ST. PETERSBURG - Things have gotten so crowded at Home Shopping Network that the St. Petersburg TV shopping network has mapped ambitious long-range plans to expand its sprawling headquarters campus.
"We're not anywhere near getting a building permit," said Darris Gringeri, spokesman for the network that reported revenues of $1.9-billion in 2002. "We want to make sure that we simply have the opportunity to build here in the future."
The city of St. Petersburg recently approved HSN's master plan for an expanded campus. But that only put the TV shopping network on a waiting list of projects in the Gateway area that cannot be started without more road and other public improvements.
The line is about to start moving. That's because the city this month committed to raise about $18-million for roads required to support 700,000 square feet of new office space, 500,000 square feet of added industrial space and several other smaller developments in the Gateway area at the city's northern border.
HSN accounts for 400,000 square feet of those development rights. That would provide for a giant expansion in the years to come of HSN's 500,000-square-foot campus west of Roosevelt Boulevard and north of 118th Avenue.
Most of the road improvements would be for widened streets in the immediate area.
"We think our investment is justified because the Gateway area is home to many of the biggest economic engines in the city," said David Goodwin, an assistant planning director.
HSN officials declined to talk about when they would begin adding to their campus, whether new jobs would be created in the expansion or what operations would be housed in new quarters.
In the short term, however, HSN has signed a contract to acquire 14 vacant acres west of its current campus as a site for a three-story building with 172,000 square feet of office space.
Later, the network, a unit of Barry Diller's InterActiveCorp, has the city's approval to build two more five-story office towers that would mirror the network's administrative headquarters, which fronts on Roosevelt.
The network cannot get building permits for any of the projects, however, until money for the infrastructure improvements is earmarked.
Other Gateway companies that have priority on the waiting list are Aegon Equity Group; industrial park developer Grady Pridgen Inc.; Carillon developer Echelon Development LLC; and Catalina Marketing Corp., which moved its corporate headquarters to the Carillon development in 2000.
If regional and state planning agencies accept the city's updated road improvement and infrastructure plan for the Gateway area, building permits for projects on the waiting list could be issued as soon as late summer, city officials said.
