Live in Meadowlawn

Meadowlawn was cattle pasture for Hood's Dairy until it was sold for back taxes in the Depression. In 1947 Rube Wells, Manch Watson and Bill Arnold bought 640 acres, and in the 1950s Johnny Haynsworth's Florida Builders, Mastry Builders and three other firms built it out. The neighborhood association's own history says why it looks the way it does: the land was low and prone to flooding, so the builders dug lakes and used the soil as fill. The association counts six, and two of them, Lynch Lake and Mastry Lake, are City parks now.

The guide's boundary is the area the Meadowlawn Neighborhood Association serves as the City maps it, an area the association filed rather than a line the City drew: about 697 acres between 62nd Avenue North, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Street North, Interstate 275 and a line near 77th Avenue North. The 2020 census counted 5,409 residents in 2,229 homes there. Two places that carry the name or sit beside it are outside: Meadowlawn Middle School and Northeast High School are both south of 62nd Avenue.

The fill did not lift Meadowlawn off FEMA's map. The effective map of August 2021 puts 67.6% of the area in the 1% annual chance flood zone, all of it zone A, and 3,178 of the residents lived on blocks inside it; at the reference point it is zone AE with a base flood elevation of 8 feet, and the County puts that parcel in evacuation zone B, with 1,067 residents in zone A. The storms of 2024 were milder here than the map suggests. After Hurricane Helene the City assessed 26 parcels in the area and recorded water inside 20, none at a foot or more; after Milton, which dropped 18.31 inches of rain on the city in a day, it assessed 49, 14 with major damage and none with water inside. A separate City layer credits the association's area with $26.1 million of Helene building loss over 592 structures. It carries no description and does not match the assessments, so this guide does not treat it as a count of damage.

The zone is what governs the paperwork. Inside it, a federally backed mortgage requires flood insurance, and Citizens requires flood cover on any homeowners policy with wind; from 1 January 2027 it requires it on every such policy anywhere. The City applies FEMA's substantial damage rule at 49%, not 50%, and counts repairs cumulatively, whatever caused the damage: once they reach 49% of the structure's value, the whole house must meet current flood rules, which can mean raising it. A homeowners policy does not cover rising water.

No price index follows the line. Zillow's typical value for ZIP code 33702 was $309,095 in August 2026, down 1.7% on the year, but the ZIP held 29,996 people in 2020, Riviera Bay and 2,966 unincorporated residents among them. Every parcel here pays the same 2025 stack, 19.9197 mills, with no redevelopment area and no historic district. A homestead at the ZIP figure owes about $5,318 a year on the base exemption amounts, and a landlord about $6,157. Save Our Homes caps a homestead's assessed value at 3% a year and resets on a sale, so the seller's bill understates yours. The arithmetic is on the St. Petersburg page.