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DAVID KARPHousing authority members want Ed Turanchik to give them some hard answers in a hurry about his proposal.
TAMPA - Developer Ed Turanchik has until Jan. 9 to close a deal to redevelop the Central Park Village housing project into an upscale urban neighborhood.
On Tuesday, the Tampa Housing Authority gave Turanchik 18 days to finish negotiations on a joint public-private plan to redevelop the area using a $20-million federal Hope VI grant.
The authority needs to apply for the grant from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development by Jan. 20.
Board members set the Jan. 9 deadline so they can submit their own application to HUD - without Turanchik - if their negotiations with him fail.
"If you want to be a team player, you have to come clean with all the information requested," board member Gerald White told Turanchik.
Turanchik missed a Monday deadline to give the authority information it needed. He submitted the data Tuesday morning, giving staff little time to review it before a 9 a.m. board meeting.
Turanchik apologized to the board Tuesday. "We missed the deadline because we were meeting with residents," he said.
Turanchik wants to partner with the housing authority to build an upscale, mixed-income neighborhood on 157 acres between downtown and Ybor City. Two low-income housing projects now sit on most of the land in the Central Park area.
To do that, Turanchik wants to build market-rate townhomes, which sell for as much as $650,000, on the site of the current housing projects. In exchange for public land, Turanchik will give the housing authority five sites downtown, 50 lots for a home ownership program, and cash.
The authority would get $1,000 for every condo or townhouse sold, and $500 for every private rental unit leased in the project, which could include 3,500 market-rate residences.
In additional, the housing authority would eventually buy as many as 150 lots in east Tampa, West Tampa and Tampa Heights, where Turanchik would build light-gauge steel homes. The authority would buy the lots at cost, plus 15 percent.
With less than a month before HUD's deadline, Turanchik has not told the authority where those 150 lots are located.
"I would like for the board to know exactly where those areas are," board member Hazel Harvey said Tuesday.
Turanchik has not said when he will identify the 150 sites. He promised to give the authority the locations for 50 properties for the home ownership program by Jan. 5.
Turanchik also plans to disclose environmental assessments of the sites and a market analysis for the project by Jan. 5.
City officials want Turanchik to answer other questions as well. They want to see the company's current financial statements, a development analysis proving the project's feasibility, and an economic impact analysis.
No one has talked publicly about getting appraisals on the land they will swap.
Harvey also asked Turanchik how his project would pay for new schools to serve the new development. School Board member Candy Olson raised the same question last week, saying Turanchik's development would attract at least 945 new elementary school children, 277 middle school students, and 329 high school students.
She said the School Board would need to build a new elementary school for the project, plus find room for older students in already-crowded schools.
Turanchik predicts that the development will generate millions in new property taxes, which the School Board can use to build new schools.
Also last week, state Sen. Victor Crist raised concerns that Turanchik's Central Park development could mean more low-income families will move into the neighborhood that Crist represents near the University of South Florida.
Turanchik said that won't happen, because he will have housing available on site.
Crist, a Republican from Tampa, said the private-public partnership could be "special."
"It also has the potential to be something devastating to the families who live there," he said.
- Times Staff Writer Bill Varian contributed to this report. David Karp can be reached at 226-3376 or karp@sptimes.com