Boatyard Village site may house 9 helicopters for Army Reserve

The Army Reserve plans to lease the land near the airport for UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters.

By SHARON TUBBS

© St. Petersburg Times, published June 23, 2000

LARGO -- The era of retail and dining around the St. Petersburg-Clearwater International Airport has nearly run its course.

No more 94th Aero Squadron -- the restaurant will close in the next week or so, said Jim Howes, the airport's executive director.

And, save for a small office building, the Boatyard Village is already gone. The struggling retail center of restaurants and small shops has been demolished in recent years.

The restaurant and the former Boatyard site sit on a combined 17 acres of county-owned land just northwest of the airport that now is targeted by the U.S. Army Reserve.

Pinellas officials are negotiating with the federal government to take over the site later this year. Under the agreement, the Army Reserve would house nine helicopters and 90 employees there.

The lease should be signed in a few months, Howes said. Under the agreement, the Army Reserve would house UH-60 Black Hawk helicopters on the site, which would serve as a maintenance and operations facility, he said. The Army Reserve would pay about $160,000 a year for the property over a lease that could span 50 years. About 90 people would be employed there, some of whom would be hired locally.

Howes expects construction to begin by early 2001, when the few small businesses still on-site would have to move.

For airport officials, the arrangement was a long time coming.

In the past two decades, business owners have wrangled with unsuccessful commercial ventures on the Boatyard site, a complex built to look like an old-time fishing town. There were restaurants, jewelry shops, an art gallery. In the end, the Boatyard Village never reached the heights that the county or its California-based owner, Specialty Restaurants, envisioned.

Specialty relinquished its claim to the Boatyard in 1999 after being cited for various code violations.

Specialty continues to lease the 94th Aero Squadron, across the street from the former Boatyard site. But Howes says Specialty's president notified the county that the restaurant will close by the month's end.

However, Rusty Pethtel, Specialty's district manager, said he was unaware of the plans. "We have not been told that that was going to happen," Pethtel said Thursday.

For more than a year, the county marketed the land off Fairchild Drive, a spindly road not visible from Roosevelt Boulevard. Officials hoped to lure a successful developer who would give Pinellas a percentage of retail sales. But with no frontage on a major roadway, the land was a tough sell.

"I guess we thought the commercial real estate market ... would have been more interested in it," Howes said. "I guess the commercial people thought it was a little off the beaten path."

A West Palm Beach consultant handling the arrangements for the federal government could not be reached for comment.

Specialty also leases the county-owned site of the Turtle Club restaurant, across the Cross Bayou Canal from the Boatyard. A sheriff's raid of the club last year yielded more than 20 drug arrests. At the time, Specialty was subleasing the property.

Pethtel, the district manager, said Specialty is renovating the club, which is now closed. Plans are to reopen the facility in November as a restaurant and banquet hall under a new name, Pethtel said.

The county also is discussing a lease with Sheltair, a company based in Fort Lauderdale, to expand its hangars at the airport, Howes said. The company would construct hangars on 8 acres near the 94th Aero Squadron that once was the Florida Military Aviation Museum, a collection of historic aircraft. Howes said he expects the deal to go through later this summer.

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