Eager investors have truly discovered Tampa Bay, and construction cranes abound. Will the new buildings play nicely with existing streetscapes or overwhelm them? In the urban cores of both downtown St. Pete and Tampa, there’s a whole lot of shakin’ going on.
Generally, there’s a push-me/pull-you attitude amongst folks who are already invested in a place. They want new restaurants — but don’t want the traffic. They want new, cool neighbors — but not too many. Finding the right mixture of existing and new in the midst of a dynamic growth spurt is tough.
I have a mental image of a daredevil on a unicycle, juggling small-scale, historic homes and McMansions, low-rises and towers. The trickiest part of this balancing act is that the surface on which the unicycle rolls is textured with existing development. There are lots of potential pitfalls along the way.
A perfect case study for this tension is 4th Avenue North, in St. Pete’s center. This charming area is filled with historic homes, large oaks and older mid-rise multi-family apartments and condos. The Palladium Theatre and Kahwa Coffee are within a block and downtown’s dynamic epicenter is three blocks away.
“Most people enter from 4th Avenue, and their first sense of St. Pete is shaped by the Welcome Tower, the Coliseum, the Shuffleboard Court Complex at Mirror Lake and the historic two-story homes and offices,” observes Emily Elwyn, president of St. Pete Preservation. “We need to protect this special feeling.”
Bliss, an 18-story, 29-unit condo, is among the projects currently underway on 4th Avenue North near Beach Drive.
This building will boast the first “vehicular elevator” in the Bay area. This means that rather than having to mess with parking, the elevator will raise both you and your car (and your groceries and your children) up to the door of your condo.
Karl Nurse is the St. Pete Council member who represents this area. When I asked him about the zoning hearing for this project, he laughed. Surprisingly enough, he told me, the objections came not from the preservation community, which I had expected, but from the adjacent Parkshore condo, which is even taller.
It seems that the Parkshore honchos were concerned about the potential noisiness of Bliss’s roof-mounted air conditioning units, which could prove annoying to their residents.
Nurse reassured me that city staff is exploring codes developed in Miami as possible solutions to this newfangled problem.
Dave Traynor is a VP for Smith and Associates, which represents Bliss, One, and the Salvador, three of the newest condos. He’s very high on these projects. “We want to make sure that any new development works in conjunction with the city to be good neighbors.”
Standing at 42 stories, One will have 253 units and take up an entire city block at 1st Street and 1st Avenue North. This single project will cost more than $1 billion and generate a lot of local taxes; hence the challenge in reining in large new projects in order to protect the small-scale character of the ’Burg.
A familiar success story five blocks from the One site has demonstrated that thoughtful development can occur without unduly disturbing St. Pete’s distinctive streetscape. Prior to 2007, land was assembled for a condo project on the 600 block of Central Avenue. That project never got off the ground, leaving properties vacant for years. The indigenous one-story commercial buildings were slated for demolition.
Then great public vision, led by former City Council member Leslie Curran, a gallery owner, transformed this sad line of empty storefronts into a vibrant collection of art-oriented, unique shops and cafes. “People were sleeping in the alcove and the property was a mess. Instead of painting the exterior of these buildings to improve them, I asked why we couldn’t get artists to move inside.”
Contrary to common belief, the city did not subsidize this project. It helped by pressure-washing the filthy sidewalks and rolling out three roll-off trash containers for the junk abandoned in the storefronts. Curran personally cleaned out every storefront and interviewed over 300 artists who vied for the spaces.
Tom Gaffney bought the property to stabilize it and agreed to put the artists in for negligible rents. Gaffney vowed that he wouldn’t be a slumlord, and invested in upgrading the properties again and again, including a first-rate commission for the metal gate to the arcade.
After the initial five years, rents are higher, some artists have moved on and new boutiques are filling the storefronts. Elizabeth Burbage said that she searched for the right location for her shop, Twig, which specializes in clothes and objects created by independent artists and small labels. “I wanted to find the right space for my business and this block is full of character and history.”
As the machinery of redevelopment cranks up, we need to support the independent, local businesses which create the character to balance the high-rises and maintain the character and personality of the ’Burg.
This article appears in Jan 7-13, 2016.