When the Tampa Bay Rays baseball team first moved to St. Petersburg, they were first known as the “Devil Rays.” The name was most appropriate, as the Boys of Summer play in Tropicana Field over the paved-over graveyards of what was once known as the Gas Plant District, former home of 800 mostly Black families and 100 Black-owned businesses.
Promises were made back in 1986 for reparation programs for the families and businesses including help with financial relocation. But those promises were brazenly broken, deepening the South Side’s legacy of poverty and under-development.
Tampa Bay Rays — Serial Predators.
Now, with the Rays scampering off to hopefully greener pastures in Tampa, residents of Tampa Park Apartments are to be cleared out within the next month. The Tampa Bay Times reports, “The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, or HUD, this week sent letters to about 170 families informing them they will be moved out of the complex and into Section 8 housing beginning in August. It also informed the owners that it will no longer subsidize rents in more than half of the complex’s roughly 370 apartments.”
“Nestled between Historic Ybor City and downtown Tampa,” the Times continues, “it is barely a home run away from the site the Rays eventually chose, which could entice developers looking to build bars, restaurants and residential development to cater to fans.”
To be “tractored by the cats …”
Channel 10 News adds, “Some have insinuated that the property’s nonprofit owner, the Lily White Security Benefit Association [no, I didn’t make that name up! — Ed.], intentionally allowed conditions to deteriorate because the 23 acres it sits on would be a potential location for a new Tampa Bay Rays ball park, or at least be in very close proximity to the team’s chosen footprint in Ybor City. They believe the area could be rezoned and redeveloped for restaurants, bars and higher-end apartments.”
Once again, promises are being made to the 1,200 people set to be displaced. They are about as good as the promises made in 1986. Back then, it was proclaimed that the ballpark would ignite economic development, but the only “revitalization” that was “revitalized” was a single sports bar, and the area surrounding Tropicana is a wasteland devoid of humanity when the players aren’t chasing balls around the field.
Meanwhile … they’re destroying Jordan Park
The Cure(D).
Back in St. Petersburg’s already besieged Black community, Jordan Park — a 237-unit public housing complex — is slated for demolition. The St. Petersburg Housing Authority plans to replace the sentimental and historic marker of that community with an apartment building for seniors. With rents in St. Petersburg skyrocketing, the vouchers the city is promising will hardly cover the forced evacuation of its mainly Black residents.
Rose Roby, Pinellas County Green Party and CURED.
“From Tropicana Field to Jordan Park, these attacks on the Black community have to end,” stated Rose Roby, co-chair of the Pinellas County Green Party. “But we have to go beyond just resisting them. That’s ultimately fighting the gentrifiers and their whole rotten Kriseman administration on their terms.
“Reparations must be paid,” she continued. “That’s why we are also supporting CURED — that’s Communities United for Reparations and Economic Development. That’s why we support CURED’s demand for Reparations for the city’s devastating destruction of historic independent black economic districts and institutions, and the forced displacement of entire black communities in the name of downtown economic development. We also their call for a Sixteen Street South Development project that promotes. supports and creates independent, indigenous independent black-owned commerce. We need a public policy of economic development of the black community instead of the current public policy of police containment.
“But we can’t do this as long as we continue to place our hopes in the Democratic Party. Last year progressives put their hopes in re-electing the Kriseman administration, and a mostly Democratic City Council. But all along they have harbored Kevin King, a known sexual predator, as Kriseman’s chief of staff and Chief of Policy & Public Engagement. It’s high time we cleaned house. Kriseman must resign! King must go! Jordan Park must not be destroyed!”
— submitted by Jeff Roby
July 21, 2018
