Jasonhouse
January 26th, 2007, 07:56 AM
Downtown Tampa emerges from its cocoon
Tampa Bay Business Journal
January 19, 2007
by Michael Hinman Staff Writer
http://tampabay.bizjournals.com/tampabay/stories/2007/01/22/focus1.html?b=1169442000^1404139
TAMPA -- In 2003, Chicago downtown development expert Frank Wolff told local business owners that downtown Tampa was at the beginning of a five-year development cycle that will bring a diverse population into the core area as permanent residents.
With one more year to go in that cycle, the city appears to be falling short of expectations. However, downtown Tampa has witnessed some significant improvement toward becoming a live-work area over the past four years, and buildings have nowhere to go but up.
"We worked with the city almost three years ago now to do a vision and action plan for downtown that identified a number of areas all over the greater downtown area that would benefit from certain types of development," said Christine Burdick, president of the Tampa Downtown Partnership. "We wanted to know what kinds of needs the different areas have, and provide guidelines and some direction to where and how these things can happen."
Creating a downtown neighborhood
One of the key ideas centered on turning downtown Tampa from an area that shut down when the sun set to a vibrant, 24-hour community. Bringing in permanent residents was a key part of the plan, and has been Greg Minder's obsession over the last few years. His company, Intowngroup, joined forces with Atlanta developer Novare Group to purchase four properties in the area that were nearly all previously owned by Tampa Electric Co., turning them into hubs of residential and retail development.
"We wanted to look at [downtown development] from the private side," Minder said. "We have looked at building a higher-density residential, commercial mixed-use space and really focused on making it a neighborhood. It sounds like an easy thing to say, but what does that really mean?"
Novare-Intowngroup picked up a series of adjoining properties off Ashley Drive across from the Tampa Museum of Art. That includes the M&I Building on the corner of North Ashley and East Twiggs Street, the land where downtown's first condominium tower SkyPoint is rising one block north, and two other pieces of nearby land fronting East Polk Street on either side of North Tampa Street.
Those last two lots are expected to be the future homes of the Twelve Arts District, a 130-unit boutique hotel tower, and Element, a 34-story condominium tower that broke ground earlier this month.
While downtown corridors tend to be filled with multiple single-block owners, Minder said it was important to not only get control of the block they are working on, but surrounding ones as well as a way to contribute toward giving downtown Tampa life.
"We've chosen to own it and control it long term," Minder said. "We're building out a broader vision. We have a 10-year business plan that we have outlined for that area. It's not a building, it's not two buildings. It's a greater long-term plan of product offerings."
That includes not just the land where the older, 12-story M&I Building currently stands, but at least two other parcels Novare-Intowngroup is expected to close on in the near future that will increase the company's holdings downtown.
Downtown an acquired taste
"Developers have bad reputations in this town," said Abbey Dohring, a broker and VP with The Dohring Group and founder of the Uptown Council, an independent group examining ways of strengthening development in the northern part of Tampa's downtown core. "But Greg has been the exception. I think that the diverse mix of projects they are doing and their vision is really important because we have had that vision before, for what, 10 years? And they haven't been able to make it happen before now."
Dohring said when she first joined her family's company, she was asked if she wanted to focus on downtown Tampa.
"I said, 'Heck no, it's gross!' But I started coming down here and working out of my family's office building, and it's amazing," she said. "Now I would never work anywhere else. Downtown is the greatest place to be."
The greatest place to work, maybe, but still not the place to go if it's early evening and she's looking for some place to eat. Bringing in residents to the downtown area between Kennedy Boulevard and Interstate 275 has been a priority for her group from the beginning, Dohring said.
While other downtown condo projects might not get as much publicity as SkyPoint, those are already welcoming their first residents.
"The northern end of Franklin Street, north of Tyler [Street], is a different place now than it was two years ago," Burdick said. "But now there's a three-story mixed-use project there with both retail and room for businesses. The Fly restaurant opened there, and there are four luxury townhomes being built next to the Fly."
Taking a commercial break
With the continued focus on residential, little has been said about creating new commercial space for businesses, or how the area will absorb some of its existing space.
The downtown office vacancy rate is dropping, to 15 percent currently, Burdick said. Some may see new construction in places such as Westshore and Oldsmar as competition for business locations, but actually they aren't, she said.
"Each of those places offer something different," she said. "In many cases they complement what we do. Westshore is a good place for people who have to have better access to Pinellas County or the airport. But there are still many businesses who enjoy that traditional urban downtown location."
Land costs also will hinder new commercial construction for some time to come, Intowngroup's Minder said.
"There's certainly going to be a component of that in what we do" in the future, Minder said. "But if anyone were to do it now, they would have to build a 5,000-foot-tall structure, which is the only way you would be able to justify the land values today."
If Dohring has her way, much of the commercial aspect will stay south of Kennedy. She is confident that growth will occur.
"It's going to happen here, and I know people are always saying it's going to happen," Dohring said. "Maybe I'm just young and it's nothing more than me being optimistic, but this time I think we're going to see downtown Tampa become what we expect it to be."
Building with (smaller) blocks
The challenges facing downtown Tampa extend beyond its current business-hours lifespan. Development also is being hindered by another obstacle, Intowngroup's Greg Minder said: Tampa's city blocks are among the smallest in the nation.
Only Portland, Ore. has smaller blocks, Minder said, at 200-by-200-foot blocks compared to Tampa's 210-by-210-foot blocks. That limits the kinds of buildings going up in the downtown core.
"When you ramp internally in a parking deck in downtown, you have to have a certain slope," Minder said. "In order to maintain that slope, you have to have one-way drive-out circulation on one end to the other. That's building property line to property line, and it makes it tougher."
It also forces cities with smaller blocks to look for alternatives to parking, said Christine Burdick, president of the Tampa Downtown Partnership.
"Portland, with their small block size, were forced to develop good transportation systems," Burdick said. "They couldn't easily park cars downtown, and they had to find good public transit to address it. And that's how we will have to evolve as well."
Tampa Bay Business Journal
January 19, 2007
by Michael Hinman Staff Writer
http://tampabay.bizjournals.com/tampabay/stories/2007/01/22/focus1.html?b=1169442000^1404139
TAMPA -- In 2003, Chicago downtown development expert Frank Wolff told local business owners that downtown Tampa was at the beginning of a five-year development cycle that will bring a diverse population into the core area as permanent residents.
With one more year to go in that cycle, the city appears to be falling short of expectations. However, downtown Tampa has witnessed some significant improvement toward becoming a live-work area over the past four years, and buildings have nowhere to go but up.
"We worked with the city almost three years ago now to do a vision and action plan for downtown that identified a number of areas all over the greater downtown area that would benefit from certain types of development," said Christine Burdick, president of the Tampa Downtown Partnership. "We wanted to know what kinds of needs the different areas have, and provide guidelines and some direction to where and how these things can happen."
Creating a downtown neighborhood
One of the key ideas centered on turning downtown Tampa from an area that shut down when the sun set to a vibrant, 24-hour community. Bringing in permanent residents was a key part of the plan, and has been Greg Minder's obsession over the last few years. His company, Intowngroup, joined forces with Atlanta developer Novare Group to purchase four properties in the area that were nearly all previously owned by Tampa Electric Co., turning them into hubs of residential and retail development.
"We wanted to look at [downtown development] from the private side," Minder said. "We have looked at building a higher-density residential, commercial mixed-use space and really focused on making it a neighborhood. It sounds like an easy thing to say, but what does that really mean?"
Novare-Intowngroup picked up a series of adjoining properties off Ashley Drive across from the Tampa Museum of Art. That includes the M&I Building on the corner of North Ashley and East Twiggs Street, the land where downtown's first condominium tower SkyPoint is rising one block north, and two other pieces of nearby land fronting East Polk Street on either side of North Tampa Street.
Those last two lots are expected to be the future homes of the Twelve Arts District, a 130-unit boutique hotel tower, and Element, a 34-story condominium tower that broke ground earlier this month.
While downtown corridors tend to be filled with multiple single-block owners, Minder said it was important to not only get control of the block they are working on, but surrounding ones as well as a way to contribute toward giving downtown Tampa life.
"We've chosen to own it and control it long term," Minder said. "We're building out a broader vision. We have a 10-year business plan that we have outlined for that area. It's not a building, it's not two buildings. It's a greater long-term plan of product offerings."
That includes not just the land where the older, 12-story M&I Building currently stands, but at least two other parcels Novare-Intowngroup is expected to close on in the near future that will increase the company's holdings downtown.
Downtown an acquired taste
"Developers have bad reputations in this town," said Abbey Dohring, a broker and VP with The Dohring Group and founder of the Uptown Council, an independent group examining ways of strengthening development in the northern part of Tampa's downtown core. "But Greg has been the exception. I think that the diverse mix of projects they are doing and their vision is really important because we have had that vision before, for what, 10 years? And they haven't been able to make it happen before now."
Dohring said when she first joined her family's company, she was asked if she wanted to focus on downtown Tampa.
"I said, 'Heck no, it's gross!' But I started coming down here and working out of my family's office building, and it's amazing," she said. "Now I would never work anywhere else. Downtown is the greatest place to be."
The greatest place to work, maybe, but still not the place to go if it's early evening and she's looking for some place to eat. Bringing in residents to the downtown area between Kennedy Boulevard and Interstate 275 has been a priority for her group from the beginning, Dohring said.
While other downtown condo projects might not get as much publicity as SkyPoint, those are already welcoming their first residents.
"The northern end of Franklin Street, north of Tyler [Street], is a different place now than it was two years ago," Burdick said. "But now there's a three-story mixed-use project there with both retail and room for businesses. The Fly restaurant opened there, and there are four luxury townhomes being built next to the Fly."
Taking a commercial break
With the continued focus on residential, little has been said about creating new commercial space for businesses, or how the area will absorb some of its existing space.
The downtown office vacancy rate is dropping, to 15 percent currently, Burdick said. Some may see new construction in places such as Westshore and Oldsmar as competition for business locations, but actually they aren't, she said.
"Each of those places offer something different," she said. "In many cases they complement what we do. Westshore is a good place for people who have to have better access to Pinellas County or the airport. But there are still many businesses who enjoy that traditional urban downtown location."
Land costs also will hinder new commercial construction for some time to come, Intowngroup's Minder said.
"There's certainly going to be a component of that in what we do" in the future, Minder said. "But if anyone were to do it now, they would have to build a 5,000-foot-tall structure, which is the only way you would be able to justify the land values today."
If Dohring has her way, much of the commercial aspect will stay south of Kennedy. She is confident that growth will occur.
"It's going to happen here, and I know people are always saying it's going to happen," Dohring said. "Maybe I'm just young and it's nothing more than me being optimistic, but this time I think we're going to see downtown Tampa become what we expect it to be."
Building with (smaller) blocks
The challenges facing downtown Tampa extend beyond its current business-hours lifespan. Development also is being hindered by another obstacle, Intowngroup's Greg Minder said: Tampa's city blocks are among the smallest in the nation.
Only Portland, Ore. has smaller blocks, Minder said, at 200-by-200-foot blocks compared to Tampa's 210-by-210-foot blocks. That limits the kinds of buildings going up in the downtown core.
"When you ramp internally in a parking deck in downtown, you have to have a certain slope," Minder said. "In order to maintain that slope, you have to have one-way drive-out circulation on one end to the other. That's building property line to property line, and it makes it tougher."
It also forces cities with smaller blocks to look for alternatives to parking, said Christine Burdick, president of the Tampa Downtown Partnership.
"Portland, with their small block size, were forced to develop good transportation systems," Burdick said. "They couldn't easily park cars downtown, and they had to find good public transit to address it. And that's how we will have to evolve as well."