Oldsmar invites public input on downtown development project

Oldsmar officials, in conjunction with USF design students, will host a Community Concept Display of the Redevelopment Master Plan of State Street on Monday afternoon at the library’s TECO Hall.

Oldsmar’s plan to redevelop its downtown district has been through several variations, the most recent of which involves a $55,000 partnership with the University of South Florida.

Students from USF’s School of Architecture and Cultural Design have been tasked with shifting the focus away from the proposed $50 million mixed use complex that anchored the old plan and expanding the scope of the project to include the entire downtown district.

The group received a number of suggestions as to what type of elements city leaders would like to incorporate into the project during a four-hour brainstorming workshop in February; on Monday, the students will seek input from the public by hosting the Community Concept Display of a Redevelopment Master Plan of State Street and Park Boulevard from 3:00 p.m. to 6:00 p.m. at the Oldsmar Public Library’s TECO Hall.

“The students have prepared 20 or 30 renderings, plus 3D models, of their ideas for the project that will be displayed throughout the hall on Monday afternoon,” Marie Dauphinais, Oldsmar’s director of planning and redevelopment, told Oldsmar Connect.

“We’ve invited downtown business and property owners, chamber representatives, hotel officials, residents, even non-residents, to to come down and view the presentations and give input, comments and suggestions to the students.”

Dauphinais said just as the students collected the information they received at the February workshop and incorporated them into Monday’s presentation, the group will do the same thing after the TECO Hall event and present their finding to the City Council in May.

“We hope we get a good turnout, because we definitely want to get the public’s input on this project,” Dauphinais said.

TECO Hall is inside the Oldsmar Public Library, which is located at 400 St. Petersburg Drive. E. in downtown Oldsmar.

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