Connecting Tampa’s Redevelopment Areas Through One Unified Communications Strategy
Tampa Community Redevelopment Agency (CRA), City of Tampa
Public Sector / Municipal Government
Community Redevelopment / Economic Development / Public Affairs
Residents • Business and Property Owners • Developers and Investors • Community Advisory Committees • City Leadership • Elected Officials • Community Organizations • Media
City of Tampa • Tampa CRA Leadership and Staff • Community Advisory Committees • Tampa City Council • District Stakeholders and Community Organizations
Executive Summary
The Tampa Community Redevelopment Agency (CRA) is a public entity tasked with implementing redevelopment activities within designated community redevelopment areas, each with its own identity, priorities, investments, and stakeholders. Communicating that work requires more than promoting individual projects. It requires helping residents, businesses, property owners, and public officials understand how redevelopment is enhancing communities, how resources are invested, and what those investments mean for the City of Tampa beyond those neighborhoods.
HCP Associates’ relationship with Tampa redevelopment communications expanded from established work in Ybor City and agency annual reporting into a broader, coordinated public information program. HCP supports recurring communications, social media, video storytelling, public outreach, and strategic counsel while helping the CRA maintain a recognizable agency wide presence without losing the individuality of its redevelopment areas.
The engagement brings together the three disciplines at the center of HCP’s work (research informed understanding, communications strategy, and integrated marketing) to make complex redevelopment activity accessible and relevant to the people it affects.
- Central Park
- Channel District
- Downtown
- Drew Park
- East Tampa
- Tampa Heights Riverfront
- West Tampa
- Ybor City I
- Ybor City II
Understanding the Landscape
Tampa CRA oversees nine community redevelopment areas that encompass different histories, development conditions, and community needs. A message that resonates with a business owner considering property improvements may not answer a resident’s questions about neighborhood infrastructure, housing, or public investment.
The CRA must communicate with multiple audiences while supporting public transparency, consistent agency identity and meaningful district level participation. The challenge is to coordinate communications across the organization without treating distinct communities as interchangeable.
HCP’s prior experience with the Ybor City Development Corporation (YCDC) provided familiarity with the city’s redevelopment environment.
Research
HCP’s work is informed by ongoing review of CRA projects, annual report material, program information, and input from agency staff and stakeholders. Organizing this information requires distinguishing agency wide priorities from the facts and audiences specific to individual redevelopment areas.
For annual reporting, HCP worked with CRA staff to research, organize, and translate project information, program activity, and public investment into accessible narratives and custom visuals. The approach went beyond presenting completed projects: it helped audiences understand the years of planning and coordination required to bring redevelopment from concept to reality.
Strategy
The strategic objective was to communicate as one agency while giving each community redevelopment area room to tell its own story. HCP helped implement the agency’s unified identity across communications and establish consistency in message, presentation, and outreach.
This approach recognizes that public communication has several jobs: explain investments, share practical information about programs and meetings, support community participation, and show how individual improvements contribute to long term redevelopment goals.
A distinctive strategic opportunity emerged from the annual reports: creating a visual system that accumulates meaning over time. The hand illustrated map introduced in 2024 was deliberately designed to accommodate new projects, reflect changes in project status, and support future editions. The long term vision is to translate this illustrated ecosystem into an interactive, continually updated experience on the Tampa CRA website, connecting annual reporting with year round public education and engagement.
Communications
HCP’s integrated communications support includes social media coordination, quarterly newsletters, recurring FLASH electronic email news alerts, short form video, staff support and public outreach. Together, these channels provide different ways for residents, businesses, and stakeholders to encounter timely redevelopment information.
Annual reporting became a signature expression of the strategy. Building on the CRA’s earlier reporting, HCP and the CRA introduced a custom illustrated redevelopment map in the 2024 Annual Report and expanded it in the 2025 report. Hand illustrated project icons depict completed improvements and initiatives still in development, including Gasworx. Rather than displaying each project as an isolated accomplishment, the evolving map places projects within a connected citywide redevelopment story. Its illustrations also appear throughout the report as visual navigation, helping readers link locations, programs, investments, and outcomes. The map intentionally omits district boundaries to emphasize how improvements in one area can contribute to the city as a whole.
HCP also produced a series of videos highlighting redevelopment activity across Tampa’s community redevelopment areas in fiscal year 2026. The video series was released during Florida Redevelopment Week, a statewide initiative to educate the public on how redevelopment helps to enhance their neighborhoods. This allowed for each community to have their unique identity and story captured while maintaining a unified look and message. HCP also supported the first CRA Open House through event branding, print and digital materials, social promotion, and media outreach. These efforts connected recurring public information with opportunities for more direct community engagement.
The 2025 Annual Report documents more than $6 million in commercial and special project grants, $8.9 million in infrastructure improvements, $3.5 million in housing program assistance, and 136 households assisted. These figures describe CRA activity reported through HCP supported communications, not investment or program outcomes attributable to HCP.
Video Storytelling
Video overviews of all eight Tampa Community Redevelopment Agency (CRA) districts, capturing the redevelopment initiatives underway in each community through engaging video storytelling released during Florida Redevelopment Week.
Central Park
Channel District
Downtown
Tampa Heights Riverfront
Drew Park
East Tampa
West Tampa
Ybor City
Impact
Helped implement a consistent agency wide communications identity while retaining redevelopment area specific information and storytelling.
Developed an evolving, custom illustrated redevelopment map for annual reporting, with project icons designed to be expanded and updated as investments progress.
Coordinated recurring communications through newsletters, FLASH updates, social media, and video.
Provided communications counsel and staff support to strengthen coordination across agency communications.
Produced redevelopment video storytelling for the 2026 Florida Redevelopment Week.
Supported public outreach for the CRA’s first Open House through coordinated creative materials and promotion.
Established a foundation for evaluating future communications performance.
What We Learned
Community redevelopment communications are most effective when they connect public investment to the everyday experiences of residents and businesses. For Tampa CRA, a custom illustrated map became more than a design element: it offered a cumulative visual record of redevelopment, capable of showing both completed improvements and projects still taking shape.
The next ambition is to carry that system beyond the printed annual report into a living, interactive map on the Tampa CRA website. Envisioned as a continuously evolving public resource, the digital experience could allow residents, businesses, and investors to explore projects, understand their status, and see how redevelopment changes over time. Alongside the map, recurring digital communications keep stakeholders informed, video makes physical improvements visible, and public events create opportunities to participate.
The larger lesson is that successful public sector communications do more than announce projects. They help communities understand what is happening, why it matters, and how to engage.
