Jane Castor, Mayor, City of Tampa

July 2026 — In an interview with Invest: Tampa Bay, Jane Castor, Mayor of the City of Tampa, said that the city’s true measure of success will be whether it can grow without pricing out the people who built it. “Ten years from now, success looks like a city where the people who built Tampa can still afford to live here,” she said. “We’ve attracted world-class employers, gained international attention, and built a booming downtown, but none of that means anything if a firefighter or a teacher can’t find a home within 30 miles of the job they love.”

What does success look like to you when you think about the city five to ten years from now?

Ten years from now, success looks like a city where the people who built Tampa can still afford to live here. We’ve attracted world-class employers, gained international attention, and built a booming downtown, but none of that means anything if a firefighter or a teacher can’t find a home within 30 miles of the job they love. I want Tampa to be the city that figured out how to grow without leaving people behind.

When I took office in 2019, my team and I walked in with a plan to make that possible, and we called it T3, short for Transforming Tampa’s Tomorrow. We built roadmaps around the city’s most pressing issues: transportation, affordable housing, workforce development, resident services, and sustainability.

Seven years in, a lot of those items are checked. The PIPES program, a $3 billion infrastructure investment launched in 2019, has driven more than 100 projects, replacing about 78 miles of aging water lines, and rehabilitating more than 210 miles of wastewater lines. Our stormwater team removed more than 24,000 tons of debris from pipes and inlets in a single year — the equivalent weight of over 16,000 cars. Crime dropped more than 21%, reaching some of the lowest levels in years. Tampa was ranked the number one American city for international business by the Financial Times, and WalletHub named us the number one large U.S. city to start a business. None of that happens without the foundation work.

The work we’ve launched around affordable housing, parks, and underground infrastructure will extend well beyond my time in office. The best thing I can do is make sure whoever comes next inherits a city that’s genuinely built to last.

Which recent initiatives do you believe will have the most lasting impact on the city’s trajectory?

I’d point to our investments in stormwater infrastructure. Not glamorous, I know. Nobody cuts a ribbon on a retention pond, but the cities that thrive long-term are the ones that did the unglamorous work early. We’re doing it.

Tampa’s economy is becoming increasingly diverse—what industries or sectors do you see shaping the city’s next phase of growth?

Financial services, defense technology, and life sciences are already planting flags here. The Tampa Bay region is home to one of the largest concentrations of defense and intelligence contractors on the East Coast, and that network is growing. Couple that with the University of South Florida pushing out research talent and the financial sector expanding its footprint, it shows that we are not a one-trick economy or solely reliant or tourism.

How are you approaching long-term climate resilience and infrastructure planning to ensure the city remains both sustainable and future-ready?

Honestly, you can’t talk about Tampa’s future without talking about water. We’ve committed serious capital to projects related to stormwater upgrades, sea-level rise planning, rezoning, and green infrastructure.

We onboarded Tampa’s first-ever Sustainability and Resilience Officer, which led to the development of Resilient Tampa, the city’s first resilience roadmap, introducing 58 initiatives aimed at preparing Tampa for climate risks and economic and social inequities. We followed that with Tampa’s first Climate Action and Equity Plan in 2023.

We have set a goal of planting 30,000 trees by 2030, launched Tampa’s first Green Team, and hosted tree giveaway events putting over a thousand free trees directly into residents’ hands. I believe trees are a very important part of our city’s infrastructure, helping with both heat management and flood reduction.

Our stormwater investment tells the same story. The Manhattan Stormwater Project is actively in construction, bringing long-overdue drainage upgrades to neighborhoods, and the South Howard Flood Relief Project, when complete, is projected to reduce flooding by 95% during typical rain events and 70% during major storms for some of our residents. Yes, these projects are temporarily disruptive and can even be costly, but the alternative is Tampa that keeps flooding on the same streets, in the same neighborhoods, every single summer. We’re choosing the hard work because that’s what it means to create a city that is built to last.

As development accelerates across Tampa, how is your administration ensuring that growth remains inclusive and enhances quality of life across all communities?

From day one, our position has been that Tampa’s prosperity has to reach every neighborhood, and we’ve backed that up with real dollars. Since 2019, we have invested more than $100 million to tackle the affordable housing challenge, producing 8,300 new affordable homes for residents who might otherwise be priced out of Tampa. 

The projects driving that number aren’t tucked away in forgotten corners of the city. Developments like the Marquee, Bel-Mar, Rome Yards, and the Army-Navy site in north downtown are delivering high-quality housing in neighborhoods that are also growing and thriving. 

We’re supporting homeownership too, not just rentals. Qualifying first-time buyers are receiving down payment assistance, and existing homeowners are benefiting from critical home repairs, some exceeding $100,000. I believe that keeping people in the homes they already have is just as important as building new ones.

A city housing needs assessment found Tampa is short more than 26,000 affordable units, so we know the work isn’t finished, however, the trajectory is right, and the framework we’ve built of public investment, public-private partnerships, and a clear goal gives the next administration something real to build on.

Looking ahead, what are your key priorities, and what kind of city are you working to build for the next generation?

Housing affordability, transportation connectivity, and making sure the Tampa of the future still feels like Tampa, not a generic Sun Belt boom town with good weather and no soul. 

We’ve got something here that most cities spend decades trying to manufacture, and that’s genuine culture, community, and momentum in every direction. The job now is to protect it while we scale it.