Tower plan set to loom
A $360-million, two-tower complex is proposed on Central Avenue near the bay.
By PAUL SWIDER
Published April 27, 2007
ST. PETERSBURG - Defying a dull real estate market, developers submitted plans this week for a mammoth $360-million mixed-use complex at Second Street and Central Avenue.
The downtown project, dubbed Tropicana Center, calls for two towers that will include a hotel, shopping and 585 condominiums on an empty lot now used mostly for the Saturday Morning Market.
Behind the project: St. Petersburg developer Jimmy Aviram, who is also building the Arts high-rise downtown, and his Miami partner Tibor Hollo.
"It's a megaproject," said Hollo, principal of Florida East Coast Realty, which has developed more than 100 projects throughout the country and dozens in Miami. "We're trying to make a statement for us and for the city."
The project could fill a gap in decades-old plans for the downtown business core. The land has been vacant since it was cleared for the now-defunct Bay Plaza project.
BayWalk, the shopping and entertainment complex, grew out of that, but initial plans were much more grandiose.
"After Bay Plaza unwound in the late '80s, individual entities picked up parcels," said Kevin Dunn, the city's managing director of development coordination. "We've been fairly protective of this block to make sure a project delivers for the community."
Dunn said there have been numerous meetings over the years to evaluate proposals for the Tropicana block, so named because the only remaining building is the former Tropicana Hotel, now home to Aviram's offices. Aviram and Hollo first made a proposal for the property in 2004, but those plans were incomplete and didn't go forward.
Not until this submission were the proposals comprehensive enough to satisfy the city's aims, Dunn said.
"They've definitely invested a lot of time and energy in this submittal," Dunn said of the site plan that will go before the city's Environmental Development Commission in June.
The project's commercial mix is important to keep the city's downtown diverse and vibrant, Dunn said, adding that it was vital that it include retail space large enough to accommodate the kind of "midbox" retailers now lacking in the area.
Tropicana Center will completely fill the block with nearly 1-million square feet. It will rise five stories straight up from the sidewalk in a retail and parking platform before the towers separate and continue rising, the east tower to include 33 stories of condominiums, the west tower to be a 36-story hotel.
The project will connect with BayWalk on the south and the South Core building on the north, completing the old Bay Plaza concept.
The project could be a boon for South Core, which was built for department store use, Dunn said. South Core's 140,000 square feet are vacant as Progress Energy moves to its newly built headquarters on First Avenue N.
Though the project includes a large number of residential condominiums at a time when housing inventories are overstocked, Hollo said he's not concerned: This project is so complicated to design and build, it won't be completed until perhaps 2012. "I hope the slowdown in the market doesn't last 5 1/2 years," he said.
Unlike many condominium developments, Hollo said, this one won't rely on presales to trigger construction.
He said he typically needs to borrow a smaller proportion of the development's cost than would other developers, so banks are more willing to lend to him.
Dunn also seems confident that the project will materialize. He described Hollo as an institution in Miami development circles.
"You believe it when it's coming out of the ground," he said, "but this is as far as I've seen anything come along."
Aviram also has a significant track record, being involved with the recently completed Parkshore Plaza as well as 400 Beach Drive and Ovation, both currently under construction.
Aviram is also the lead developer of the Arts, slated to create a residential and artistic complex at Central Avenue and Eighth Street.
The Tropicana proposal comes on the heels of another hotel concept that downtown neighbors have opposed, at First Street and Fifth Avenue N.
While the Westin Hotel and Residences would be as tall, but not as dense, as the Tropicana, it is closer to a residential neighborhood.
The Tropicana site is "not across from a row of bungalows, it's between two parking garages," said Tim Baker, president of the Downtown Neighborhood Association, which plans to fight the Westin project. "If you're going to put a big, giant building anywhere, that's where you want to put it," he said.
Baker said he's pleased to see the development of Bay Plaza because the original concept was low and sprawling, not urban and efficient. "It was just dreadful," he said. "What we're getting is a much better mix."
Paul Swider can be reached at 892-2271 or pswider@sptimes.com or by participating in itsyourtimes.com.