Print

Email story

Comment

Email editor

Homeless uprooted

To make way for $695,000 condos, the downtown park is closed, displacing denizens of the night.

By JUSTIN GEORGE
Published August 11, 2005

TAMPA - A sign is posted in the downtown park where the homeless once stayed.

"We appreciate your patience as we continue to develop downtown as a residential community," the sign states.

Herman Massey Park is closed for now.

Soon, condominiums will rise alongside it. But in the shadows of those new homes, others have been left homeless.

"What they're trying to do is put us as far as they can from downtown," said Chester Brown, 34, idling his Schwinn at Franklin and Tyler streets across from the park. "There's nothing you can do about it."

There on the park's brick terrace, Brown and as many as 30 homeless people used to spread out cardboard and sleep undisturbed beneath sprays of palm fronds, cleaning up in a nearby fountain.

But this month, the city closed the park, fenced it and signed a one-year lease with the contractor for Residences of Franklin Street condominiums. Soon, the project will boast an eighth-floor fitness center, a 24-person Jacuzzi and $695,000 units. Builders needed the park as a staging area to store supplies, city parks spokeswoman Linda Carlo said.

There was no room elsewhere, she said. The homeless were displaced. Some, like Brown, now sleep at a site where day laborers are hired near Channelside Drive.

The half-acre park, which opened in 1987, is named after a longtime Tampa parks department director whose landscaping prowess started a city beautification movement.

Instead of Massey Park, the homeless call it "messy park," assuming that's what people must think of them, Brown said. Last year, police arrested members of the group Food Not Bombs when they tried to host picnics for the homeless there. They were charged with trespassing when they didn't leave.

Mayor Pam Iorio, who wanted clean and safe parks, backed away from a ban on feeding the homeless in city parks.

This year, the city avoided conflict by teaming with the Homeless Coalition of Hillsborough County to tell the homeless the park was closing. "It wasn't a surprise to us," said coalition chief executive officer Rayme Nuckles.

In early July, a dozen organizations descended on Massey, giving people pamphlets and information about Tampa health, employment, counseling and shelter services. Outreach workers went back out two weeks ago.

Brown heard them. But leaving isn't easy, not when he's developed a routine that revolves around Franklin and Tyler streets. Come night, he bikes to the Channel District.

Others, he said, aren't as mobile.

A few yards away, a Kmart shopping cart sits next to the boarded-up Albany Hotel. Shorts hang from the cart's child seat. Duffel bags stuff the undercarriage. A blanket is neatly folded.

Someone's cardboard bed is all rolled up. Rolled up and ready to go.

[Last modified August 11, 2005, 00:42:17]