Tampa council rejects land-use change for suspected cemetery land

The Tampa Heights lot, once a part of Showmen’s Rest Cemetery, sits empty.

Curtis Carlin, its prospective buyer, saw in the property the perfect place to build a home for his family.

But for a group of local cemetery advocates, the land at 3541 North Boulevard represents a slice of history that, they said, could hold unmarked graves.

The Tampa City Council on Thursday unanimously denied a request to change the city’s future land use map at the property, blocking Carlin from building a home on the site. The council’s decision broke with a recommendation earlier this month from the Hillsborough City-County Planning Commission, which voted in favor of changing the land use.

The saga was the latest in a yearslong debate over the plot, which sits beside Showmen’s Rest, Beth Israel and Woodlawn Cemeteries.

The City Council in 2021 unanimously rejected a land-use change that would have allowed developers to build townhouses. When the plot went up for sale last year, council members and neighbors again asked: Are there unknown bodies buried beneath the land?

The latest proposal would have changed the current land use — which does not allow residential or commercial buildings —toa designation that would have allowed for up to four residential units on the property.

Council members said their denial was unrelated to the potential presence of graves. City staff had previously objected to the change, finding, “The long-term planning vision of the city favors a more conservative, thoughtful approach to development around cemetery uses.”

“Ultimately, you have to look at what’s best for the land use of the area,” said council member Bill Carlson. “This just doesn’t match.”

Still, attendees spoke of the plot’s contested history. Hillsborough County property records show its use listed as a “cemetery.”

Quinn Steele, who works for the Planning Commission, told council members on Thursday that a recent ground-penetrating radar study found graves are likely not present at the site. That report was commissioned by Carlin and conducted by Erin Kimmerle, a University of South Florida researcher.

“The results are very clear,” Carlin told council members before the vote. “There are no remains that are annotated or found in any of the sites, specifically where we want to build.”

But Aileen Henderson, founder of the nonprofit The Cemetery Society, cast doubt on that characterization.

Kimmerle’s report said there was no evidence of burials “within the areas successfully investigated,” but that she could not say definitively that there are no graves in the entire parcel.

Henderson presented the report to Rachael Kangas, a regional director for the Florida Public Archaeology Network, who told her in an email, “The report makes it clear that they CANNOT rule out the possibility of burials on the land.”

Jim McCarthy, a homebuilder who lives nearby, told council members, “This is the wrong thing. This property is a cemetery. If it looks like a duck and it quacks like a duck, it’s a duck.”