Live in Childs Park

Julius A. and Lysander D. Childs platted the Childs Park subdivision in 1911, on farms and groves west of 34th Street that stayed mostly rural until after the Second World War. Dr. J. A. Childs gave the land for Childs Park Elementary, which opened in 1924 and closed in 1995. The historian James Schnur records that the neighborhoods west of 34th Street South were still all-white in the early 1950s, that Black families had moved into eastern Childs Park by the 1960s, and that by about 1970 four in ten pupils at the elementary school were Black, the year before court-ordered busing integrated the county's schools. Just across 34th Street is Gibbs High, opened in 1927 for Black students only.

The line is an association's, not the City's. The City maps the area each registered association says it serves, and this guide is the Childs Park Neighborhood Association's: 830 acres from 5th Avenue South to about 18th Avenue South and from 34th Street South to 49th Street South, where the separate City of Gulfport begins. The 2020 census counted 6,518 residents in 2,432 homes, the most of the three South St. Pete guides, and every one is inside the City's South St. Petersburg Community Redevelopment Area, which since 2015 has steered the growth in tax revenue inside its line into grants and loans and adds no rate. How many homes are owned rather than rented was not tabulated for this guide. The park of the same name, at 4301 13th Avenue South, holds the recreation center, the pool and Childs Park Lake; this guide means the neighborhood around it.

This is the dry side of South St. Pete. FEMA's 2021 map puts none of the 830 acres in its 1% or 0.2% annual chance zones; the reference point is zone X, minimal hazard, and 6,147 residents are in no hurricane evacuation zone. After Helene the City assessed three parcels here and found no water inside any of them, against 66 of 71 in Bartlett Park three miles east. Milton was different: the City assessed 115 parcels after it, 26 with major damage and one destroyed, again none with water inside. Those are its inspection points, one per parcel, not a count of homes. Dry ground is not an exemption from flood cover, either: from 1 January 2027 most Citizens policies with wind cover must carry flood insurance wherever the house is.

The schools are the open question. Pinellas County Schools zones by address, and Childs Park is split three ways at the elementary level and two at the high school. On 10 September 2026 the district recommended closing Bear Creek Elementary, the zoned school for 1,200 residents, and moving Azalea Middle, which every resident is zoned for, into a building on the Boca Ciega High campus, while turning Boca Ciega, the high school for 3,158 of them, into a technical high school. The board votes on 13 October 2026; until then these are proposals.

No price index follows the line. Almost everyone here is in ZIP code 33711, whose Zillow value was $275,667 in August 2026, down 3.1% on the year; the ZIP's 20,121 residents also include 534 in Pinellas Point and 655 in Gulfport. Every address in the guide pays 19.9197 mills for 2025, so a homestead at that figure owes about $4,653 a year on the base exemptions and a landlord about $5,491. Across 49th Street, Gulfport levies 17.4930, so check which city the parcel is in. Save Our Homes caps a homestead's assessed value at 3% a year and ends with a sale, so the seller's bill understates yours; the City's stormwater fee, $12.67 to $59.08 a month, comes on the utility bill. The arithmetic is on the St. Petersburg page. Route 66 runs every half hour on 40th Street, the Spark line every 15 minutes on 34th, and PSTA's schedule changes on 4 October 2026.