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Store site near Trop is 16th and Cursed

A convenience store and four restaurants have set up shop across from Tropicana Field, only to find the location fails to deliver.

By TOM ZUCCO, Times Staff Writer
Published December 18, 2007

Loose wire and an empty bottle hang from the porch roof of the vacant building at 16th Street and First Avenue S.
	[John Pendygraft | Times]

ST. PETERSBURG - It's a one-story, eggshell-white building that should be the entrance to a gold mine. Tropicana Field and all its potential loom just across the street, there's enough parking for dozens of cars, and the site borders three heavily traveled streets ¶ Entrepreneurs, take a number. ¶ Except that the corner of 16th Street and First Avenue S might as well be the intersection of Utter and Disappointment.

In just the past dozen years, four restaurants and a convenience store have come and gone at 16th and First. That's proof, neighbors and city officials say, that it's people - not a professional sports franchise - that drives downtown businesses. And it's a key point as the city contemplates turning the 86-acre Tropicana Field site, current home of the Tampa Bay Rays, into a mini-city of shops, large retailers and moderately priced apartments and condos.

After all the failures, affordable housing is planned for the 16th and First site, as well. Construction could begin as early as next year on 312 apartment and condo units, with shopping on the ground floor.

"This is a definite go," said Kevin Dunn, St. Petersburg's managing director of development coordination. "It makes a very significant statement that adding residential population to what is being advocated as mixed use can be nothing but a positive thing. These are folks who are going to frequent nearby merchants and restaurants on a year-round basis."

That's a major shift from the "build a stadium and they will come" mentality of the 1990s. The idea this time, Dunn said, is to offer people an affordable alternative to the high-rise, high-end condos closer to the bay.

Because it's not always location, location, location.

Like a miniature Sahara, everything that has been planted at 16th and First has died. Seven have tried to make a go of it over the past 15 years:

-In the summer of 1992, the San Francisco Giants announced they were close to moving to what was then the 2-year-old Florida Suncoast Dome. Vadan Patel, who owned the Nanda Corner convenience store at 16th and First, was ecstatic.

"It's about time," Patel said then. "The downtown is run-down. Now we've got a team and the downtown is alive again. Everybody is going to have good business."

But the Giants never came, and in 1995, while waiting for the Rays to begin their first season, Patel was shot in the stomach during a robbery attempt. He closed his store later that year.

-Next at bat was Mark Ferguson, who two years earlier had turned an abandoned Sunoco station down the street into Ferg's Sports Bar. Ferguson opened the Hot Corner restaurant in 1996, and for three years tried to make a go of it. But the Hot Corner proved to be only a corner.

-In 2000, Tim Walters rolled the dice with Big Tim's Bar BQ, a spinoff of the first restaurant he started on 34th Street S. "We will try to put live blues music in once a week," said Nat Hines, the general manager for both restaurants.

Blues, indeed. A year later, Big Tim's was closed.

-The Beaver Club restaurant was next on the scene in 2002. It lasted about a year.

-The most recent retail venture was Spizzico's Pizza & Pasta, which took over in January 2003. The signs are still there, but the restaurant closed in June 2004.

-Later that year, the site and several other neighboring parcels totaling more than 2 acres was purchased for $1.75-million by a company owned by developer Grady Pridgen.

-And then this month, the site and adjacent land was sold for an undisclosed amount to Cleveland-based Zaremba Group, a developer that plans four-story apartment buildings at 16th and First, as well as several adjacent lots.

"Working people," Ferguson said. "That's what we need downtown. The Trop is used 90 to 100 days a year. This will give us business every day.

"When I had the Hot Corner building, there wasn't a lot of foot traffic, and the foot traffic you did get, you didn't want."

St. Petersburg City Council member Leslie Curran's district borders the location. Curran also owns Interior Motives Inc., an art gallery and design business a few blocks away.

"You can't put a business there that's going to depend solely on patrons of Tropicana Field," Curran said. "Until the team starts winning and there's more attendance at the Trop, you're not going to get that walk-by traffic.

"It's a great location, but right now, until other things are built up around it, it's not a destination."

No matter what happens to Tropicana Field, longtime area business owners say the affordable housing that had nearly disappeared downtown is already coming back. And that's what they're counting on.

Paul Misiewicz, owner of World Liquors across the street, said a business cannot run based on the proximity of a building that's vacant most of the time. "That's why you'll notice no national chains, like McDonald's or Burger King, anywhere downtown," he said. "They knew that."

Misiewicz said he plans next year to transform his 82-year-old building and adjoining property into a new liquor store, wine shop and office space. He's doing that, he said, because of affordable housing.

"It's about having people living here," he said.

Tom Zucco can be reached at zucco@sptimes.com or (727) 893-8247.

Here lies ...

At 16th Street and First Avenue S in St. Petersburg, seven businesses have tried to make a go of it over the past 15 years.

Nanda Corner Store (1984-95) convenience store owned by Vadan Patel

The Hot Corner (1996-99) restaurant owned by Mark Ferguson

Big Tim's Bar BQ (2000-01) restaurant owned by Emma Thomas

The Beaver Club (2002) restaurant owned by David Kendall

Spizzico's Pizza (2003-04) restaurant owned by Antonio Romeo

Pilgrim Hall LLC (2004-07) owned by developer Grady Pridgen

Zaremba Group (2007-) owned by developer Walter Zaremba

[Last modified December 17, 2007, 22:40:38]