Neighborhood Associations in St. Petersburg, Florida

The Council of Neighborhood Associations (CONA) of St. Petersburg is a volunteer-led nonprofit that says it unites, educates and empowers neighborhood associations across the city and has been a voice for neighborhoods since 1957 (CONA).

CONA describes itself as helping shape a stronger, more connected St. Pete through collaboration, leadership development and civic engagement. Its Executive Committee, made up of officers and committee chairs, is elected annually by the membership, and its standing committees cover areas such as codes, events, communications, leadership, membership and land development and historical resources (CONA About page). CONA says its standing committees are open to participation from member association representatives.

Association work also shows up in St. Petersburg council biographies. The 2026 City Council Chair, who represents District 4, lists on her council page that she was president of the Crescent Lake Neighborhood Association from 2016 to 2021 and CONA membership chair in 2020, and lists Neighborhood of the Year at the Mayor's Neighborhood Partnership Awards 2020 among her community entries (District 4 page).

One way to match a St. Petersburg address to an association is the CONA neighborhood directory, which lists each association with its street boundaries and lets readers filter by active, inactive, member and reactivating status (CONA directory).

Boundaries in the St. Petersburg directory are written in the city's street grid shorthand, with avenues and streets marked north or south. A few examples copied from the directory show how the descriptions read (CONA directory).

The St. Petersburg directory also carries entries such as the Coquina Key Neighborhood Association, listed simply as Coquina Key, and the Shore Acres Civic Association, whose listed area starts at Smacks Bayou and the Snell Isle Bridge and lies south of 62nd Ave. NE (CONA directory). Some listed contacts are personal email addresses of volunteers, so the directory, not this guide, is the place to look up who to write to.

Registration with the St. Petersburg Neighborhood Relations Department, reachable at 727-892-5141, is what makes an association eligible for the Mayor's Neighborhood Mini-Grant and for city services such as a yearly junk removal dumpster (Mini-Grant Program, Neighborhood Improvement).

The city's mini-grant page states plainly that an association must be registered with Neighborhood Relations to be eligible and links the registration form from the same page (City of St. Petersburg). On the services side, Neighborhood Relations works with the St. Pete Sanitation Department to drop off dumpsters for junk removal to registered neighborhood associations once a year, and it partners with Keep Pinellas Beautiful to host litter pickup events that start with a Neighborhood Cleanup Interest Form (Neighborhood Improvement).

The same St. Petersburg page describes the city's Neighborhood Team, or N-Team, which uses city employees and volunteers to provide free exterior painting, carpentry, handicap access ramps, minor roof repairs, roof tarps, minor plumbing, debris and overgrowth removal and code violation repairs for St. Pete homeowners who are elderly, disabled or low income; applications go through the city and questions to 727-893-7373 (Neighborhood Improvement). Last verified: October 15, 2026, on the City of St. Petersburg website.

Three City of St. Petersburg programs fund neighborhood groups in 2026 and 2027: the Mayor's Neighborhood Mini-Grant for events, the Neighborhood Partnership Matching Grant for physical improvements, and the MLK Communities in Action Mini-Grant (Mini-Grant, Matching Grants, MLK Mini-Grant).

The St. Petersburg mini-grant runs on a quick but strict process. Applications are reviewed within 2 business days, an approved association signs an agreement sent through Adobe, and Neighborhood Relations staff then buy the items directly, holding them for pickup at a local retailer or shipping them; the city makes no reimbursement payments (Mini-Grant Program). No reimbursement payments are made for supplies bought by the association itself.

For the matching grant, St. Pete counts volunteer hours, in-kind services or dollars as the match, and an application is not complete until the association emails its Budget and Match Spreadsheet to [email protected] (Matching Grants). The 2027 MLK mini-grant lists community-based organizations and civic groups among eligible applicants, alongside nonprofits and small businesses located within St. Petersburg city limits (MLK Mini-Grant).

A St. Petersburg resident who owns, rents or lives at a property abutting the street in question asks the city's Neighborhood Transportation Coordinator, at 727-893-7843, to evaluate it under the Neighborhood Traffic Calming Program (Neighborhood Improvement).

The St. Pete program covers local roads and neighborhood collector roads with a speed limit below 35 mph. A speeding concern qualifies when the 85th percentile speed is more than 8 mph over the limit or above 35 mph, and a cut-through concern qualifies when more than 20 percent of a street's 24-hour traffic passes in a single hour on a street carrying more than 400 vehicles a day (Neighborhood Improvement). Measures the city lists include speed humps, speed tables, raised intersections, median islands and chicanes.

The same St. Petersburg page posts neighborhood traffic plans by association name, and many are old: the Palmetto Park plan is dated August 2002, Historic Kenwood June 2003, and the newest of the 90 posted plans, Central Oak Park, dates to November 2019 (Neighborhood Improvement).

In South St. Petersburg, the city's Neighborhood Planning Program, created in 2022, supports eligible neighborhoods inside the South St. Petersburg Community Redevelopment Area in planning and revitalization activities, including expanding neighborhood organizational capacity and engagement (13th Street Heights plan page).

The South St. Petersburg CRA was established in 2014, covers 4,777 acres, is the largest CRA in the city, and encompasses or borders more than 20 neighborhoods. Neighborhood plans were developed in the early 2000s for many of St. Pete's organized neighborhoods, including some inside the CRA (City of St. Petersburg). The city's Neighborhood Planning page lists six neighborhood plans: Campbell Park, Melrose-Mercy, Palmetto Park, St. Pete Heights, Wildwood Heights and 13th Street Heights (Neighborhood Planning).

The 13th Street Heights update in St. Petersburg shows how long the process runs. It began with an online survey and comment map in March and April 2025, held a neighborhood meeting on May 6, 2025, released a draft in July 2025, held an open house on September 20, 2025 and community workshops on January 21 and January 24, 2026, was reviewed by the South St. Petersburg Citizen Advisory Committee on April 7, 2026, approved by the Community Planning and Preservation Committee on April 14, 2026 and approved by City Council on April 16, 2026 (13th Street Heights plan).