Southpinellas: Chamber buying, selling, moving

Chamber buying, selling, moving

The chamber almost doubles its space with its pending move into the vacant Florida Power building at 125 Fifth St. S.

By SHARON L. BOND, Neighborhood Times Business Editor

The chamber almost doubles its space with its pending move into the vacant Florida Power building at 125 Fifth St. S.

ST. PETERSBURG -- The St. Petersburg Area Chamber of Commerce hopes to close on the purchase of its new location Friday, and it already has an offer to buy its current space at 100 Second Ave. N.

The chamber agreed earlier this month to buy the vacant Florida Power building at 125 Fifth St. S. With renovations, the Florida Power building will nearly double the 7,124 square feet the chamber is now in.

The chamber will pay Florida Power $800,000 and give it 20 years of dues-free membership. Florida Power now pays $15,000 per year in dues. The utility also will be recognized as the sponsor of the chamber's Entrepreneurial Academy and its annual dinner without paying the usual fees to buy that sponsorship.

Chamber president Russ Sloan would not disclose an exact figure for the cost of renovations but hoped the work would not exceed $350,000. The biggest change the chamber will make is to put a floor in the atrium and create a second-floor boardroom, Sloan said.

"Most of it will be cosmetic," he said.

The Florida Power building has a drive-through window where customers dropped off payments until the utility moved out of the building in May. Sloan said the chamber has had discussions with several financial institutions about renting the window and space in the building. At its current location on Second Avenue N, across from BayWalk, the chamber shares space with Signature Bank.

The chamber is asking $900,000 for its Second Avenue N location. Sloan said one offer in that range already had been made, and he had been told several more would be made within the week.