There’s a county-owned option less than a mile away
A vacant parcel roughly 0.8 miles away — on 46th St (Fowler Ave Central) — could host this fire station without clearing a residential canopy. And it isn’t a guess: the Hillsborough County Property Appraiser’s record confirms the basics. We are not engineers, and we don’t claim to know either site’s final cost. That is exactly the point: before the City spends taxpayer money clearing a mature canopy on a residential street, it should show the public a side-by-side site and cost comparison. We’re asking for that comparison — and for the City and County to work together.
The two lots, side by side
| The chosen lot — 4902 E Whiteway Dr | The alternative — 46th St / Fowler Ave | |
|---|---|---|
| Parcel (folio) | 139687.0000 | 140139-0000 |
| Owner of record | City of Tampa | Hillsborough County (Real Estate Dept) |
| Zoning | Residential Single-Family (RS-60) | CI — not residential |
| Size | ~3 acres | ~3.14 acres (136,778 sq ft) |
| Status | Wooded; occupied homes across the street | Vacant (per county record) |
| Trees | Requires removing ~97% of protected trees | No residential canopy to clear |
| Flood / drainage | Confirming from FEMA/county record | Confirming from FEMA/county record |
Flood-zone rows are marked pending until we verify both lots from the official FEMA/county maps — we’ll publish the designations here rather than characterize them from memory. The alternative fronts Fowler Avenue and has a railroad carve-out in its legal description, so we make no claim that it is “quieter” — only what the county record supports: county-owned, vacant, right-sized, and non-residential.
Less than a mile away sits a roughly 3-acre, vacant, non-residentially-zoned parcel that Hillsborough County already owns. We’re not against a fire station — we’re asking the City and County to work together and put a real side-by-side site and cost comparison on the public record. Was this county-owned parcel evaluated? If it was considered and rejected for real reasons — drainage, cost, access — let’s see that analysis. If it was never seriously evaluated, that’s a question the public deserves answered before construction begins.