Harbour Island is an island neighborhood within the city limits of

Tampa, Florida Tampa ( ) is a city on the Gulf Coast of the United States, Gulf Coast of the U.S. state of Florida. Tampa's borders include the north shore of Tampa Bay and the east shore of Old Tampa Bay. Tampa is the largest city in the Tampa Bay area and t ...

and the sub-district within

Downtown Tampa Downtown Tampa is the central business district of Tampa, Florida, Tampa, Florida, United States, and the chief financial district of the Tampa Bay Area. It is second only to Westshore, Tampa, Westshore regarding employment in the area. Compani ...

. The ZIP Code serving the area is 33602.

Geography

Harbour Island is situated adjacent to

Downtown ''Downtown'' is a term primarily used in American and Canadian English to refer to a city's sometimes commercial, cultural and often the historical, political, and geographic heart. It is often synonymous with its central business district ( ...

across the Garrison Channel. Other nearby areas include Davis Islands and Channelside. The

Tampa Convention Center The Tampa Convention Center is a mid-sized convention center located in downtown Tampa, Florida at the mouth of the Hillsborough River. It has both waterfront views of Tampa Bay and views of the city's skyline. Harbour Island is across the epo ...

is located directly across the Harbour Island Bridge and Channelside is just across Beneficial Drive, both walking distance.

History

Harbour Island was originally known as Seddon Island, which was named after W. L. Seddon, chief engineer for the

Seaboard Air Line Railway The Seaboard Air Line Railroad , known colloquially as the Seaboard Railroad during its time, was an American railroad that existed from April 14, 1900, until July 1, 1967, when it merged with the Atlantic Coast Line Railroad, its longtime ri ...

. In 1906, a public hearing was held to plan a new port for the city. Seddon's plans were adopted and soon his company dredged a channel and established a port facility on what was then called Grassy Island. The Seaboard Coast Line later sold the island to the Beneficial Land Corporation in 1979 for

residential A residential area is a land used in which houses, housing predominates, as opposed to industrial district, industrial and Commercial Area, commercial areas. Housing may vary significantly between, and through, residential areas. These include ...

office An office is a space where the employees of an organization perform Business administration, administrative Work (human activity), work in order to support and realize the various goals of the organization. The word "office" may also denote a po ...

and

retail Retail is the sale of goods and services to consumers, in contrast to wholesaling, which is the sale to business or institutional customers. A retailer purchases goods in large quantities from manufacturers, directly or through a wholes ...

development purposes. The first phase of development did not begin until 1985. Up to that point, the island still housed a phosphate terminal and had freight rail access. Beneficial's chief executive, Finn M. W. Caspersen (1941-2009) envisioned transforming the island into a bustling waterfront with offices, shops and restaurants, much like Baltimore's Inner Harbor. Between 1985 and January 1999, Harbour Island was linked to

by the Harbour Island People Mover, an automated rubber tired tram manufactured by Otis Transportation Systems that ran on an elevated concrete guideway connecting the Knights Point shopping center on Harbour Island, to the Ft Brooke Parking Garage half of a mile to the north, adjacent to the downtown core on the mainland.

Today

Today, the island consists of mostly private residential areas, including high-rise condos, apartments, row houses, single-family homes and large houses, as well as a yacht club. The island has a

Westin Westin Hotels & Resorts is an American upscale hotel chain owned by Marriott International. , the Westin Brand has 226 properties with 82,608 rooms in multiple countries in addition to 58 hotels with 15,741 rooms in the pipeline. History Wes ...

hotel, Jackson's Bistro Bar & Sushi restaurant which offers Sunday brunch, waterfront dining, and a Friday and Saturday nightclub. Located in the center of the island there are small shops, coffee shops, and the local hotspot Cafe Dufrain. The

TECO Line Streetcar The TECO Line Streetcar System is a heritage streetcar transit line in Tampa, Florida, Tampa, Florida, run by the HARTline, Hillsborough Area Regional Transportation Authority (HART), owned by the city of Tampa, and managed by Tampa Historic Stre ...

"in-town" trolley connects the island to downtown and Channelside.

NEVs NEVS AB (an abbreviated form of "National Electric Vehicle Sweden") was a Swedish electric car manufacturer which acquired the assets of Saab Automobile from a bankruptcy estate in 2012. After facing numerous financial difficulties, the compa ...

also connect the island to other core neighborhoods such as Hyde Park.

References

{{authority control Neighborhoods in Tampa, Florida Planned communities in Florida

Geography

History

Today

See also

References