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Deal will let county build park next to development

LEALMAN Mall developer Sembler's first full-blown foray into housing will be in Pinellas.

By PAUL SWIDER, Times Staff Writer
Published August 26, 2007

The first project for shopping mall developer Sembler's new residential division will be in unincorporated Lealman.

"For our first standalone residential, we picked something close to home," said Greg Sembler, vice chairman of the St. Petersburg company.

The project, called Duval Park, is expected to begin construction soon and have people move in early next year, Sembler said. It is in an out-of-the-way spot, tucked beneath 54th Avenue N at 45th Street, between Wellington School, the CSX railroad tracks and Joe's Creek.

The development will resemble Key West in its architecture, Sembler said, with narrow pastel homes on small lots. Garages will be in the rear, and the structures will be near the street to better connect residents.

"We call it front-porch living," Sembler said, relating it to the new urbanism movement and examples like Orlando's Celebration.

For Lealman, the development is a mixed blessing. Residents had wanted a large community park on the land but will settle for a smaller version.

"Lealman is not the nicest place in the world, so we needed that," said Ray Neri, head of the Lealman Community Association. "We hated losing that land, but we're happy to get anything."

Sembler found the property while scouring a list of surplus land owned by Verizon, he said. He noticed a 5-acre piece near Wellington but then saw another 10 acres next to that. The company bought both in November 2006.

Neri was hoping the county would buy the larger property to join an adjacent landlocked piece it owned to the east along the railroad tracks. When that didn't happen, Neri suggested Sembler and the county swap some land so the county could add on to the Joe's Creek Greenway Park. That swap should become final soon.

Now, Sembler will have a 10-acre triangle along the 5-acre piece it bought from Verizon. It will build an entrance along 45th Street and give the county access to the south so the county can construct a park along the recently rehabbed Joe's Creek. Neri said eventually there could be a path crossing the creek twice and making a circle route around the water.

"It was really attractive for us to work with the county and help solve a problem," Sembler said of the deal that helps the county put a park next to his development. "But it also gives us a nice back yard."

Sembler said he's still working on final site and floor plans, but most likely there will be about 90 units, some single-family homes and some townhomes. They will range in size from about 1,200 to 1,700 square feet. Prices are not final, but 20 percent of the units will be workforce housing, the top price of which would be about $180,000, while the bottom would be negotiated and possibly subsidized by Sembler.

The railroad tracks would seem to be a deterrent to an attractive development, but Sembler said that line is rarely used and so will not create a disturbance. He said he's not banking on it for this development, but should the line ever become part of a mass transit system, its proximity to Duval Park would be an asset.

Sembler said this project was inspired in part by the work of former Hillsborough County Commissioner Ed Turanchik, whose company, Intown Homes, is building workforce housing bungalows in East Tampa.

Neri said he sees unsold homes in Lealman and elsewhere in the area, so he doesn't know why anyone would add housing stock in a down market. He also said he has heard of these development plans for some time and isn't convinced it will occur, though he is hopeful.

"I think it will be an asset for Lealman," he said, "but I'll believe it when I see it."

Paul Swider can be reached at 892-2271 or pswider@sptimes.com.

[Last modified August 25, 2007, 22:35:21]