Tampa's $100 Million South Howard Flood Plan Goes on Display Tuesday, Days Before a Council Vote

The City of Tampa will put the South Howard Flood Relief Project in front of residents and business owners on Tuesday, Aug. 11, from 6 to 8 p.m. at Bayshore Baptist Church, 3111 W. Morrison Ave., and it is the last scheduled chance to question the design-build team face to face before City Council decides whether to authorize construction. The estimated cost is $100 million. Every Tampa stormwater ratepayer has a stake in it, and the households most directly affected are in Parkland Estates and Palma Ceia Pines, where between 150 and 250 homes sat in floodwater for roughly 12 hours during Hurricane Milton.

The open house is free and drop-in. No registration. The city says engineers will have renderings from the 60% design milestone on hand and will take questions one-on-one rather than from a podium.

What the project actually builds

South Howard Avenue sits in a bowl. Runoff collects there, and the existing pipes cannot move it out fast enough. The fix on the table is a gravity system: about 1.5 miles of 10-by-10-foot concrete box culverts buried under the corridor, plus pipes and inlets, carrying water to retention ponds without pumps. Project documents describe more than 8,000 linear feet of box culvert, with the recommended route running under W. Swann Avenue and pipes extending into Parkland Estates.

The city's Infrastructure and Mobility Administration says the system would cut street flooding by roughly 95% in a strong summer storm. Its position on the alternatives is blunt: the corridor needs surgery, not a Band-Aid, and maintenance alone will not stop structural and street flooding.

The fight over records and numbers

The SoHo Business Alliance sued the city on June 5, accusing officials of violating Florida's Sunshine Law by withholding cost-benefit analyses, modeling studies and communications with project lead Kimmins Contracting ahead of the council vote. The group says it has already paid $27,000 for records. Its spokesman, Steve Michelini, argues the cheaper path is refurbishing what already exists and clearing retention ponds the group says are full of debris. Restaurant, bar and retail owners along the avenue are also bracing for years of excavation and lane closures.

Local news reports have surfaced two figures the alliance keeps returning to. A 2022 Southwest Florida Water Management District analysis scored the project at 0.77 on benefit-cost, below the district's fundable threshold, and found it would remove only three homes from the 100-year floodplain. The city's own preliminary engineering report concluded the system would have lowered Milton's water in Palma Ceia Pines by 1.4 feet. Project documents also show the bigger relief for that neighborhood does not arrive until a later phase.

How it gets paid for

Council approved moving forward in January and agreed to issue $21 million in stormwater bonds. At a January workshop, the city's chief financial officer laid out a plan totaling just over $98 million, and roughly $40 million of that is still labeled potential rather than secured. The city has said there will be no tax increase tied to the project.

Potential funding	Amount
FDEP Resilient Florida grant (disputed)	$25M
Tampa-Hillsborough Expressway Authority	$11M
Community Investment Tax backstop	$9M
Hurricane Ian hazard mitigation	~$4M

That $25 million is the crux of the alliance's complaint. Its attorney, Edward de la Parte Jr., wrote to all seven council members and to city administrators in February arguing the state had already told the group the application was not approved for the coming year's flooding and sea level rise plan. The city responds that it has identified multiple possible sources, including current and future grants and legislative money, and that only $8.4 million comes out of the stormwater improvement fund. City officials have declined to discuss the pending litigation.

Cost has moved a long way. The 2022 estimate, based on preliminary engineering, was $64.5 million.

The budget side of the same question

Council spent Monday morning on the money. FY27 Budget Workshop #2, the second of three special call sessions, started at 9 a.m. at Old City Hall, 315 E. Kennedy Blvd., and was set aside specifically for Mobility funds: Transportation and Stormwater. It sits inside Mayor Jane Castor's final proposed budget of just under $2.04 billion. Public comment at those workshops is capped at three minutes per speaker, after all presentations.

Workshop #3 is Monday, Aug. 17. The construction decision itself is separate: the 60% drawings go to council alongside a proposed Guaranteed Maximum Price contract, expected this summer, and no box culvert gets built until that passes. Tuesday night at the church is where residents can see the drawings first. Details and project updates are posted at SHstormwater.com.

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