historic st pete & tampa neighborhoods?

[gypsychic]

Originally Posted by vilehelm

My wife and I did our first drive through St. Pete. (and her first drive through Tampa Bay area period).

First impressions of St. Pete, everything is a little more cramped and smaller scale than I expected. I knew that it would be tight but wow those pics on realtor.com are a little decieving.

Now I'm used to small scale houses, I live in 920 sq.ft. cottage in Atlanta, so I know when I look at a house if it really is the square footage they say it is and I gotta say ... some of these guys need to check their rulers. Maybe they are counting Linai areas, garages ... pools and carports. :P

The "new northeast" is not all that charming and the pricing for those houses seem a bit off. Basically we looked through Edgemoor, Meadowlawn etc. and a couple others and decided unless we found an incredible bargain, and then talked them down, we would pass on everything up north. I know this will sound a little silly since I barely know anyting about the neighborhood but I just can't see those house moving until the market up there drops everthing a good 20% more.

After that we headed south, had a quick bite to eat at The Limey (nice place for a beer, so-so pub food ... mosquitos!) and then went all the way down to Central and started working our way up, kinda zigzagging around. I wanted to see the Shuffleboard Club (I liked it!). We were both pretty pleased with "Old Northeast", I had a hard time figuring out where Kenwood was and I didn't have my notes with me.

While I think the prices in that area could stand to drop a little bit, the area struck me as one that could actually have some value as an investment, as opposed to New Northeast. Yes it's crampt but no more so than New Northeast.

There are some pretty sweet houses in Old Northeast, the 20's bungalows and even some 50's and 60's slick brick/cinder buidlings. You have to be into that sort of thing to really appreciate it but it can be very cool.

...

In Tampa we're curious about the Seminole Heights and Riverside Heights area, mostly from an investment point of view. Is it as tight there as it is in St. Pete? Anyone?

...

Will keep ya'll updated on the search. My wife and I are not 100% sold on anything yet and may just drop back 10 and rent.

vilehelm - I see on another post by you that you have found something in Riverside Heights - as a native of Tampa, I really like that area, I think for an inner city neighborhood it is really pretty, and probably a little safer than some other areas. I don't recommend Tampa Heights because there is a very high crime factor there. Seminole Heights is a little better, but there is crime there also. If I were to live inside Tampa again, I would have looked in Riverside Heights - I don't think you can go wrong there.

Interesting that you didn't like St. Pete, it seems so many love the area - guess you are just an "urban" kind of guy? Anyway, good luck on getting a good deal in Riverside!

[vilehelm]

Originally Posted by gypsychic

vilehelm - I see on another post by you that you have found something in Riverside Heights - as a native of Tampa, I really like that area, I think for an inner city neighborhood it is really pretty, and probably a little safer than some other areas. I don't recommend Tampa Heights because there is a very high crime factor there. Seminole Heights is a little better, but there is crime there also. If I were to live inside Tampa again, I would have looked in Riverside Heights - I don't think you can go wrong there.

Interesting that you didn't like St. Pete, it seems so many love the area - guess you are just an "urban" kind of guy? Anyway, good luck on getting a good deal in Riverside!

Thanks very much ... it was very emotional experience, per usual with buying a house.

Not to say that we didn't like SOME of the houses in old northeast but there were just way to many negatives for us. We couldn't afford the ones we really liked and you could literally see where the major elevation change happens east of 4th street and anything in that area we weren't interested in due to the flooding issues.

We did see one house near Woodlawn Circle, found after looking at it was a preforeclosure and we didn't have that kind of time. In retrospect I'm glad. HOWEVER ... I will definitely try to get over the bridge for Friday Night shuffleboard a few times. :P

We are really happy with Riverside Heights, it's a bit of a mix bag architecture wise, which I like. Has some great little houses all the way from the 1920s to the 2000s. We did a lot of in detail searching on the crime trackers and found that it was quite the oasis of inactivity. Drove around the neighborhood at night and found it to be quietand reasonably well lit (although I gotta say their was way less nighttime lighting on the houses than I was expecting).

Seminole Heights looks like a great community, funky and very much like what we were used to in Atlanta. They also have what looks like a pretty active communit association. We dropped by on Ybor (during the day) ... I've head it's a little freaky at night but looked fun during the day. If you could combine that with Seminole Heights and take out the scariness you'd probably have Little Five Points in Atlanta.

We wree glad to find those couple places that made us feel way more comfortable about the upcoming move.

Fingers crossed, we'll be posting as Tampa residents at the end of August.

[tampaguy03]

Vilhelm - Just curious since your looking at historic areas what you though about the Hyde Park Historic District Neighborhood in Tampa.

[vilehelm]

If someone would give me a +500k loan for 0% interest I'd be all over that place.

Hyde Park has some great houses and we did spend some time driving around there just to see what we could see. We only scratched the surface of what was there but it looked like a great area, South Tampa is just too expensive for us at the moment.

I plan to go back and check out that retro store "squaresville". It was on Howard I think.

I've also gotten very drunk at the Dubliner with clients on some work trips and eaten at a great sushi place around the corner. The only other place I've been to in that area was SideBerns, that was a while ago but I remember it being good.

Something I haven't found in Tampa so far is a BIG public green space like Central Park in NY or on a smaller scale Piedmont Park in Atlanta (designed by the same designer). The city seems like it needs some real central communal area. Even Providence RI where I went to school had a real town center that they extended into the canal area. They worked hard to get it done and now they hold first night there similar to what they do in Boston Commons.

Maybe it's supposed to be the river walk project? I dunno. Not sure what that is yet.

I thought the Hillsborough River was lovely and my wife and I were really really impressed by the lack of trash we saw in ponds and rivers. Do the alligators eat it all? When we got back to Atlanta we were once again reminded of this city's potential and the lack of care so many have for it. Trash and ciggarette buts everywhere in East Atlanta. What the hell is wrong with people, use a frickin' ashtray!

Whoops, sorry, end rant.