Tampa: the city that staged a comeback

This Gulf Coast star is more than a match for its famous siblings, says Chris Leadbeater

Midway along the Tampa Riverwalk, at the point where the Kennedy Boulevard Bridge carries its stretch of highway across the Hillsborough river’s estuary currents, a young family is cycling in – almost – matching outfits. Not for them, however, the snug fit of bright Lycra. All four are wearing the voluminous padded shirts of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. The sole distinguishing factor is that, where three of them are pedalling in the red home colour of the city’s beloved (American) football team, dad is in the alternative white jersey.

Three years ago, this might not have been the case. True, this gang of four could still have been rolling on the carfree promenade that shadows Tampa’s Downtown waterside for three miles. But it might, perhaps, only have been with the arrival of Tom Brady in 2020 that they all went shopping for NFL gear. The signing of the sport’s greatest ever player, transferring south from the New England Patriots, was supposed to provide a profile boost for the underperforming Bucs and a mutually beneficial last dance into retirement for a star quarterback who had won six Superbowls in Boston. Instead, in 2021, at the age of 43, he won his seventh, in the colours of his new employer.

Tampa has gained enormously from this alliance. Suddenly, a place that, despite being the biggest city on Florida’s Gulf Coast, was constantly eclipsed as a destination by Palm Beach, Fort Lauderdale, Miami and Orlando, now found itself shining on the map.

Of course, a sizeable number of its residents (the population of the wider metropolitan area adds up to 3.1 million people) would argue that Tampa was a Florida landmark long before a wellpaid sportsman threw a few touchdown passes. And they would be right. It wears its past keenly in Ybor City – the district, north-east of Downtown, which was the 19th-century birthplace of modern Tampa long before it became its 21st-century heartbeat. It bears the name of Vicente Martinez-Ybor, a Spanish entrepreneur who founded the area’s first cigar factory in 1885. The idea caught on. A half-century of prosperity ensued, only for the Great Depression and the mechanisation of the tobacco industry to kill the party. But if Ybor was a ghost in the 1970s, it had begun the process of urban renewal by the 1990s. Its main drag, East 7th Avenue, is now alive with bars and eateries. Including the Columbia Restaurant, Florida’s oldest – which, having opened in 1905, has witnessed decline and resurrection without ever closing.

Back in Downtown, the Riverwalk is a more recent example of regeneration, only brought to full fruition in 2014 after four decades of piecemeal construction and stop-start progress. Now an unbroken line along the Hillsborough’s east bank, it has given the centre of Tampa a walkable accessibility that many American cities still lack, while also helping to bring the river into play. My stroll along it in the haze of a Saturday morning does not just produce encounters with cycling families and fleet-footed joggers. There are kayaks and stand-up paddleboarders on the water, as well as flotillas of rented fishing barges and groups of amateur anglers dangling nets and rods in hope of an unexpected catch.

The Riverwalk also connects the city’s key cultural sights. At its south end, the Tampa Bay History Center takes the story back much further than cigar factories, recalling the Timucua and Seminole peoples who inhabited the area before Spanish galleons dropped anchor. The Florida Museum of Photographic Arts is an architectural wonder, occupying a striking structure – a symmetrical cube – as eye-catching as the works displayed inside it. Most evocative of all, though, is the Tampa Museum of Art, which finds its soul in paintings that celebrate its regional surroundings – not least in a room dedicated to watercolours of the west-Florida landscape. Faye Henthorne’s Clearwater Beach salutes the resort town that sits 25 miles to the west, two children posed as close companions on its lovely sands in the summer of 1944. by Asa Cassidy, is ablaze with fantastical glamour – a Roaring Twenties belle in an orange bathing suit, riding a giant tarpon. Lawrence Porth’s Tampa, After the Rain, Sunrise, My Back Yard captures the city in reflective mood in 1952 – cypress trees cascading, a boat bobbing on swollen shallows.

Elsewhere, there are novelties to go with these rear-view glances. Just behind the History Center, Sparkman Wharf is a recent addition, opened in 2018 as a nest of food stalls and outdoor dining. Rather more indicative of the city’s growing profile is the new Edition hotel; the latest outpost of Ian Schrager’s high-end design-hotel empire flung wide its doors in October, its rooftop pool and garden terrace making the most of the Florida sun.

Those drawn to the headline act can take a five-mile taxi ride north-west to the Raymond James Stadium, the cavernous home of the Bucs. Guided tours will take you almost everywhere within it, including to the side of the pitch, Brady following you at each step, his image seemingly plastered to every surface. Talk around town is that his retirement – briefly declared, then recanted in July – may occur at season’s end. If so, Tampa will miss his celestial skills – but will not expect to retreat into obscurity as his bandwagon departs.