Envy Apartment

The city of Tampa is on the cusp of a total makeover. With billions of dollars in investment and dozens of new apartment, condo, office and cultural buildings in the pipeline, the city's skyline and surrounding communities are poised to look a whole lot different than what it does today. But dreaming up the future of Tampa doesn't come without its challenges. For all the promises of a new urban core filled with hotels, parks, food halls and stores, there are also potential pitfalls. The Tampa Bay Times identified the five key obstacles that stand in the way of some of the biggest projects proposed in Hillsborough County . Many of these challenges are ones local politicians and business leaders have been fighting for years to find a solution. Others are fairly new territory, but still pose a real threat to the region's continued growth. [LOREN ELLIOTT | Times] A construction site is seen just north of Amalie Arena in downtown Tampa , Fla., on Monday, May 1, 2017. Curr...

Guests no longer can stay at the Stahlstown Hotel, and students can't attend the town's one-room schoolhouses. Those landmark buildings have disappeared from the Cook Township community 's landscape, but they still have a place in a scaled-down version of the village to be unveiled at 7 p.m. Friday at the township community center . The diorama has been in development for more than two decades, but work kicked into high gear the past five years. Harry Lenhart, 78, who lives just over the border in Mt. Pleasant Township , has been a constant force in the project since conceiving it with his late brother-in-law, Ivan Campbell, part owner of Laurel Valley Aluminum and a community center board member . "It's been a commitment," Lenhart said of developing the 8-foot-square model of Stahlstown. "Every time you added something to it, it looked a little bit better." A carpenter, cabinetmaker and model-railroad enthusiast, Lenhart applied his interests...

At the ribbon cutting this month for the Wesley Village affordable housing complex in Garden Grove, Laura Archuleta couldn ’t resist referencing Joni Mitchell ’s 1970 environmental protest “Big Yellow Taxi.” Built on underused land that’s part of the Garden Grove United Methodist Church campus on Main Street, Wesley Village offered Archuleta , president of the nonprofit community organization Jamboree Housing Corp ., a chance to riff on one of Mitchell’s most famous lyrics. Where Mitchell sang “They paved paradise/And put up a parking lot,” Archuleta told about 300 people packed into the steamy church sanctuary on a hot afternoon that “Today we are going to learn how a group of dedicated organizations and individuals re-purposed a parking lot and put up a paradise.” Then she and others who spoke, including a single mom with six children who now reside at Wesley Village , told how the project became reality through a unique collaboration that involved the church, Jamboree and other...