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High hopes for high-rises

Downtown condo developers are betting big bucks the urban chic lifestyle spreads like kudzu. Their pioneers are planting the seeds at SkyPoint.

By MICHAEL VAN SICKLER
Published March 19, 2007

TAMPA

The view from Bobby Neale's home in Land O'Lakes is a field of cows.

From his Brandon townhouse, Ian Markowitz scans a retention pond.

Rock Scaglione looks out his window in Seminole Heights and sees a street of bungalows.

In the coming weeks, they will swap these standard Tampa Bay neighborhood backdrops for something entirely new: high-rise urban chic.

By late April, Neale, Markowitz, Scaglione and a few hundred soon-to-be neighbors will be part of a historic migration to downtown's first major offering of urban living: 777 Ashley Drive.

SkyPoint, the $80-million 32-story tower with 381 condos, is the biggest residential high-rise in downtown's history. Its future residents will pioneer a way of life in a downtown known for its office towers, parking lots and deserted after-hours streets.

"Downtown is very transitional," Neale said. "Sometimes it's pretty vacant. But with all the things that are projected to come, I just see it getting better and better."

Will this experiment work?

SkyPoint's developers are betting it will.

Novare Group, an Atlanta development company; and Intown Group, a local firm, are doubling down on an acre lot across from SkyPoint. There, they recently started building Element, a 34-story condo tower along Franklin Street.

On Thursday, they will seek zoning approval for another tower on Ashley Drive. This one would be called Twelve, part-boutique hotel, part-condo. As proposed, it would be the tallest condo high-rise yet at 47 stories.

When it comes to downtown's so-called condo boom, forget about Trump Tower Tampa, the project that became the media darling but has yet to find the financing to start construction.

The developers transforming downtown are Novare and Intown. SkyPoint, Element and Twelve would add 1,185 condos and 135 hotel rooms to a downtown that so far can claim fewer than 100 completed condos. With a fourth project pending next to SkyPoint, no other developer comes close to keeping up.

Gregory Minder, Intown's president, said with SkyPoint sold out and Element selling briskly, he doesn't buy the doom-and-gloom talk about a slowing condo market.

"We're not worried," he said. "We know there are a lot of people in Tampa who want this type of housing."

City officials have calculated that the tax windfall from SkyPoint, Element and other condo projects will finance a $40-million overhaul of downtown for the next 12 years.

A new waterfront park, better public transportation, and a revamped Ashley Drive are some of the projects that might be financed from the taxes paid by downtown's newest denizens.

"This evolutionary stage for downtown will take place in the next two years," said Michael Chen, director of Tampa's urban development department. "Downtown will become not just viable, but a desirable place to live."

With its floor-to-ceiling glass windows wrapped in Smurf-blue protective tape, SkyPoint hardly looks ready for occupation.

Inside, it looks even more uninhabitable. On the 32nd floor, construction debris covers the floors of the penthouse suites. Dust swirls in the air. Wires dangle from the ceiling.

But Minder said a late April opening for the lower floors is going to happen. Several hundred construction workers work around the clock to keep the project on schedule.

By late August, all 32 floors will be ready, said Minder, who plans to move into his own condo on the 26th floor by late July.

The building will look different than it does now.

In April, the tape on the windows will be stripped off to reveal green-tinted glass. The exterior concrete will be polished. The fitness center, pool and club room, with its plasma TV screens and Xboxes installed, will be ready for hipsters.

Sidewalks with a wide row of plants will ring SkyPoint. Art will adorn the building's sides.

So who exactly are the people moving into these condos, which fetch from the $170,000s for the 650-square-foot units to more than $500,000?

Downtown will soon find out. The target market for Novare and Intown's projects are those between the ages of 25 and 40.

Scaglione of Seminole Heights fits the profile. He's 29 and single. He works at a human resources firm. He'll be moving into one-bedroom condo on the 13th floor that he paid $200,000 for in 2005.

"I envision coming home from work, maybe working out, finding a restaurant on foot, getting entertained without having to hop into a car," Scaglione said. "I grew up in Tampa, and know all about downtown not having a lot going on. This is all pretty exciting."

He'll have neighbors like Jim Steward, a 47-year-old Verizon technician who said he looks forward to hanging out at the pool and meeting people. He has already met some of his future neighbors at a mixer.

"From what I saw, they seem like high-class people," Steward said. "They all wore black. It was remarkable. I thought I was at a mixer in Manhattan. I'm all about the metropolitan, metrosexual lifestyle."

When asked whether he hoped to find his future wife at SkyPoint, Scaglione joked: "Yeah, probably at the pool."

But he said three out of every five people at the mixer he attended were men.

Markowitz said he, too, wants to find romance at his new address.

"Hopefully, there will be some single girls in the building," Markowitz said.

Could be slim pickings, though. The project's sales manager said men make up about 70 percent of owners at SkyPoint.

Michael Van Sickler can be reached at (813) 226-3402 or mvansickler@sptimes.com.

[Last modified March 19, 2007, 06:20:51]