Construction began July 2 on a thirty-acre plot of land in Temple Terrace stretching along 56th Street from Riverhills Drive to Bullard Parkway. Storefronts were closed and the roads decorated with orange traffic barricades. Mounds of dirt climb higher and higher as cranes and bulldozers reshape the topography that was once parking lots. Downtown Temple Terrace is getting major renovations based around the ideas of the new urban development movement.

    “The whole point of new urban development,” said Mark Sneed with the Master Development Group Vlass Temple Terrace, “is to live, work, play. It takes all the social ills of driving, like gas prices, and traffic, and gets rid of them because you put all these choices in one spot. Then people can live there, people can work there, people can play there.”

    In order to help create an all-in-one sense of order in the community, the main focus of the design plan features a main street, flanked on either side by new buildings with retail space and residential units above. At the edge of the complex, along the Hillsborough River, is space for a half-acre city park to host free concerts, weddings, and add to the overall tone of the area.

     Environmental considerations are being taken throughout the project to promote low impact living as well as to assist environmentally conscious residents.

  “We are incorporating electric power charging stations for electric cars, parking spaces for golf carts, to help accommodate the traffic from the country club, and providing many bicycle racks to promote using these alternates to driving,” said Sneed.

     The budget for this project totals up to about $120 million dollars, but very little of the expenses are being covered by Temple Terrace taxpayers.

     “The vast majority of the project is not coming from tax money. We are using money [from taxpayers] only to fund a small portion of the site work. The rest is funded by private enterprises,” said Sneed.

   Although the project’s deadline affords it 13 years to be completed, the already ahead of schedule team working on it is optimistic about finishing early.

     “It’s very difficult to give a definitive finish date because [the renovations] are so big, but we already have shown we can get stuff done ahead. It only took us a year and a day to begin work when we could have taken as long as three years,” said Sneed.

     New urban development will undoubtedly bring a new facet to life in Temple Terrace and effect residents throughout the area. Many changes are already moving this city into a life centered around “Live, Work, Play.”