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Whatever happened to the Trump Tower Tampa site and other big projects planned for the bay area?

 
Published Sept. 23, 2016

A 35-story apartment tower in downtown St. Petersburg. Two huge new communities with sunset views of Old Tampa Bay. A 52-story tower overlooking Tampa's Riverwalk.

If you haven't heard much about these lately, it's because not much is happening — at least not yet.

While a $2 billion redo of Tampa's Channel District and other mega projects are underway, others have yet to get out of the ground. That's partly the nature of the projects themselves and partly the nature of development in general, especially as another boom begins to show hints of a slowdown.

"Banks are tightening and pulling back on loans,'' said Tampa attorney Robert Stern, an expert in real estate law who has been involved in many bay area commercial transactions. "I have clients ... that I had trouble getting financing for this year.''

Whatever the reasons, there have been some long gaps between announcements and activity for some high-profile Tampa Bay developments.

In July 2015, for instance, developer Larry Feldman filed plans for a 52-story tower with residences, shops, restaurants and office space on the riverfront site of the doomed Trump Tower Tampa. He has not applied for a building permit, and no renderings or further details have been publicly released about what would be the tallest building on Florida's west coast.

"We have been doing some presentations, but have not allowed any of the materials out of our hands yet,'' Feldman said in a recent email. "We are not quite there yet.''

Previous coverage: Buyers still feel burned by Donald Trump after Tampa condo tower failure

As the owner of downtown Tampa's Wells Fargo tower and three St. Petersburg office buildings, Feldman "has a track record of success,'' said T. Sean Lance, a partner in the real estate advisory firm Vertica. "If anybody in the area could pull off a project like that, it's Larry.''

But, he said, big, mixed-used projects like Feldman's sometimes encounter what Lance calls "challenges'' in financing.

"I think the wild card is, is a lender going to require him to lease out any of that (office) space prior to going vertical with construction?'' Lance said. "But he's got a little different business plan — smaller office floor plates, not going after corporate-type tenants. It's been successful in other areas of Florida so it will be interesting to see how it's received here.''

Previous coverage: 52-story tower proposed on former Trump Tower site in downtown Tampa

A year ago, a Fort Lauderdale company said it had acquired a 51-acre tract near Gandy and West Shore boulevards that originally was planned for a 1,500-unit luxury condo community called New Port Tampa. The project, announced in 2005 in a splashy event with flowing champagne and Cirque du Soleil acrobats, never materialized, and the waterfront site has remained empty ever since.

BTI Partners, the current owner, did not return calls. But Bob McDonaugh, Tampa's administrator of economic opportunity, said the company has received interest from developers including Miami-based Related Group, a leading builder of multi-family housing.

"There were a lot of things that needed to be cleaned up, there were utilities that were partly done and had to be checked and new roadways planned,'' McDonaugh said Thursday. "They (BTI) are going to city council in late October for approval so we should see stuff happening there by the end of the year or early next year.''

Previous coverage: Developer acquires once-hyped Tampa condo project New Port Tampa Bay

A few blocks away, the 162-acre waterfront site of the former Georgetown apartments also remains vacant 18 months after DeBartolo Development announced plans for up to 1,235 homes and nine acres of retail along West Shore.

Since then, McDonaugh said, the company has replatted the property and filed plans for a "grand new entrance'' to what is now being called the Isles at Old Tampa Bay. The first phase will have 67 single-family home sites on the water.

Buyers "are going to be able to buy lots and build their own homes,'' said Realtor Toni Everett, whose company is marketing the property. Subsequent phases are expected to include townhomes, condos and stores along West Shore.

Although the New Port Tampa and Georgetown sites have seen little activity to date, Lance of Vertica thinks their locations bode for well for eventual success.

Both are "waterfront in South Tampa, which is rare to find,'' he said. "Obviously, traffic is a concern but the elevation of Gandy (boulevard) near the Crosstown (Lee Roy Selmon Expressway) will help alleviate that and would actually benefit some of the development there.''

On the St. Petersburg side of the bridge, David Mack proposed a 35-story, 305-unit apartment tower for a vacant lot on Second Street N. That was in December, and no plans have been filed nearly a year later.

"There are just a lot of little nits and nats that are taking time to get it done so we continue to move it along, continue to fine tune it, but we're not to the point we can bring it to the city,'' Mack said Thursday.

He and his equity partners paid $8.75 million for the site of what was to have been a Grand Bohemian hotel, another victim of the recession. Although they have not yet sought financing, he acknowledged that lenders would have found their project "more attractive a year ago.''

"But,'' Mack added, "we look at this as a generation type of development. Downtown St. Petersburg continues to get more and more attractive. You are smack in the heart of downtown. And even if the market turned down, in the long run a project like this has lasting power.''

Contact Susan Taylor Martin at smartin@tampabay.com or (727) 893-8642. Follow @susanskate