Tampabay: City pitches riverfront property

City officials sent that pitch out Tuesday to about 300 developers nationwide, hoping to drum up interest in a patch of Curtis Hixon Park for downtown's first residential housing project in two decades.

"It's got views of the University of Tampa, the minarets, a beautiful view of the bay," said Ron Rotella, a special consultant to Mayor Dick Greco. "We want to make sure developers have the same enthusiasm we do. It's their role to access the market and assume the risk."

Home sales and apartment rentals boomed at nearby Harbour Island. High-priced condos keep springing up a short drive away on Bayshore Boulevard. But downtown Tampa is a ghost town after dark and on weekends when workers have left their office towers for home.

That won't change until people live downtown, say Greco and downtown boosters.

The best chance to jump-start the process could be the residential tower that planners envision as part of a cultural arts district, which will include a new $45-million art museum, history museum and an expanded Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center.

The original blueprint called for 60 to 80 high-priced condominiums in a tower hugging the city's Poe parking garage. But local developers and bankers told the city last summer the project would need at least 200 units to work financially.

So the package sent to developers Tuesday was intentionally open-ended, Rotella said.

The site plan shows a building footprint next to the garage. The only guidelines are that the structure fit inside the lines and be no taller than the nearby 31-story 400 Ashley Tower.

The cover letter from Greco calls it "a prime site for an exciting luxury residential high rise development" and asks recipients to mail in letters of interest by May 27. The city expects to issue a formal request for proposals this summer.

Local development heavyweights say the project faces some tough obstacles.

The market for luxury apartments with rents of $1,000 a month or more is nearly saturated, said Anthony M. Everett, vice president for Post Properties apartment development in Tampa. There are better high-end condominium sites on Harbour Island and Bayshore Boulevard, he said.

"I'm not sure what I'd put on that property now -- not luxury condos," Everett said. "That part of downtown is coming along but it's not the best part of downtown."

The project's timing is critical, said Dick Beard, the developer who built much of the downtown office skyline. Other pieces of the district, such as the new art museum, must be finished first, he said.

"I think it will do well, especially as rental apartments," Beard said. "But the trick is how to time the development with the other construction around it. People aren't going to want to live on a construction site."

They also won't move in unless they're convinced the rest of the district will actually be built, said Chris Bowers, a partner with the Wilson Co. The only sure bet appears to be the art museum, which has $27-million from the city and a campaign under way to cover the rest.

"You can't trailblaze it and expect it to survive," Bowers said. "The whole district's got to be done first."

Urban pioneers tend to be young people with average incomes, Everett said. Orlando provided developers as much as $14-million in incentives to build reasonably priced, multifamily housing downtown that working people could afford, he said.

"I don't know if the city will have to do that or not," he said. "It will be a challenge to come up with a product that works."

-- Steve Huettel can be reached at huettel@sptimes.com or (813) 226-3384.

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