INSPIRATION / TAMPA
Sarah Combs
She was willing
to change the plan.
By Rob Urban
Sarah Combs thought the neighborhood needed housing. Residents told her they wanted a park.
That is a fairly consequential disagreement when your job involves deciding what gets built. Housing was an entirely reasonable answer. It was also her answer, arrived at before she had fully understood theirs. In a 2026 conversation with the University of South Florida, Combs described changing course after hearing families explain their need for somewhere safe to play and spend time together.
The story stayed with me because she tells it as something she had to learn. Plenty of leaders will explain the brilliance of their completed project. Combs is willing to include the part where the people she intended to help improved her thinking.
She now leads Metropolitan Ministries in Tampa. Earlier, she spent nearly fifteen years heading the University Area Community Development Corporation. Across those roles, she has worked on the rather complicated question of what it takes for a family to feel secure in a neighborhood.
Room for
ordinary life.
HARVEST HOPE PARK
TAMPA’S UNIVERSITY AREA
Harvest Hope Park opened in November 2019 on seven acres in Tampa’s University Area. Its features include a playground, sports field, walking trail, fishing pond, outdoor exercise stations and a splash zone. There is also a community garden and teaching kitchen.
Look at that collection and you can see how many kinds of days a park can hold. A parent has a place to bring a restless child. Someone who wants exercise does not need a gym membership. A family can spend an afternoon together without buying tickets to anything. In Florida, that last category deserves considerably more respect than it gets.
The park was developed in phases, which also helps explain its character. A useful public place accumulates opportunities. People have different ages, abilities, interests and amounts of time. Giving them several reasons to come makes the space more hospitable than a single-purpose attraction.
Something is growing.
At the community garden, participants can keep a share of what they grow. The remainder supports other families or helps sustain the garden through sales. It is a place to work as well as a place to receive something.
There is a different feeling to bringing home produce you helped grow. You know what happened before it reached the kitchen. You have also spent time around other people doing the same thing, which is an underrated benefit of getting your hands dirty. A garden offers an easy starting point for conversation: something is growing, something needs watering, and everyone has an opinion about the weather.
The families
knew what
was missing.
I admire the confidence it takes to hear a better idea and help it happen. A resident should not need a development degree to explain that their child needs somewhere to play. Combs had knowledge the neighborhood could use. The neighborhood had knowledge she needed. A park grew out of allowing both to matter.
There is a generosity in telling the story that way, too. She lets the families remain the people who knew what was missing. Years later, their answer is still there for other families to enjoy.
The property
decisions matter.
Combs brought substantial development experience to her current job. Metropolitan Ministries’ biography describes her work in land banking, financial strategy and real estate, alongside program development. These are useful skills for someone whose concern is whether families can remain in a community as it changes.
There is care in understanding what a building will cost to operate ten years after the ribbon cutting. Somebody has to work through the land, the funding and the maintenance so the promise made on opening day can hold. Combs has spent years working in that demanding territory.
Combs’ background gives her experience with both the people a project serves and the machinery required to build it. That combination is part of what makes her move from neighborhood development to a large regional service organization interesting.
University Area CDC’s housing work includes renovated apartments and Uptown Sky, a sixty-one-unit development with two- and three-bedroom homes. The organization describes housing as connected to programs for residents, including families, veterans and seniors. Reporting by 83 Degrees also credits the collaboration with Blue Sky Communities that brought Uptown Sky into being.
The variety matters. A household may need enough bedrooms, a manageable rent, a way to get to work and help solving an immediate problem. Those needs arrive together. Dividing them among professional specialties can make sense inside organizations; a family still has to live with the whole situation at once.
Tuesday morning.
Two overlapping schedules.
At Metropolitan Ministries, Combs leads an organization whose work reaches into education, employment and family support. Its education programs cover early childhood through adult learning. Childcare creates room for a parent to work; adult education can help that parent qualify for something more stable.
That relationship is easy to describe and demanding to organize. A training opportunity does little good if a parent has nowhere safe to leave a child. A childcare opening is more useful when it fits the hours of a job or class. Each part gains value when the others are available.
I appreciate work that takes these mundane dependencies seriously. They are usually where an ambitious plan either becomes possible or quietly falls apart. It is Tuesday morning, two schedules that overlap and one person who cannot be in both places.
A place
to practice.
A way forward.
The ministry’s job training includes a fifteen-week culinary course with a restaurant externship. Its CareCorps program prepares people for childcare or registered behavior technician work, combining instruction with supervised practical experience. The culinary program also accepts qualified applicants from the wider community.
These are specific routes into work. A student can understand the training, the setting in which it will be practiced and the kind of job it is intended to support. The restaurant placement is especially useful: a kitchen has its own speed, coordination and expectations, and eventually the order has to reach an actual customer.
The same practical approach appears in Inside the Box, the ministry’s catering enterprise. It connects food service with hands-on vocational learning for people moving out of homelessness. Its thrift operation, Bloom Again, supports the wider mission through sales and access to household goods.
There is something encouraging about an organization finding useful work in the things people already need: meals, clothing, furniture, care for children. These activities give supporters ways to participate in everyday life. They also demand competent service. Lunch has to be good even when it comes with a good cause.
Combs grew up in Dove Creek, Colorado, in a farming family. In the USF interview, she connected her community-building instincts to her mother’s example. At Metropolitan Ministries, she also described setting aside her first four months for listening before making changes.
That brings me back to the park. She has the experience to arrive with a plan. What makes her worth paying attention to is her willingness to let the people who will live with it have a say in what happens next.
About Sarah Combs
What does Sarah Combs lead?
Sarah Combs is president and chief executive officer of Metropolitan Ministries in Tampa. She previously led the University Area Community Development Corporation for nearly fifteen years.
What is Harvest Hope Park?
Harvest Hope Park is a seven-acre community park in Tampa’s University Area that opened in November 2019. It includes places for play, exercise, gardening, cooking and gathering.
Why does Rob Urban admire Sarah Combs?
Rob admires her willingness to change a plan after listening to residents, and the practical knowledge she brings to connecting housing, education and family support.
Readers who followed Suzanne Pickett’s work on Jacksonville’s Eastside will recognize a related concern: investment in a neighborhood should make life better for the people who call it home.
Sources: Sarah Combs’s 2026 conversation with the University of South Florida; Metropolitan Ministries’ leadership and program pages; University Area CDC’s park, garden and housing pages; and Joshua McMorrow-Hernandez’s reporting for 83 Degrees. Reflections on listening and everyday care are Rob Urban’s.
For more of Rob’s writing and approach to consulting, meet Rob.