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Posts Tagged ‘Petersburg Park’

Take the Field

Potential Tropicana Field site redevelopers outline what they contend gives their proposal an advantage over the competition.

Each of the potential redevelopers of the 85-acre Tropicana Field site in St. Petersburg believes that their proposal has an element or concept that will separate it from the competition in the eyes of St. Petersburg’s mayor and city council.

The city last month received seven proposals to revamp the municipally owned property with retail and office space, hotel rooms and a conference center, open space and parks, condominiums and apartments and social programs aimed at lifting the community’s residents.

For the winning developer, the site could represent a two decade-long project valued at billions of dollars and millions of square feet and one that generates tens of thousands of jobs.

“This project is so important to the city, and the development team that’s selected will be a partner with St. Petersburg,” says Alan DeLisle, the city’s development administrator.

“This will be a public-private partnership in the truest sense.”

For the team comprising Atlanta’s Portman Holdings, local developers Third Lake Partners and Echelon LLC and designer HKS Architects, its potential $2.6 billion redevelopment will lean heavily on its principals’ local ties and history in the community.

“I think our local perspective in moving forward will be very important,” says Ken Jones, Third Lake’s chairman and CEO. “And I firmly believe that our collective financial strength and longevity in the community is second to none. We have proven staying power, and we intend to be around for decades to come.

“We understand that this is complicated and it has a lot of moving parts and constituencies, but we also know that our plan can have a transformative impact on the city,” adds Jones. “Just as importantly, all the residents of St. Petersburg have been taken into consideration in crafting our proposal.”

Sugar Hill Community Partners, a team made up of JMA Ventures, the Machete Group, local offices of design and engineering giant Stantec, St. Petersburg-based Backstreets Capital and J Square Development and master-planning architect Henning Larsen, contends its vast experience sets it apart.

“The companies on our team have built careers embracing larger, complex projects,” says David Carlock, the founder and principal of Machete Group, which has two decades of experience with sports venues and related development.

COURTESY RENDERING — Sugar Hill Community Partners believes its team’s experience gives it an edge.

“We appreciate them and the transformative effect they can have on a community at large, and that’s the case here,” he adds. “We’re familiar with what it takes to execute and be successful and we’ve pulled together a team that can deliver that. There’s really no substitute for having rolled up one’s sleeves and done the homework and completed projects such as this.”

Unicorp National Developments Inc., an Orlando-based company with developments throughout Florida, believes its team’s focus on open space and the arts will give it the edge.

Like the Portman/Third Lake team, Unicorp’s team has a local flavor, with Tampa-based Feldman Equities LLC, the Tampa office of commercial real estate brokerage Colliers International and an offshoot of Sarasota’s Hoyt Architects, among others, on board.

“I’ve looked at all the proposals, and some are more dense than ours in terms of square footage and some generate more tax revenue to the city than ours, but no one provides more open space and leverages the natural environment the ways ours does,” says Chuck Whittall, Unicorp National’s president and founder.

“We understand that density and physical improvements to the site are important, but our proposal is centered on what’s best for the community,” he adds. “Just as Central Park in New York City enriches the community far beyond it, we’ve tried to do that with the Tropicana Field site.

“We plan on building something that will appeal to all income levels and be beneficial to everybody.”

COURTESY RENDERING — Unicorp National Developments Inc.’s proposal focuses on ample open space and arts offerings.

SROA Capital, meanwhile, developed a proposal that would accentuate the site’s baseball heritage by incorporating the sport into the property with a new baseball-themed museum and other attractions.

Benjamin MacFarland III, SROA Capital’s founder and whose ancestor Ben Shibe owned the then-Philadelphia Athletics for two decades in the early 20th Century, says the West Palm Beach company’s baseball-centric development differentiates it from the other half-dozen proposals submitted.

“We have a passion to build something in St. Petersburg that will access and highlight Florida’s pastime, baseball, which has been such a huge part of the state’s history and my family’s history,” he says.

For its part, TRS Development Services’ plan says its proposal will save the public the most money.

COURTESY RENDERING — SROA Capital’s plan accentuates the site’s ties to professional baseball.

Paula Barca, CEO of Restoration Design Worldwide, a Tampa-based firm that specializes in reclamation of properties damaged through fire or natural disaster, notes TRS Development’s plan is the only one that envisions retrofitting — not replacing — Tropicana Field for professional baseball.

Its plan includes a new 28,000-seat stadium that would feature an open-roof design, work on which would be spearheaded by Restoration Design. To pay for the refurbishment, TRS Development would construct a trio of high-rise, luxury condominium towers rising as high as 50 stories.

“From a financial perspective, our project would take less money out of taxpayers’ pockets,” Barca says. “The luxury towers we’re proposing would pay for the majority of the stadium’s renovation.”

Two other potential Tropicana Field site developers — Wendover Housing Partners of Altamonte Springs and Midtown Development LLC, of Miami — declined to comment on their plan and failed to respond to inquiries by deadline, respectively.

For now, the city is taking public input on all the plans. At the same time, a 26-member community review committee is considering each proposal “from every angle, all the strengths and weaknesses,” DeLisle says.

Sometime in March a short-list of candidates will be developed by Mayor Rick Kriseman and St. Petersburg’s City Council, which will lead to a series of charrettes and developer presentations and another round of community feedback.

Before the end of June, the city hopes to begin work on a detailed term sheet and development agreement that would govern future work on the site.

“The goal is to be able to bring something back to the Council by the end of the year,” DeLisle says.

Trop Talk, part five: Parks and green space

Editor’s note: In this multi-part series, the Catalyst will compare and contrast each of the seven proposals for the Tropicana Field site according to five major redevelopment needs that each plan was asked to meet: commercial and office space, housing, I-175 and transportation, parks and green space and hotel and convention center space. 

In this final installment of Trop Talk, we’ll take a look at how parks and green space will be incorporated into the redevelopment of the Tropicana Field property. In its request for proposals for the site, the City of St. Petersburg cited “significant contiguous park and public gathering space” as one of the criteria it would look for in developers’ plans.

As it currently exists, the Trop site is composed of a baseball stadium and parking lot that’s vastly underutilized, even on game days because of the Tampa Bay Rays’ well-documented struggle to draw fans to the ballpark. Parks and green space would help activate the site and make downtown St. Petersburg even more of an ideal live-work-play environment.

Unicorp National Developments’ proposal would bring so much green space to the site that it has “park” in the name — “Petersburg Park,” to be exact. It would have five distinct parks and public gathering spaces: South Booker Creek Park, Central Park, The Basin, North Booker Creek Park and Sunburst Plaza. Sculptures, gardens, canopy shade trees and even a putting green are some of the features that would be included, but the highlight of Petersburg Park would be a sprawling greenway park that would require the removal of a portion of Interstate 175. This amenity would stretch eastward into Roser Park and the city’s Innovation District, and it would include “walking jogging trails, bike lanes, volleyball and basketball courts and other active play area environments,” the proposal reads.

Wendover Housing Partners’ proposal envisions a new Rays stadium built in the northeast corner of the site, but if that doesn’t happen, a large urban park and two multifamily housing developments would take its place. Amenities could include a small amphitheater, playgrounds, splash pad and art installations. Also, according to Wendover’s plan, the area where Booker Creek crosses First Avenue South would also be dedicated to a public park whose footprint would extend southward to Fourth Avenue South, following the route of the expanded creek.

The proposal submitted by Portman Holdings and Third Lake Partners would turn a large portion of the site’s southern edge into a park, and like the other plans, it would revitalize and expand Booker Creek, making the waterway a “natural sanctuary in the middle of St. Petersburg’s urban core,” the document reads. Jogging and biking trails would be installed along the creek, providing an easy connection to the Pinellas Trail. Also, and much like some of the other plans, Portman and Third Lake propose an open area of green space where Booker Creek crosses First Avenue South. Such an amenity could be used as a community lawn and performance space, their plan states.

“Creekside,” the proposal submitted by Midtown Developments, uses terms such as “the city as a park” to describe the transformation of the Trop site. “Public spaces will be integrated throughout the neighborhoods with generous amounts of green space,” Midtown states. Jogging and bike paths would be plentiful, and workout stations would be installed to encourage people to exercise. Several pocket parks interspersed throughout the property would provide opportunities for small groups to do yoga and other fitness activities together. And much like Unicorp, Midtown envisions a large central park that serves as a tranquil transition space between the eastern and western neighborhoods. Under Midtown’s plan, the southern part of Booker Creek would be significantly widened to accommodate stormwater overflow but would also have a series of small islands.

Much like Unicorp, Storage Rentals of America and Holabird & Root favor the removal of I-175. In its place, the developers would erect a series of mixed-use residential and commercial buildings, a technical or higher education campus, a series of canals and a large native landscape park. The latter feature would encompass the southern end of a re-naturalized Booker Creek. To the east of the park would be a hotel and additional mixed-use residential and commercial structures. Assuming a new ballpark is built, SROA and Holabird & Root say the Trop site would feature 850,000 square feet of park and green space. With no ballpark, that figure would increase to 1.02 million square feet. The removal of I-175 would add an additional 508,100 square feet of park and green space to the property. Under both the ballpark and non-ballpark plans, the center of the site would be occupied by a large cultural pavilion surrounded on all sides by green space.

Sugar Hill Community Partners and JMA Ventures, meanwhile, would make Booker Creek Park the centerpiece of the Trop site. The park would span the property’s entire north-south axis and make use of land underneath I-175. The creek bank itself would be lowered at one point to make a small urban beach and wading area. Land at the northern part of the site, near the Pinellas Trail and First Avenue South, would be dedicated to fruit tree orchards. Wetlands filled with native vegetation would also be created in hopes of providing habitat for birds.

The Sugar Hill/JMA plan would create a land bridge across I-175 to link Booker Creek with Campbell Park. Their non-ballpark plan calls for a large convention center complex to be built in the southwest corner of the site, and the roof of this building would be outfitted with a community garden. West of the convention center complex, underneath the I-275/I-175 junction, would be green space that could be used as a pop-up art park, according to the proposal.

Lastly, TRS Development Services’ proposal does not go into many specifics regarding park and green space, but its non-ballpark plan would provide a large central park with what appears to be a bandshell or amphitheater at the park’s west end. The park would take up much of the middle part of the site, west of Booker Creek. TRS’s vision for the property also includes multiple “greenways” running along the creek and the Pinellas Trail. As well, many of the buildings in the development would have “green” roofs that can provide rest and relaxation areas for residents and office workers.

Visit the City of St. Petersburg’s website to view all of the proposals and submit comments about them.

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