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Owner: Complex is on upswing

The man about to buy Tampa's Channelside wants to improve the retail mix of the shopping and entertainment center.

By MARK ALBRIGHT
Published March 16, 2005

TAMPA - Channelside is getting a new owner who thinks the long-struggling waterfront entertainment center finally has turned the corner.

New York City real estate dealmaker Ben Ashkenazy has agreed to buy the 4.5-acre complex next to the Tampa cruise ship port for an undisclosed price. The Tampa Port Authority blessed the deal Tuesday by agreeing to assign the rest of the 40-year land lease for the two-level center to Ashkenazy Acquisition Corp. The sale is expected to close within three weeks.

"We're in it for the long term," said the 34-year-old Ashkenazy, who has been turning heads since age 17 when he and a partner borrowed $2-million to buy a Bronx supermarket. "In the past year the current owners have done a very good job of leasing Channelside. We think we can improve the mix."

That means going after more tenants such as bookstores, apparel chains and home decor and gift retailers.

Ashkenazy, whose father once owned a chain of paint stores, amassed in a decade a $1-billion portfolio of 50 properties for his investment fund. Most of the properties are large shopping centers and office buildings, but his fund garnered a lot of attention when Barney's New York emerged from Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2001. Ashkenazy swooped in with $175-million to buy the high profile retail real estate that the chain's Japanese creditors wanted to ditch. Since then, Barney's trendy stores in midtown Manhattan, Chicago's Gold Coast and Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills have rented from Ashkenazy.

Ashkenazy also once owned a vintage 1846 Manhattan church that was remodeled into the once popular Limelight night club, and he redeveloped a gas station in hip Chelsea into an apartment building.

"The new owner is going to be a breath of fresh air because he understands you have to constantly market and stage events at a center like this," said Guy Revelle, co-owner of five restaurant/clubs at Channelside including Stump's and Splitsville. "The original developers were more passive investors."

Entertainment centers were a relatively new type of shopping center when the first three in the Tampa Bay area - BayWalk in St. Petersburg, Channelside and Centro Ybor in Tampa - opened four years ago.

"It's a nontraditional type of center that's become hot enough elsewhere that more and more retailers want to go in them," said John Crossman, a principal with Trammel Crow. "The Channelside area is turning into a good market with a lot of activity."

The original developer, ORIX Real Estate Equities, a unit of a Japanese financial service company, figured it was time to sell. That's because of the flush market for retail real estate and a parade of new tenants stabilized what had been a dicey property.

Built in a fight for many of the retailers that settled into Centro Ybor, ORIX was handicapped by a site that offered only the promise of future traffic. Now that the neighborhood has been discovered by a flurry of high-rise condo developers and event patrons at the nearby St. Pete Times Forum, the shopping complex has become a more attractive draw. Sweetbay Supermarket plans to put a store nearby. Bennigan's opened in Channelside this winter, making the project 85 percent leased with 11 restaurants, a 10-screen Regal theater and a handful of retailers.

Mark Albright can be reached at albright@sptimes.com or 727 893-8252.

[Last modified March 16, 2005, 01:31:14]