St. Petersburg’s Skyway Village will bring Sprouts, neighborhood shops

A Sprouts Farmers Market is coming to St. Petersburg’s Skyway Marina District and will be the primary draw for a new development in the neighborhood.

The organic grocery chain headquartered in Phoenix will bring the anchor of Skyway Village, a new residential and retail project transforming an old office park, said Frank Guerra, the founder of developing firm Altis Cardinal. The new Sprouts will open in 2025.

The grocer confirmed it’s coming to the Skyway Marina District and that it is set to open another store in the area at 4571 66th St. N in Kenneth City on Aug. 18.

“That’s just a big driver for traffic. It makes the area relevant and puts it on the map,” Guerra told the Tampa Bay Times about Sprouts coming to the development.

Coral Gables-based Altis Cardinal bought the 34-acre Ceridian Office Park in 2021 for $40 million to establish a “new living corridor” for St. Petersburg. After two years, the developing firm released a site plan and a rendering of the project detailing exactly what the plans are for the site.

In addition to the 23,000-square-foot Sprouts store, Altis Cardinal is building 92,000 square feet of “nonbig box retail,” Guerra said. The Skyway Village will focus on attracting neighborhood shops, cafes and restaurants with local or regional ties along 34th Street.

“What we’re proposing is the largest delivery of nonbig box retail in the history of the Skyway Marina District,” he said. “It’s a meaningful commitment to increase the retail, restaurant and entertainment destination offerings in the area.”

The city formed the Skyway Marina District at the southernmost tip of mainland Pinellas County a decade ago to establish a business destination within south St. Petersburg.

It has attracted several developers wanting to build luxury multi-family complexes bringing hundreds of units over empty lots and an abandoned Kmart. But rapid development of the area also forced out a handful of businesses that had inexpensive rent at the Skyway Marina Mall to make way for another housing complex.

Altis Cardinal has been working on St. Petersburg projects for 12 years. The firm redeveloped the Mosley Hotel and transformed 10 acres in Historic Kenwood into the Elements on Third apartment complex. Guerra said he jumped to buy the Ceridian Office Park when it went on sale because he saw the Skyway Marina District as the “next growth area” in the city.

“It’s always been a single-family home community, but there hasn’t been the concentration of high density buildings and there hasn’t been the retail offering,” he said. “So we see our project as addressing both.”

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Skyway Village is set to bring 2,000 apartments, from one to three bedrooms, available for rent on the corner of 34th Street and 30th Avenue South. Some of the apartment complexes will have ground-floor retail space. The project will be completed in six phases and will span about eight years, Guerra said.

The apartments will be designed for middle-income residents and people who make up St. Petersburg’s workforce, he said.

“We’re going to be a substantial discount to the downtown and the Central Avenue corridor, which probably has gotten the most attention in the last couple of years,” Guerra said. “There’s very few projects and developers targeting, let alone hitting the middle market in terms of cost ... And that’s kind of our bread and butter.”