Gas Plant: about 500 households, 9 churches and 40 businesses for a stadium (St. Petersburg, 1970s–1990)

SUMMARYGas Plant: about 500 households, 9 churches and 40 businesses for a stadium (St. Petersburg, 1970s–1990) [Connections: Tampa Bay, Nov 5, 2026]

RECORDFOX 13 reports that a 1931 city charter barred Black residents from living or doing business in white neighborhoods; Peppertown was declared "blighted" and gone by the 1940s; Methodist Town redevelopment relocated 377 families in 1974. The 1970s Gas Plant plan rated 81% of structures "deteriorated or dilapidated"; I-275 and I-175 cut the district off; in 1983 the plan was amended to add a stadium. Totals: 9 churches, about 500 households, 285 buildings demolished, 40 businesses moved or closed. Promised jobs and housing went unfulfilled; Gwendolyn Reese: "I'm very comfortable saying they lied." A 2021 city structural-racism study called it the seventh mass displacement in over a dozen years, affecting about 2,100 Black families, businesses and institutions. Tropicana Field opened in 1990 on 86 acres

PATTERNZoning confined Black residents, "blight" labels condemned them, and highways and a stadium replaced them, next to the erased Moffett/Evergreen/Oaklawn cemeteries

LENS (WW9)We were replaced: first the charter, then the bulldozer, then the ballpark

OPENThe 2021 city study itself; the 1931 charter text

SOURCEFOX 13, Gas Plant District history (2022).