ST PETERSBURG, Fla. — While the future home of the Rays Major League Baseball team is still up in the air, the redevelopment of the “Historic Gas Plant District,” now known as Tropicana Field, will bring more affordable and workforce housing to St. Petersburg.
Mayor Ken Welch is expected to choose the proposal from one of four development teams by the end of January. In those proposals, he is looking for elements of affordable living.
Former mayors have started this redevelopment process, but Welch said past proposals don’t cover the current needs of the city, such as more jobs, housing, and the African American history of the site.
The Gas Plant District was torn down 40 years ago to make way for the baseball stadium.
“Residents and businesses were forced to relocate with the promise of jobs, opportunity and equitable development, which did not materialize,” the city’s project overview stated.
Hundreds of residents in St. Petersburg showed up to a January community meeting to hear about the proposals, with many saying they care most about the increasing price of living in the city.
“I've been in South St. Pete for over 30 years. I'm a citizen who is concerned about the future of this city,” St. Petersburg resident Mendee Ligon said. “I'm concerned about the inclusion. I'm concerned about the development that's going on.”
According to the company Rent, the average rent for a one-bedroom apartment in St. Pete is up 26% from just last year, now at $2,152 dollars.
If you look at the share of apartments currently listed in St. Pete, only 13% are $1,500 or less a month.
“This is a transformational project that will benefit all St Petersburg stakeholders for decades to come,” Mayor Welch told the audience at the January community meeting.
Welch told ABC Action News that the creation of affordable housing is vital.
“Our economy dies if we don't have folks that live close to where they work,” he said.
In-depth reporter Stassy Olmos spoke with each of the four teams vying for the project to get an idea of how they plan to help keep the city affordable for people to live.
The four teams are:
Hines, joined with the Tampa Bay Rays franchise, is proposing to make 23% of the project housing affordable, with 859 units on-site and a $15 million dollar investment in off-site programs for homeownership and rental assistance.
“Development also creates an opportunity for... neighborhoods around the development itself to become more expensive, and what we're trying to do is stem that tide,” said Buwa Binitie, the founder and CEO of Dantes Partners, who is heading the affordable housing element of the Hines & Tampa Bay Rays project proposal.
50 Plus 1 Sports plans to dedicate 50% of units to affordable and workforce housing, which would be about 3,000 units. They also plan to work with organizations outside of the district to help develop or renovate existing neighborhoods.
“We don't have any off-site affordable housing, and we're the only ones that are going to request that the city keep the land that way to people that don't get displaced in 12 to 15, 20 years,” said Monti Valerie, founder and CEO of 50 Plus 1 Sports.
Sugar Hill Community Partners plans to build close to 5,000 units, half of which will be affordable and workforce rates. They also plan to develop a rent-to-own program.
“It has been raised that this 50% affordable housing is too much for this project. We don't think that at all,” said Dan Coakley, CEO of PMG working on affordable housing for Sugar Hill Community Partners. “And some people have argued that affordable housing is somehow inconsistent with being an economic engine for the community.. we think it is a critical economic engine because, without a workforce, companies are not going to come to St. Pete.”
Restoration Associates has a proposed plan to build housing in phases, totaling 1,000 units set at certain area median incomes and the possibility for an additional 1000 affordable and workforce units.
“We’re making our residential units either workforce, affordable or attainable, but all of them will be below market rate, and the vast majority of that will be traditional tax credit affordable housing,” said Paula McDonald Rhodes, co-founder and CEO of InVictus Development, working on affordable housing for Restoration Associates.
Overall, residents are excited about the proposals, especially those who self-fund and those that could potentially create offsite opportunities to own homes.
“I think we need to look forward and try to give people a way to elevate their lifestyles instead of creating more rental places,” Mendee Ligon said. “I’m praying for the mayor to make the right decision, and I’m sure he will.”
Here’s the timeline moving forward so far:
- Jan. 2023: Mayor Welch selects recommended developer
- May 2023: Term sheet completed with preferred developer
- Sept./Oct. 2023: Development agreement presented to City Council for approval.
The community discussion isn’t over just yet. Residents can still share their thoughts with the mayor and his team either in person or online until Jan. 23.
- Online. Submit feedback about the proposals through this form from Dec. 19, 2022, to Jan. 23, 2023.
In person at a City facility. Please visit a Feedback Pop-Up station at one of six city locations from Jan. 5 to Jan. 23, 2023. Feedback can be submitted online via the City's website.
- Campbell Park Recreation Center, 601 14th Street South
- Childs Park Recreation & Fitness Center, 4301 13th Avenue South
- J.W. Cate Recreation Center, 5801 22nd Avenue North
- South Branch Library, 2300 Roy Hannah Drive South
- Enoch Davis Center, 1111 18th Avenue South
- North Branch Library, 861 70th Avenue North
It's a process that hasn't come without some controversy. Tuesday, the Spring Hill Community Partners revealed their disappointment at the fact that the St. Petersburg Area Chamber of Commerce had endorsed the Hines-Tampa Bay Rays project proposal. An associate with Spring Hill Community Partners, David Carlock, says he'd hoped that the group would have had a chance to give the chamber a private pitch.
"Standard operating procedure would be for an organization like the chamber to meet with all the teams. We didn't have the opportunity to do that here. We were surprised and disappointed," he said.
We addressed those concerns with the president of the chamber of commerce Chris Steinocher, who said their endorsement came down to a few things.
"The biggest key turning point was the Hines one was how quick they can deliver. We have to deliver a stadium to the [Tampa Bay] Rays in four and a half years, it's going to require an amazing amount of coordination," he said, "It was our belief that of all the proposals only one of them brought the [Tampa Bay] Rays to the table and that was the Hines proposal and that's why we chose them."
Steinocher added that the chamber chose not to meet with all developers privately because members attended city events where the proposals were revealed.
"We felt like the city was doing a really, really amazing job with their process and we didn't want to duplicate it," he said.
To read each team’s proposal in full, click on their names above, or visit the St. Petersburg project website here.