TAMPA, Fla. \u2014 A wrecking company has filed a demolition permit application for The Mirasol Apartments on Davis Islands, a century-old building whose owners previously sought to convert it back into a hotel.<\/p>\n
The Mirasol opened in 1926 as a hotel. Earlier this year, its owners asked Tampa City Council to approve a zoning change that would allow the building to return to that use, but the request was denied.<\/p>\n
The owners did not respond to a request for comment on the demolition permit application.<\/p>\n
At a January council meeting, The Mirasol owner Frank Carriera said the building had been hit hard by Hurricanes Helene and Milton.<\/p>\n
\u201cPreserving a historic building, like the Mirasol, costs far more than building something new. That is exactly why so many historic homes were demolished after the 2024 storms,\u201d Carriera told council members.<\/p>\n
Carriera said in an interview with Spectrum News last year that he bought the property in 2021 and believed converting it back into a hotel was the best option to preserve it.<\/p>\n
But Davis Islands residents pushed back on the rezoning request, saying they were concerned about the noise and traffic a hotel could bring. Carriera told council members that without the zoning change, he did not think renovations could happen and that the building would likely be lost.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor over 20 years, my professional career has been in multi-family investment sales,\u201d Carriera said at the January meeting. \u201cBased on my experience, I can confidently say that a 1.6 acre parcel on Davis Island on the water is worth two-to-three times more without the existing improvements than with them.\u201d<\/p>\n
A city spokesperson said The Mirasol will be evaluated to determine whether it qualifies for a board-level review with the Historical Preservation Commission.<\/p>\n
Under city code, that review process applies when there is an application to demolish a building more than 50 years old. The code says the commission can ask Tampa City Council to take emergency action to review the request if the building meets certain criteria, including if it qualifies for the National Register of Historic Places but has not been listed.<\/p>\n
The Mirasol is not currently on a historic registry, according to comments at the January meeting. Councilwoman Lynn Hurtak said during that meeting that approving the rezoning request would not have guaranteed the building would not be torn down, and that a historic designation would have made a difference.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TAMPA, Fla. \u2014 A wrecking company has filed a demolition permit application for The Mirasol Apartments on Davis…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":416606,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[16022,274,276,1644,115,2718,135,137,136,278,835],"class_list":["post-416605","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tampa","tag-app-housing","tag-app-top-stories","tag-hillsborough-county","tag-housing","tag-news","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\/416605","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=416605"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/416605\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/416606"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=416605"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=416605"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=416605"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}