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ST. PETERSBURG - They are affluent, savvy shoppers who expect attentive customer service. They have the means and the inclination to invest $1,000 or more on a suit, $1-million or more on a home.
Within the next few years, several thousand of these new urban dwellers will move into condominiums downtown costing from about $200,000 to several million dollars.
St. Petersburg's waterfront view is one of the selling points that soon will bring an estimated 2,500 to 2,900 additional residents to an area that encompasses Fifth Street, Fifth Avenue N, Second Avenue S and Tampa Bay.
City officials project 1,427 dwelling units for that sector; others are planned, or are already being built nearby. Developers are negotiating with a number of high-end retailers, and business investors are trying to intuit the needs and desires of new residents while holding on to the customers they already have.
Does central St. Petersburg have what it will take to satisfy those champagne tastes?
Not quite, according to people who already live and have businesses in the area. They want a bookstore, a sundries shop, perhaps an apothecary. There's no nearby service station, haberdasher or exclusive women's boutique. Brooks Brothers, Neiman Marcus, Nordstrom, Saks Fifth Avenue and Tiffany - none has a St. Petersburg storefront.
If you use premium-label cosmetics, for example, you must go elsewhere.
"I only use Elizabeth Arden Blue Grass deodorant," said Margaret Ann Burtchaell, who lives in the Old Northeast and opened a Beach Drive branch of Margaret Ann's Gourmet Cookies earlier this year. She drives to Tyrone and Tampa to stock up.
"It's a journey, and people make that journey," Burtchaell said. "There's certainly a market for a store that carries good cosmetics."
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The same can be said for fine restaurants.
Russ Bond, general manager of the waterfront Renaissance Vinoy Resort, notes that downtown St. Petersburg lacks big-name national restaurants that cater to the well-heeled, concepts that "people from outside the area could recognize, to make sure our guests come back and come back again." Something like a Ruth's Chris, perhaps, or a Palm. Both have Tampa locations.
"Of course, we always recommend our restaurants here (at the Vinoy) first," Bond hastened to say. "Our restaurants are busier than they've ever been."
Well-to-do downtown residents also are pushing private memberships at the Vinoy and the nearby St. Petersburg Yacht Club toward capacity.
"We are close to getting to a waiting list," said Robert Lovejoy, the yacht club's general manager. "That's a big thing for us; it's exciting. One of every club's goals is to get to that."
Bond said discussions already are under way about expanding the Vinoy's health club and pool areas to accommodate additional members.
Still, there are voids to fill.
Look to Bal Harbour, Naples and Palm Beach for more exclusive boutiques that carry labels such as Cartier, Chanel, Gucci, Harry Winston, Hermes and Louis Vuitton - merchandise that can be hard to find in St. Petersburg.
Richard Fenker, founder and president of the International Centre for the Science of Retail Modeling and Forecasting in Irving, Texas, says two basic factors are necessary to draw upscale merchants to an area: "Somebody looks at the stuff that's going on with the condominiums, and they simply say, "This is an area that's going to turn around.' "
The second: A retail developer "pushes the button on enough of an investment," fearing it will be unaffordable later.
"If you look around at what retailers are doing," Fenker said, "a lot of them are sitting around watching. The things that kind of sell me, if I'm an investor, are that there is a commitment coming from somewhere that's going to make this development work. That spark, to the largest degree, is where the tipping point comes from."
City planners certainly hope to land those kinds of major retailers. Hoping to avoid a canyon effect caused by row after row of condo towers, they have urged residential developers to make room for retail and restaurants, said Bob Jeffrey, St. Petersburg's assistant director of development services. Ideally, they will serve downtown residents as well as laborers and office workers who live beyond the city's core but linger to shop and take their meals.
"Ultimately, that's the kind of retail that we want downtown," he said. "If the base of the building is about all the people in the community, that's what creates a successful downtown."
That's just the scenario that John Hamilton Jr. is working toward. Hamilton is a director of Beach Drive Retail, which is leasing businesses in two Opus South Corp. condominium towers under construction on the waterfront between BayWalk and the Renaissance Vinoy.
"We have a vision for what this can become," he said. "We're trying to create a pedestrian environment that accentuates the window-shopping experience."
The two towers, Parkshore Plaza and 400 Beach Drive, together with a number of other, smaller projects, are "just creating an entirely different residential environment," he said.
For downtown St. Petersburg, the next logical step would be larger, big-box stores that would replace spaces now occupied by smaller businesses and boutiques, Jeffrey said.
Could that mean franchises such as Crate & Barrel and Banana Republic?
It's possible, he said, without elaborating.
Those sorts of options would please Sally Poynter, who lives in the Florencia condominium development, on St. Petersburg's waterfront Beach Drive: "Like a BayWalk, but serious high-end retail stores. It would be nice to have more restaurants to walk to."
Carmen Moore, another Florencia resident, said she would support businesses with high-level customer service such as that once typified by John Baldwin, a women's boutique that opened on Beach Drive in 1951. Coplon's, its last incarnation, closed last year.
Others lamented the loss of Maas Brothers, which offered everything from wedding gifts to pantyhose, birthday cards to sofas. The full-service department store closed in 1991.
Still others cited specialty groceries such as Whole Foods, which has a store in Sarasota, and the Fresh Market, in Tampa and Clearwater.
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St. Petersburg's core landscape looks considerably different than it did just five years ago: BayWalk, the entertainment and shopping complex, opened in 2000; University Village, anchored by a Publix, in 2003. Several high-end restaurants - Julian's at the Heritage, Pacific Wave and Redwoods - are within a walk or a short drive.
Still, some entrepreneurs who have gambled on a more vibrant cityscape cross their fingers that developers have come up with a winning formula.
Catherine Watkins, co-owner of Cafe Alma with her husband, Dwight, has concerns about the dearth of downtown corporate headquarters and wonders whether buyers of the new condominiums will become permanent residents.
Seasonal residents and investors who plan to quickly resell the properties will have little long-term effect on the community, she said. And as gasoline and insurance prices rise, discretionary income evaporates.
But Watkins remains hopeful.
She envisions downtown becoming "an eclectic mix of independent and corporate places," where people who live and work downtown shop and order lunch, dinner and after-work drinks. Cafe Alma, on First Avenue S, already offers late-night entertainment along with food and beverage service, and Watkins thinks other restaurateurs likely will do the same.
"St. Pete is changing itself as we go along," she said. "If the neighborhood does change, we're ahead of the game."