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Manhattan firms ask about area, two report
By SHARON L. BOND
© St. Petersburg Times, ST. PETERSBURG -- Reacting to the terror attacks, agents of some New York City companies have been making preliminary inquiries about office and industrial space in St. Petersburg, two developers say. "Many companies will take a strong look at decentralizing and moving into areas perceived as safe and off any target areas," said Grady Pridgen, whose company developed and manages several office/manufacturing parks in north St. Petersburg. He said his company, Grady Pridgen Inc., heard from five companies in New York last week asking about possible relocation sites here. Echelon Development LLC had several third-party inquiries as well, according to Mark Stroud, director of asset and property management. Echelon developed Carillon office park in the Gateway area, which has unfilled tracts. The questions about business space came after terrorists' attacks last month destroyed the World Trade Center in lower Manhattan and damaged nearby office buildings. Pridgen said the five requests involve a total of a million square feet of office and manufacturing space, which he called a dramatic amount of requests for one week. Pridgen recently won the bid from the city of St. Petersburg to develop a 122-acre tract in mid Pinellas that he is calling Gateway Business Park W. "We have 600,000 square feet in Gateway Business Park W. We hope to move very quickly. As soon as we can permit the property, we would begin 200,000 square feet immediately. Permitting a site that large could take as long as six months," he said. Pridgen said he did not know the identities of the companies that made inquiries or even what type of businesses they are. His company was approached by site selection groups. The needs were for 800,000 square feet of office space and 200,000 square feet of manufacturing and distribution space, he said. "They wanted to know what is available now and what is available that could be constructed quickly," Pridgen said. "The inventory is virtually nonexistent both for office and manufacturing." Plans already are in the works for Metropointe Industrial Park to build a 150,000-square-foot building, Pridgen said. Pridgen forwarded information on the Tampa Bay area to the site selection companies. "You need to sell the Tampa Bay area and the benefits of living in this area," he said. Stroud, of Echelon, said his company could get a facility built fairly quickly because it has had plans for a 150,000-square-foot building on the shelf for a while. "We could deliver that in 12 to 15 months, probably quicker," he said. Included in Echelon's available land is a 20-acre tract designated for Carillon Town Center, which still is in the planning stages. Last week, the company got a second one-year extension on approvals for that project. "We could take a million square feet on the southern part of the (town center) site and still maintain the ability to" construct a town center, Stroud said. "We have a lot of density left in Carillon." Pridgen said one of the five companies was looking at only three areas: Atlanta, Charlotte, N.C., and Tampa Bay. "I would think in that situation we would fare very well," he said, citing Atlanta's busy airport and Charlotte's smaller population and employee base compared with Tampa Bay's.
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From the Times South Pinellas desks |
