PINELLAS COUNTY, Fla. — The city of Safety Harbor is updating its downtown master plan and wants your input as they look to improve Main Street.
The mayor said the main change to the downtown master plan is the vision statement. It now reflects that they want Safety Harbor to remain a thriving city with a small-town feel.
Safety Harbor is part of the Pinellas Community Redevelopment Agency. As that was set to end, the city submitted a request to extend. In order to do that, the city needed to update its downtown master plan. While the changes to the plan are not major, the mayor said being part of the CRA is crucial to some projects in the city.
“The CRA allows us to get additional tax money that we can keep in Safety Harbor to reinvest in projects in Safety Harbor so it's very important to get that," Mayor Joe Ayoub said
Right now, the city is using some of that money to fix up Baranhoff Park and add a second story to the library. The mayor said they will also use some of those funds to improve Main Street.
“Generally, we want to look at how we can improve downtown and make it more beautiful,” Ayoub said.
More lighting, better parking, and bigger signage for businesses are all options the city is looking at as they prepare to start the Main Street Visioning Project. The mayor said they will ask for public input.
“I would say probably parking," Paula Krupa said.
Krupa owns Accents by Paula on Main Street. She has lived and worked in Safety Harbor for about 30 years now. She said she loves the small-town feel, but as more people visit the area, she hears parking complaints.
“This has gone from a completely dead town where you maybe see 10, 25 cars a day drive by to today where thousands of cars drive by,” Krupa said.
The mayor said they plan to host meetings to get public input, but the city has not set dates for those meetings yet.
