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Tampa City Council gives initial approval to 400-room Vinik hotel near Amalie Arena

 
Lightning owner Jeff Vinik's companies propose to build the hotel at the corner of S Florida Avenue and Old Water Street in Tampa.
Lightning owner Jeff Vinik's companies propose to build the hotel at the corner of S Florida Avenue and Old Water Street in Tampa.
Published Sept. 12, 2014

TAMPA — The first in what is expected to be a series of projects to create an entertainment district around the Amalie Arena cleared an early hurdle Thursday night.

The City Council voted 6-0, with Mary Mulhern absent, to give initial approval to a 400-room hotel proposed by Tampa Bay Lightning owner Jeff Vinik.

The rezoning, which comes up for a second hearing and a final vote Oct. 2, is expected to allow Vinik and his partners to move ahead, pick a hotel operator, then develop more detailed plans for a 2.8-acre parking lot just west of the arena.

"We greatly appreciate the vote of support this evening from City Council, and we are excited to move on to the next phase with regards to the west lot," Lightning spokesman Bill Wickett said after the vote. At this point, he said discussions about what companies might be in the running to put their brand on the hotel are premature.

Normally, Tampa's land development code limits the height of buildings in the central business district to 120 feet unless the zoning includes a detailed site plan. At 325 feet, about 25 floors, Vinik's hotel would be a foot shorter than the neighboring Tampa Marriott Waterside Hotel & Marina, which has 27 floors and 719 rooms.

Vinik's companies propose to build the hotel at the corner of S Florida Avenue and Old Water Street. Vinik acquired the lot in 2010 when he bought the Tampa Bay Lightning, and he has since amassed 24 acres around the arena, plus the Channelside Bay Plaza shopping center. He has said he will soon unveil a master plan for his holdings.

Plans on file with the city call for the 770,000-square-foot building to have 50 apartments or condominiums on its top floors, up to 170,000 square feet of meeting space below and 45,000 square feet of shopping, restaurants or offices on the ground floor. Conceptual drawings show sidewalk cafes and an elevated, covered walkway leading to the arena.

"We have a grand vision for this site as a high-end development to both serve as a true centerpiece for this district and to raise the bar for the district," said Trammell Crow Co. executive Robert Abberger, who spoke for Vinik's development team at the meeting.

The council agreed to waive 11 different land development rules. For example, city code typically requires developers to keep some trees, but the proposed site plan would remove all of them. The hotel seeks to have fewer loading bays than rules call for.

Vinik is also seeking a 20 percent reduction in the amount of parking the project would be required to have. City rules require the hotel to have 273 parking spaces, but he wants a total of 219. A few dozen of those would be at ground level under the building. But most would be inside the city's South Regional Parking Garage, which is immediately north of the hotel site and would be secured by a long-term lease.

"That's the biggest concern that I have," council member Lisa Montelione said of the various requests to waive the rules. "We don't know what the final product is really going to be. We're giving you as much flexibility as one could possibly give."

"Our goal is to utilize as few of these waivers as possible," Abberger said. Some are not unprecedented, he said. For example, he said the Marriott Waterside has a similar waiver on the number of truck bays it has. Having options in design will help create a project that works for both Vinik and the hotel operator, he said, and the goal is to create a showpiece that will stimulate further development nearby.

"The trees, we're not going to have a barren site. We're going to have a grand, lush site," he said. "With regard to the setbacks, we don't know exactly where the footprint is going to be. It's going to shift north or south based upon how we finalize that grand retail main street."

Contact Richard Danielson at rdanielson@tampabay.com or (813) 226-3403. Follow @Danielson_Times.