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A real chance for teachers to buy?

A property in the Euclid neighborhood of St. Petersburg could become 23 condos and townhomes especially for educators.

By SHARON L. BOND
Published October 16, 2005

ST. PETERSBURG - For most teachers, moving to Pinellas County is tough in this hot real estate market, where the median home price increased 70 percent in four years to $256,600.

The aging Euclid Center, built as an elementary school in 1925 but now housing school support personnel, could be an answer to a small slice of this problem.

St. Petersburg's Downtown Partnership, a nonprofit group, wants the school and its 2 acres at 1015 10th Ave. N for condominiums and townhouses that first would be marketed to teachers only.

The plan, still in the discussion stage, is for the two-story brick building to be converted to nine condos and another 14 townhomes to be built on the school property.

"We want to have the land put in a community land trust," said Don Shea, president of the partnership.

Not paying for the land should enable a developer to build more affordable housing, Shea said. He wants the condos in the Euclid building to range from $120,000 to $135,000 and the new townhomes priced around $170,000.

"We would build homes and market them to schoolteachers as a recruitment tool," Shea added. Shea said that when he approached Pinellas school superintendent Clayton Wilcox about the Euclid site, Wilcox was interested. Wilcox told him recruiting teachers for south Pinellas schools was difficult because of home prices here.

"It's becoming more challenging in the county as it is becoming more and more difficult to find affordable housing," said Debbie Wedding, director of human resources for recruitment and retention in Pinellas County schools.

Wedding said the school system works with real estate companies, housing agencies and special municipal programs to lure prospective teachers who want to buy homes.

The Euclid Center provides offices for about 85 support staffers. The building, which has arched windows on the first floor and long windows on the second, is too old and the site too small to rehabilitate for students, said Jim Miller, director of real property management with the Pinellas School Board.

"Bringing it back to code for us would be very difficult. It does not meet our needs for the future. We have other facilities where (support) people can move," Miller said.

The Downtown Partnership wants five two-bedroom, two-bath units and four three-bedroom, two-bath units in the Euclid building. The 14 townhomes built around it would be three-bedroom, two-bath units with two-car garages.

Conditions on resale of these homes would keep them affordable for future buyers.

"We want to make sure they are permanently affordable," Shea added.

The Downtown Partnership has worked through land trusts for commercial properties.

Shea said the Euclid building, if the deal is struck, would be the partnership's first such residential property.

[Last modified October 16, 2005, 01:32:18]