Every driver who loops around Davis Islands eventually slows down in front of the same building. The beige Mediterranean Revival tower on Davis Boulevard, with its arched windows and the kind of scale nothing else on the island quite matches, has been asking the same unanswered question for most of 2026: what's actually happening in there?
The short answer is nothing. The apartments are still apartments. The building still stands exactly as it did in January. But the longer answer, the one that actually matters if you live nearby or plan to, is that the vote residents fought hardest for did not lock in the quiet they were trying to protect. It removed the one path that came with real strings attached, and left the building sitting on an entitlement that never needed anyone's approval in the first place.
A Building the Island Has Known Since It Was Built
The Mirasol opened in 1926 as a Mediterranean Revival hotel designed by architect Martin Hampton, built during the same dredge-and-fill boom that created Davis Islands itself. It had a rooftop garden, a waterfront restaurant, and a lobby that functioned as the social center of a neighborhood that was, at the time, barely a few years old. The land bust and the Depression cut its run as a hotel short. By 1962 it had been converted into apartments, and it has operated as 58 residential units ever since, mostly out of view of the daily life of the island it once anchored.
Frank and Lindsey Carriera bought the building knowing it carried no local historic protection and could legally be demolished under its existing zoning. That fact shaped their decision from the start. Back-to-back hurricanes in 2024 accelerated a conversation that had already been running for two years with land use attorneys and architects. Thermal scans after the storms showed moisture throughout the structure, and the basement, which houses major mechanical systems, flooded more than once. Frank Carriera has described the building as having been wet from top to bottom, and said that was the point at which waiting stopped being an option.
What Actually Went Before Council on January 15
The Carrieras asked the city to change the Mirasol's future land use designation from R50, the residential category the property has carried for decades, to CMU-35, a community mixed use designation that would have allowed the building to operate as a hotel again. The proposal on the table was specific: up to 116 to 118 hotel rooms, as many as 12 new condominium units in low-rise wings, expanded on-site parking, a restaurant, and a coffee bar. The plan would have required the building to pursue historic designation as part of the approval, the one mechanism that could have formally protected its exterior for the long term.
Neighbors organized against it. Signs went up around the island reading "Keep the Mirasol residential." The objections centered on traffic, noise, and a request that would have significantly increased both building coverage and unit count on a site that currently carries the least dense future land use designation in the city. Some opponents raised a subtler concern too: that changing the land use designation, even for a boutique hotel, could raise the property's underlying value and make it a more attractive target for a future owner with different plans entirely.
That last worry turned out to be the one worth paying attention to.
The Number Nobody on Either Side of the Signs Was Arguing About
Here is the detail that got lost in five and a half hours of public testimony on January 15: the Mirasol's current R50 zoning already allows up to 80 residential units on the site, by right, with no council vote required. The building operates as 58 apartments today. Nothing in the January decision changed what a future owner, or the Carrieras themselves, could build under the zoning that was already there before anyone filed for a hotel.
| Current zoning (R50) | Denied request (CMU-35) | |
|---|---|---|
| Units allowed | Up to 80, by right | Up to 118 hotel rooms plus 12 condos |
| Council approval needed to build to the max | No | Yes, denied 5-2 |
| Historic designation attached | No | Would have been pursued as part of approval |
| Use | Residential only | Hotel, restaurant, condos |
Tampa City Council voted 5-2 to deny the rezoning, on a motion from council member Lynn Hurtak, with Council Chair Alan Clendenin and council member Luis Viera voting against the denial. More than 100 residents, business owners, and community stakeholders spoke at the hearing, and the council members who voted no were careful to frame the decision as a zoning and procedural judgment rather than a rejection of preservation itself. They said their concern was the scope and flexibility of the CMU-35 designation, which could have enabled development beyond what was actually presented at the hearing.
Clendenin went further than that. He acknowledged the economic pressure facing aging structures and said out loud that Tampa cannot become a fully residential city, pointing to past examples of historic buildings lost to neglect when no financial path existed to sustain them. His phrase for that outcome, as reported afterward, was demolition by attrition: preservation efforts that fail not because anyone tears a building down on purpose, but because nothing ever gets fixed until it can't be saved.
One coverage of the vote made the underlying math explicit in a way the public hearing itself did not. As Tampa Monitor's wrap-up of the meeting put it, the attorney representing the Carrieras argued that a hotel was the only economically viable way to avoid tearing the building down and that the entitlement already in place, R50's 80-unit allowance, is the kind of density that favors a luxury condominium tower over a boutique restoration. That same coverage drew the direct comparison neighbors may not have wanted to hear: the Ritz-Carlton Residences on Bayshore Boulevard sits on the same R50 designation and became a twelve-story luxury residential tower under it.
What Didn't Change on January 16
The council's vote leaves the Mirasol operating under its existing zoning and use as apartments. That sentence sounds like the status quo held. It didn't, not in the way the people holding signs meant it to. What the vote actually did was remove the one approved path forward that came bundled with historic designation and a commitment to restore the exterior. What it left standing is an 80-unit by-right allowance on a site currently built to 58, with no requirement that anyone preserve a single arch or tile roof if they choose to use it.
The Carrieras have said they remain committed to the building and to continued dialogue with the city and the neighborhood. That commitment is not enforceable. It is a choice they are making, the same way selling to a buyer with different plans would be a choice available to them or to whoever owns the Mirasol next.
What This Means If You Live Near It
Nothing about the building has visibly changed since January, and nothing requires it to change soon. That is precisely the situation worth understanding if you own property nearby or are weighing whether to. The quiet version of the Mirasol that exists today is not protected by ordinance. It is protected by the current owners' stated intentions, and by how long it takes for the economics of an aging, storm-damaged, unprotected building to force someone's hand.
Davis Islands has always been a place where residents pay close attention to what happens on their own streets, and this is a case where the attention paid off in information even when the vote itself didn't resolve anything. The building at 84 Davis Boulevard is the same building it was in January. The zoning underneath it just got a little more visible.
If you are watching how a specific parcel's entitlements shape what a neighborhood can become, or you are trying to read a property's future through its zoning rather than its current use, that is the kind of question Acropolis Realty Group Tampa works through with clients every week on Davis Islands and across Tampa Bay. Reach out to start a conversation about what a property here actually allows, not just what it currently looks like.
