Robles Park Village getting new community hub in addition to affordable housing
TAMPA, Fla. (WFLA) — Robles Park is getting the help local leaders agree it needs. In addition to replacing all the Robles Park Village buildings with improved affordable housing, neighbors are getting a community hub to help them out.
“It’s a 1950s-era public housing project,” said Rep. Kathy Castor, (D) Tampa. “That is not up to the standard we want for our neighbors.”
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While the plan is still to tear down the complex and replace it with more units of affordable housing, neighbors are also now getting a new smart community hub.
Representative Kathy Castor helped get $4 million in seed funding for the hub, which will offer financial, social, and educational services to Robles Park residents.
“They want a place where their kids can go to preschool, that they can see a doctor, that they can get connected to a job,” Castor explained. “So this is really the lifeblood of a new community.”
Michael Randolph has lived in Robles Park for 10 years.
“I see a miracle if you want to be quite candid about it,” Randolph exclaimed. “I see beauty where darkness was. I see an opportunity to come back to a place that’s all about good things.”
Randolph helped give input to the new community hub and affordable housing.
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“I thought transformation,” Randolph said. “I thought it was an opportunity to get the best of the best for people that live in public housing, just as if they were not in public housing.”
The hub’s developer said it will be 30,000 square feet and sustainable for the environment.
“It’s like a light in the dark,” said Randolph. “It’s like seeing that was dark is now turning light.”
Officials said they’ve already started relocating residents out of Robles Park and should be demolishing it and beginning construction in 2025.
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