Clearwater / Gateway / Northern Pinellas Development News

[I-275westcoastfl]

They probably are seeing they can't make that much profit off of it or something. They better not demolish such a rare gem of the bay area.

[Jasonhouse]

^Exactly. They bought for the site, not the structure.

[John F]

For those paying attention to the Belleview Biltmore saga, the Times spins a story today trying to make it sound like a local savior is on the horizon.

The problem is, for those who want the hotel saved, the guy's a vulture. He's not in it to do something, he's in it to make a profit. This isn't based off one example, it's based on doing some research on the guy.

[Jasonhouse]

The Times seems to be on the down slide a bit lately.

[John F]

It's also the fact both papers are lazy / have local pride to a degree. Local means everything is kosher.

The regional news desk that handled this story isn't going to do the research required to find out this guy is known for vulture tactics. I sure hope someone in power in Bellair has.

I'd love for them to save the property. We all know that landmarks around the area are almost always razed instead of restored.

[John F]

My wish is granted

[I-275westcoastfl]

Great news!

[Jasonhouse]

^Maybe.

[TampaGuy]

wrong thread

[TampaMike]

Can I please nominate the new Holiday Inn hotel as the ugliest 5+ story building in Tampa Bay? I drove through Clearwater and Clearwater Beach today after class being bored and puked at the very sight of it after going over the causeway bridge. Who in the blue moon saw anything remotely qualifying to have that placed on the beach? This makes the big pink slab look like the freaking Taj Mahal compared to it! It offers exactly nothing to the beach. Plain walls, lack of retail, eyesore parking garage, and the tint of glass they used puts the last turd on the pile of crap that it is.

Sorry for the rant, but remove all who approved of this monstrosity.

[I-275westcoastfl]

Originally Posted by TampaMike

Can I please nominate the new Holiday Inn hotel as the ugliest 5+ story building in Tampa Bay? I drove through Clearwater and Clearwater Beach today after class being bored and puked at the very sight of it after going over the causeway bridge. Who in the blue moon saw anything remotely qualifying to have that placed on the beach? This makes the big pink slab look like the freaking Taj Mahal compared to it! It offers exactly nothing to the beach. Plain walls, lack of retail, eyesore parking garage, and the tint of glass they used puts the last turd on the pile of crap that it is.

Sorry for the rant, but remove all who approved of this monstrosity.

LOL its Clearwater Beach! Every major building on that beach is mediocre and a massive ugly slab.

[TampaMike]

Two new hotels for Clearwater Beach?

Developer wants to build 15-story Hampton Inn on Clearwater Beach

By Mike Brassfield, Times Staff Writer
Posted: Jan 09, 2013 06:08 PM

CLEARWATER — On the south end of Clearwater Beach, between a Quality Hotel and an EconoLodge, there's a parking lot. Over the years, there have been some ambitious plans for this parking lot.

Back in 2005, during the beach condominium boom, a high-end project called the Clearwater Grande was envisioned for this spot. First it was going to be a 91-unit condo-hotel. Then it was going to be a 68-unit luxury condo. Finally, the whole thing got shelved.

Now, eight years later, the property's owner hopes to build a 15-story Hampton Inn & Suites on the site. It's another sign that, after years of inactivity, development on Clearwater Beach is slowly starting to pick up again.

The 116-room Hampton Inn would be about 165 feet tall and would consist of 10 floors and a swimming pool placed over five levels of parking.

The parking garage's 245 spaces would be shared by the Hampton Inn and the existing Quality Hotel next door at 655 S Gulfview Blvd., which has five floors, 91 rooms and an IHOP restaurant. The Quality Hotel would lose its parking lot to make way for the Hampton Inn.

"Each hotel will have its own identity, but they will share parking," said Housh Ghovaee, CEO of Northside Engineering, which is handling the site plan. He compared it to a food court where restaurants share seating. "It's the same concept here, having two hotels and one parking garage."

Clearwater's Community Development Board will consider next Tuesday whether to approve these plans. City staffers haven't yet decided whether to recommend approval. "It's being evaluated," said city planner Kevin Nurnberger.

It remains to be seen whether the development board will approve a project of this height and density on the .8-acre site. The property owner says the plan complies with Clearwater's blueprint for beach redevelopment, called Beach by Design.

The owner is asking for 60 rooms beyond what would normally be allowed there. The city allows beach hotel developers to draw units from a pool of 1,385 extra rooms, building more rooms than they otherwise could per acre.

The so-called "density pool" was created five years ago as an incentive to build mid-sized, mid-priced hotels on the beach, many of which Clearwater lost to condominium construction. The Hampton Inn would meet the need for another mid-priced hotel, with room rates varying from $89 to $160 a night.

"We're excited that a new hotel is going in. It's been long overdue," Ghovaee said. "That speaks volumes about a kick-start in the economy."

The $15 million hotel would create 35 full-time jobs and 20-25 part-time jobs, according to the developer's application to the city.

The Hampton Inn and the Quality Hotel would have the same owner — Steve Page, president of Clearwater Grande Development. Page was the developer for the Westview Grande Condo on Indian Shores and recently won approval to build a 90-room Courtyard by Marriott Hotel in Madeira Beach, that city's first new hotel in decades.

Several proposed hotel and condo projects on Clearwater Beach have foundered in recent years due to lending freezes and the recession. The two most recent hotels to open there were the 250-suite Hyatt Regency Resort in 2010, and the smaller, less expensive Pier House 60 Marina Hotel last year.

A developer also recently won approval to build a seven-story, 134-room hotel, probably a Courtyard by Marriott, a block north of the Clearwater Beach Roundabout.

Mike Brassfield can be reached at brassfield@tampabay.com or (727) 445-4151. To write a letter to the editor, go to tampabay.com/letters.

http://www.tampabay.com/news/busines...cle1269738.ece

[I-275westcoastfl]

Its probably going to be another bulky ugly building like the big pink hotel.

[Jasonhouse]

^They have to be, per city building codes and zoning regs.

[I-275westcoastfl]

I know.. Ridiculous!

[Jahi98]

Not exciting urban news, but good signs for the local economy.

http://m.bizjournals.com/tampabay/bl...ea-to-see.html

[kmthurman]

I dunno I find that mildly exciting. More mixed use Gateway/Westshore get the more likely they will be good transit hubs and provide a cheaper alternative to Downtowns in both cities.

[Jasonhouse]

^The problem is, they're all auto-centric, dead end and gated. By filling in yet more lots with developments that are not even close to being transit friendly, Gateway is inching closer to being a lost cause for effective mass transit.

[Jahi98]

Most of Gateway may never be walkable in the traditional sense, except in some planned areas of Carillon and a few other pockets, but well-planned bus routes to get people from these complexes to a rail station would work. At any rate, it is good to see new apartments in Gateway. Hopefully, it some new restaurants and retail will follow.

[TampaGuy]

Clearwater Marine Aquarium planning splashy new home in downtown Clearwater


http://www.tampabay.com/news/busines...wntown/1276962

CLEARWATER — The Clearwater Marine Aquarium, home of the most famous dolphin since Flipper, is about to launch an ambitious plan to build a new $160 million, 200,000-square-foot aquarium in downtown Clearwater.

The substantially larger home for Winter, the dolphin that learned to swim with a prosthetic tail, would be built on a city-owned site where Clearwater's City Hall is located, overlooking Clearwater Harbor.

The new aquarium would include a 2,000-seat dolphin stadium, a two-story coral reef tank and a "4D theater" where viewers would get misted with water or feel the breeze of a sea environment. It would provide space for the hordes of visitors who have flocked to the current location since Winter starred in the hit 2011 movie Dolphin Tale.

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The small aquarium on Island Estates near Clearwater Beach would remain open, but would be devoted to animal rescue and rehabilitation. It would be renamed the Clearwater Marine Hospital, after the film's fictional backdrop.

Aquarium officials will ask the city for a no-cost lease to the City Hall property. In exchange for getting the waterfront land, the aquarium forecasts that it would draw exponentially more tourists to Clearwater's struggling downtown, which is best known for the presence of the Church of Scientology.

Aquarium officials predict that a new facility would attract more than 2 million visitors in its first year.

"With 2 million visitors a year, you change the entire complexion of downtown," said former Clearwater Mayor Frank Hibbard, who is on the aquarium's board of directors. "This is the right thing at the right place at the right time."

Because City Hall is on public land, the deal would require the approval of Clearwater voters. The aquarium will ask the city to hold a referendum this November, with the aquarium paying the $70,000 cost.

"I think that's a fair request. Let's see what the public believes should happen," said current Mayor George Cretekos. "It's a massive project. It's a potential game changer for downtown."

The aquarium will publicly present its plan to Clearwater's City Council on Tuesday morning. Council members have already been briefed one-on-one and are generally supportive of holding a referendum.

So if the aquarium moved to the City Hall site, what would happen to City Hall? The three-story building at 112 S Osceola Ave. houses offices of city administrators, clerks and attorneys as well as the City Council meeting chamber.

The 1960s-era building isn't aging well. Eight years ago, the city was prepared to sell the property to a condo developer. Officials have previously debated closing City Hall to save money and moving its functions into newer city buildings such as the Clearwater Main Library and the Municipal Services Building a few blocks away.

Clearwater has also considered building a new City Hall, and it owns several large tracts of land downtown. "We'll start looking at our options," City Manager Bill Horne said.

The aquarium already has hired the company that designed the Georgia Aquarium in Atlanta, the world's largest, to design the new facility.

Conceptual drawings show the building fronting downtown's Osceola Avenue and stair-stepping down the high bluff to a covered dolphin stadium near the water.

Drawings also show turtle tanks; exhibits for otters, octopuses and possibly manatees; a 9,000-square-foot community meeting room; an outdoor Everglades exhibit; a cafe; and a 630-space parking garage on a 1-acre vacant lot just south of City Hall that the aquarium bought in December for $2.1 million.

A Dolphin Tale movie prop exhibit currently housed in the city's Harborview Center would be folded into the new location, said Frank Dame, the aquarium's executive vice president.

Betting on a dolphin

Is it prudent to bet this big on a dolphin?

Winter is 7 years old, and dolphins can live for 50 years, Dame said.

David Yates, the aquarium's CEO, says Dolphin Tale draws visitors to Winter's home because the film is so closely tied to a real location. The name "Clearwater" is mentioned or shown several times in the movie.

One might assume that tourism generated by the film would begin to drop off after the movie left theaters. But Yates says it will have a long "afterlife" on DVDs, HBO, and later on the ABC Family network, ensuring that families will have many chances to be exposed to Winter's story. Several books also have been written about Winter. Wounded veterans and disabled children have also turned Winter's home into a place of inspiration.

Opened in the 1970s in what was once a sewage treatment plant, the current small aquarium has at times struggled to handle the overflow crowds generated by Dolphin Tale. The aquarium was 52,000 square feet before current construction projects that will expand it to 83,000.

Attendance has roughly quadrupled since the movie's release, with about 750,000 visitors last year to the aquarium and its movie prop exhibit. That's more than the Florida Aquarium, which reported 650,000 visitors last year.

Clearwater officials expressed confidence that Clearwater's aquarium could survive competition from Tampa's aquarium because Clearwater's aquarium will draw beach visitors and because it has a bonafide star in Winter. Florida Aquarium officials had no comment Thursday.

To help make its vision a reality, the Clearwater aquarium has hired a fundraising consultant. It will need to raise tens of millions of dollars from donors and corporations, as well as from the city, county, state and federal governments.

To cover the $160 million cost, the aquarium also anticipates spending $15-$20 million from its own bank account, and getting $60-$80 million through bank financing.

If a referendum passes and sufficient money is raised, construction on the new facility would begin in spring 2015 and finish in spring 2017, Dame said.

Getting the deal approved in a voter referendum is no guarantee. In 2000, Clearwater voters rejected a $200-million plan that would have transformed the downtown waterfront. They rejected a less ambitious proposal in 2004. But in 2007, they approved the construction of a downtown marina.

The two earlier referendums got resounding "no" votes because voters feared impacts to city-owned Coachman Park, a sprawling green space that is home to the annual Clearwater Jazz Holiday and is considered premium waterfront property. It remains to be seen if the City Hall site would engender similar opposition.

The presentation that aquarium officials will make to the City Council shows an optional proposal for changes at Coachman Park, but that will not be a part of the referendum and officials said they offered it just to demonstrate how the downtown waterfront could be redesigned.

Clearwater Beach activist Anne Garris, who helped torpedo two of the previous downtown referendums, said Thursday that she's mostly concerned that no buildings be added to Coachman Park. The park concept doesn't call for that. An aquarium supporter, Garris nevertheless wonders how much the plan would cost taxpayers.