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Condo proposal tops Trump Tower

Felix Amon wants to build two 625-foot-tall towers, connected by sky bridges, in downtown Tampa.

By STEVE HUETTEL
Published December 6, 2005

TAMPA - A Daytona Beach developer says he's assembling land in downtown Tampa for a wildly ambitious project: twin 51-story condominium towers connected by sky bridges.

Felix Amon of Amon Investments is thinking big: two 625-foot-tall towers that would reach higher than the planned Trump Tower Tampa, already touted as the tallest condo project on Florida's west coast.

"We want to build buildings that create inspiration, something that puts Tampa on the map," he said Monday. "They need to be spectacular."

The project, dubbed Tampa Towers, is at "a sensitive stage" with most of the land - parking lots south of the SunTrust Financial Centre along the Lee Roy Selmon Crosstown Expressway - under contract, Amon said. He has held only preliminary talks with a city planning official.

A couple weeks ago, Amon Investments launched a Web site complete with an artist's renderings of the towers, showing their location in relation to other downtown skyscrapers and the future Trump Tower.

Tampa Towers would have 472 residences, a combination of residential condos and condo hotel rooms owned by investors and managed by a nameplate hotel, Amon said.

Condos would sell from $350 to $1,200 per square foot or $700,000 to $2.4-million for a 2,000-square foot unit. There would also be 10,000 square feet of retail space on lower floors.

Renderings show towers with green glass and metal facades and gold tops cradling glass or silver domes. Two or three sky bridges would connect the buildings. They were inspired by the 88-story Petronas Towers in Malaysia, Amon said, the tallest buildings in the world.

News of his project appeared Friday evening on a Tampa blog site. Amon said he didn't plan on announcing Tampa Towers soon and put up the Web site to attract investors. The project Web site and Tampa Towers information on the company site were pulled down after Amon talked with a St. Petersburg Times reporter Monday afternoon.

An Austrian-born investor, Amon moved to America to capitalize on the euro's strength against the dollar, said Geri Campos, Clearwater economic development director. Amon says he has undertaken about 20 projects, both single-family homes and condos, mostly in the Daytona Beach and Orlando areas.

In May, Amon bought the rights to build a 126-unit, 15-story downtown condo development in Clearwater called Station Square, which had floundered for more than a year under a previous developer. Amon is expected to break ground in February.

He'd like to begin building Tampa Towers in 2007 and finish in two or three years. But he admits there's a long way to go.

It will take several months to hash out with city staffers issues on zoning, possible street closings and measures to make the southern part of downtown more "pedestrian friendly," said Amon.

He will also need to build any skyscraper to a height acceptable to the Federal Aviation Administration because the downtown area is so close to flight paths for Peter O. Knight Airport on nearby Davis Islands.

--Staff Writer Aaron Sharockman contributed to this report. Steve Huettel can be reached at huettel@sptimes.com or 813 226-3384.

[Last modified December 6, 2005, 02:15:34]