New owner: Undo zoning change

Once the center of a battle for residential zoning, Tampa Bay Park of Commerce in Oldsmar may go back to its original industrial zoning.

By ED QUIOCO

© St. Petersburg Times, published April 6, 2000

OLDSMAR -- When the owner of the Tampa Bay Park of Commerce came to the city in 1996 and asked for a zoning change to allow 500 homes on the industrial property, Oldsmar officials balked. They feared that a neighborhood with that many homes would be too much of a burden on the city.

A fight ensued, with lawyers firing off letters and both sides hiring consultants with differing opinions.

"It was a big battle," Mayor Jeff Sandler recalled. "It would have been just too many people, too many adults, too many cars, too many everything."

The commerce park's owner, Michael Swerdlow Cos., claimed the market for industrial space had dried up. After more than a year of negotiations, city officials agreed to a compromise: Swerdlow would get more than 70 acres of the 400-acre commerce park rezoned to allow 225 homes.

But the fight may have been for naught.

Swerdlow has since sold the industrial park. Now its new owner, Harrod Properties, a commercial and industrial developer in Tampa and Pinellas County, wants the residential zoning changed back to industrial.

The technical review committee of city staffers and department heads will review the request later this month. The proposal also would need the approval of City Council members and a number of local, regional and state agencies, said Marie Dauphinais, the city's planning administrator.

"There is not a whole lot of industrial land available in Pinellas County," said Ben Nelson, project manager for Harrod. "We are just looking to keep our options open so that we could have that industrial space we could develop."

Harrod Properties also is developing the 580 Corporate Center on Tampa Road in Oldsmar. The company purchased the land in 1998 and already the 315,000-square-foot center is about two-thirds full.

"Obviously, the industrial business is going well," Nelson said.

Harrod purchased the Tampa Bay Park of Commerce from Swerdlow in April 1999. Harrod has since signed a handful of companies to build in the park, which had remained largely vacant since the mid-1980s.

Harrod quickly found a tenant for a 30,000-square-foot building in the park and then signed a deal for a 103,000-square-foot claims processing center for a national health services provider. Uniprise, an entity of UnitedHealth Group, announced in February that it would hire 330 new employees and transfer 360 employees from Tampa and Clearwater offices to the Oldsmar site.

Swerdlow, a South Florida developer, took over the Tampa Bay Park of Commerce in 1988. Although plans called for the park to have more than 2-million square feet of industrial space, the developer was able to attract only a handful of companies.

City planning officials and consultants disputed Swerdlow's claim that there was no market for industrial space and City Council members said they feared that adding an unplanned subdivision would heavily tax city resources.

"You get better tax revenue off industrial than residential," said City Manager Bruce Haddock. "And overall, the city services required by industrial are less than residential. Businesses don't need parks and libraries and recreational services. I think it would be a good thing if it all went back to industrial."

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