Flooding on W Fountain & W Parkland Boulevards in Tampa, Florida on Aug. 2, 2015. Credit: City of Tampa
The South Howard Flood Relief Project returns for a vote before Tampa City Council on Oct. 23, 2025. Requested is max price of $4.1 million to start preliminary work for the project.
Items 66 & 67 on the Oct. 23, 2025 agenda is a request to approve the Guaranteed Maximum Price (GMP) of $4,132,878.38 for early work efforts that “include, but not limited to: maintenance of traffic (MOT), site preparation, installation of water mains, and roadway reconstruction” on the South Howard Flood Relief project.
Which comes as a bit of a surprise as there hasn’t been any presentation to council on the results of the $7.7 million design approved last November. There was a public presentation in June which outlines the expanded scope of the project beyond the original JMP Study. As to alternate routes considered, there was no alternate considered south of Howard Avenue and Bristol Avenue. The only alternatives that were considered were west of Howard Avenue and now includes the neighborhoods north of Swann Avenue.
The rest of the slides from that presentation are all “potential”—“Potential Design Features”, “Potential Bayshore Gateway”, “Potential Selmon Expressway Gateway” and “concepts”—“Concept Design north of Morrison Ave.”, “Concept Design at Marjory Ave.” You get the picture. With so many potential features and concepts, one would expect that presented prior to moving forward with any ground breaking.
There is strong opposition to this project based on the Howard Avenue route and those folks aren’t going to change their mind. There were also a large contingent of people who were hesitant to support it based on the information provided. They didn’t believe the work proposed in the original study would solve the problem of flooding.
And to remind folks, we’re talking about every day summer afternoon thunderstorms flooding (five-year, eight-hour flood events), not 1-in-500 year hurricanes producing 15 inches of rain in 12 hours.
The previous Director of Mobility Vik Bhide assured council and public this design scope would include looking further into the floodplain than what the original study did and it appears they followed through with that. At least in relation to Palma Ceia Pines. There were others that opposed the project merely on cost. Find smaller, more surgical solutions for short term relief and kick the can on the full bowel replacement now. That’s what this is. It’s major surgery for Parkland Estates, Palma Ceia Pines as well as all of the neighborhoods bordered by Howard Avenue. And while it’s cut open for that, the plan is to replace some arteries in the form of new potable water lines.
So there’s an expanded route with a lot of concepts and potential. Is that what $7.7million gets you these days? Either way, one would expect this presentation with current details; the final design was submitted Sept. 19, 2025. It was the understanding this design would produce beyond concepts and potential a price tag. $64 million was budgeted. Did that $64 million also include this expanded work beyond the JMP study? It didn’t sound like it even if the scope allowed for it.
Asking council to approve $4.4 million for this first GMP—after approving $7.7 million with some understandings that may not hold true now—is asking for a blank check. And seems hostile to the public and council. This could have been a workshop item where the design was presented explaining the expanded study and engineering basics. Followed with an updated budget discussion—if we went with this design concept it would cost this, if we scaled it back, it would cost that. Allow the public to comment directly to the issue. Then schedule a budget request for preliminary work where if questions aren’t answered at the workshop, there’s time to get them. That should be standard procedure for any large scale infrastructure project.
This post first appeared on The Tampa Monitor and is used under the Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Tampa Monitor is also part of the Tampa Bay Journalism Project TBJP, a nascent Creative Loafing Tampa Bay effort supported by grants and a coalition of donors who make specific contributions via the Alternative Newsweekly Foundation. If you are a non-paywalled Bay area publication interested in TBJP, please email rroa@ctampa.com. Support The Tampa Monitor by making a donation or buying Michael Bishop a coffee.
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This article appears in Oct. 16 – 22, 2025.
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