{"id":364243,"date":"2026-08-06T12:00:10","date_gmt":"2026-08-06T12:00:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/364243\/"},"modified":"2026-08-06T12:00:10","modified_gmt":"2026-08-06T12:00:10","slug":"drew-park-neighborhood-in-line-for-community-upgrades","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/364243\/","title":{"rendered":"Drew Park neighborhood in line for community upgrades"},"content":{"rendered":"

TAMPA, Fla. \u2013 With a new baseball ballpark potentially rising nearby, the Drew Park area is in line for multiple major infrastructure projects.<\/p>\n

Community leaders in Drew Park got an update Wednesday night on millions of dollars in improvement projects in the works for the neighborhood.<\/p>\n

The improvements include everything from new signs at neighborhood gateways and landscaping along streets to roadway improvements meant to make streets safer.<\/p>\n

These are projects that the Drew Park CRA Community Advisory Committee (CAC)<\/a>\u00a0chair Maritza Astorquiza said have been in the works for years.<\/p>\n

But now, with the recent focus on the neighborhood as a potential Rays stadium site at Hillsborough College<\/a>, there is a renewed focus on the projects. \u00a0<\/p>\n

The biggest project discussed is focused on street upgrades.<\/p>\n

That will see 78 crosswalks created or remarked, more than 150 new parking spaces, rebuilt sidewalk connections, and more.<\/p>\n

City of Tampa staff told CAC members that’s expected to cost anywhere from $7 to $10 million.<\/p>\n

Also, officials said $2.9 million has been budgeted to create a neighborhood park on Hubert Avenue, and another $2.3 million is being used to add landscaping and other improvements along Lois and Grady Avenues.<\/p>\n

More than once during the meeting, Astorquiza asked if shovels would be in the ground on these projects this year.<\/p>\n

She said many of them were first talked about in 2022 and first steps were taken about a year later.<\/p>\n

Roadway improvements are expected to begin next year.<\/p>\n

“That’s a lot of investment in Drew Park,\u201d she said. \u201cSo, we’re already itching to get to our next projects in Drew Park that we need, like covering up our drainage ditches and with piping and so forth.”<\/p>\n

Neighborhoods will also be getting new signage.<\/p>\n

Astorquiza asked that a push be made to begin work on the park on Hubert before the end of the year.<\/p>\n

And road improvements in Drew Park are expected to begin in the first quarter of next year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TAMPA, Fla. \u2013 With a new baseball ballpark potentially rising nearby, the Drew Park area is in line…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":364244,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[274,558,770,276,2287,115,29208,2718,135,137,136,278,835],"class_list":["post-364243","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tampa","tag-app-top-stories","tag-business","tag-community-news","tag-hillsborough-county","tag-local-politics","tag-news","tag-rays-stadium","tag-sarah-blazonis","tag-tampa","tag-tampa-headlines","tag-tampa-news","tag-top-stories","tag-vod"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/364243","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=364243"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/364243\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/364244"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=364243"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=364243"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=364243"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}