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Downtown grocery soon will be reality
By SHARON L. BOND, Neighborhood Times Business Editor
ST. PETERSBURG -- In the annals of groundbreakings for downtown projects, the one last week for University Village carried a significance larger than the size of the project or the amount of money in it. Downtown finally is getting a grocery store to serve its center core that has come back to life with six residential condominium towers, two blocks of apartments and an entertainment/shopping center. "We are clearly the most residential downtown in the state of Florida today," said Mayor Rick Baker, ticking off the residential towers, townhomes and apartments already built and the lofts and condominiums that are planned. "All the folks who live here need amenities," Baker said. "The addition of Publix and Eckerd are not only great additions. They reflect the success we already have seen in our downtown." University Village is a Sembler Co. project that features a Publix grocery store, an Eckerd drugstore and a number of other retailers, including General Nutrition Center, Village Optical, American Spirit wine and liquor store, Great Clips hair salon, Subway sandwich shop and East Bay dry cleaners. Several more retail spaces are spoken for but leases haven't been signed, said Craig Sher, president and chief executive officer of Sembler Co.. The project should be complete by early next year. Publix will sit on the site that housed Dew Cadillac for more than 80 years. Dew left last year for a new dealership, clearing the way for University Village. Sembler, with several partners, built downtown's new entertainment/retail center, BayWalk. University Village is an $8-million project that has 46,000 square feet in retail space, including the 28,000-square-foot Publix. Eckerd is a free-standing store and is being built on a lot across Third Street S from Publix. University Village sits within sight of the Madison, a 277-unit luxury complex that was just completed by Zom Development, and McNulty Lofts, a project just announced by Echelon Development LLC. Not far away is the University of South Florida St. Petersburg, which is expanding and building student housing in the future. "We worked on this project for some four to five years," Sher said at the groundbreaking last week. "We worked various sites. We kept working around downtown, and we finally came to this site. It is kind of a dream come true in a lot of ways."
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