Doctors and administrators tied to HCA Florida South Tampa Hospital and the South Tampa Medical Center are asking Tampa City Council to approve the South Howard Flood Relief Project. They say repeated flooding has already shut clinics, delayed care, and left the hospital running on generators.

Council is scheduled to take up the construction contract Thursday morning. City engineers put the job at roughly $93 million to $100 million. The plan would install about 1.2 miles of large underground pipe, including a 10-by-10-foot box culvert designed to move about 20 million gallons of stormwater an hour. The line would run from near Bayshore Boulevard and South Howard Avenue through Palma Ceia Pines and into a stormwater pond under the hospital parking deck.

Dr. Dana Coberly, a plastic surgeon in the medical office building next to the hospital, said her first-floor practice took about 20 inches of water and was closed for four months. Periodontist Dr. Mark Abdomey said patients with oral infections that can spread to the heart or brain could not be seen on schedule. Other providers in the same complex described post-operative patients climbing stairs to upper floors and pediatric neurology families losing access during floods. During the last major event, the hospital itself became an island on emergency power for days.

That is the medical case. Homes in Palma Ceia Pines and Parkland Estates have flooded as well. A preschool, a senior high-rise, and bus routes have been hit. Supporters argue the pipes are basic drainage for a low-lying neighborhood that sits between the bay and a restaurant strip, not a luxury project.

The Soho Business Alliance opposes the city’s design. Owners along South Howard say three years of construction on a street that lives on foot traffic could close restaurants and shops. Alliance representative Stephen Michelini cited a rule of thumb that about 60 percent of businesses fail during long, full-street projects. The group hired engineer David DeLoach, who proposes more storage in existing ponds and underground vaults at the ZOM pond, a site near the hospital, and open space in Parkland Estates. City staff say that alternative would require taking down hospital parking.

The alliance also argues the project would consume too much of the city’s stormwater assessment money for one corridor. Residents who have had water in their houses call that framing tone-deaf. They say another round of “study the cheaper option” does not pump water out of a first-floor clinic or keep an emergency generator from becoming the hospital’s only power.

The choice in front of council is not abstract climate policy. It is whether Tampa builds a large pipe to move stormwater away from a hospital campus and nearby homes, knowing SoHo businesses will take a multi-year hit, or whether it adopts a storage-heavy alternative that still has to work around that same hospital parking deck. Doctors who already spent months out of their offices are telling the city the construction window is shorter than the next flood.

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