple Terrace Revitalization Authority) properties. This assemblage must be accomplished before the selected Town Planner conducts the Citizen Charette resulting in our Downtown Master Plan with design guidelines, market analysis, traffic patterns and zoning codes such as “SmartCode” (a proprietary New Urbanist product).

Lastly, the Strategic Teamwork and Redevelopment (STAR) commitee, the citizens advisory committee for the downtown revitalization, passed a resolution on May 19 recommending that the City request appraisals for the TTRA property south of Chicago Avenue to the Hillsborough River, as well as the Doral Oaks apartment complex.