A closer look at redevelopment plans for the Kress in downtown Tampa
By Ashley Gurbal Kritzer
Tampa Bay Business Journal
Published: Nov 10, 2014

The latest proposal for revitalizing the historic Kress building in downtown Tampa is about half the size of the plans pitched at the height of the real estate market.

The Tampa Bay Business Journal was first to report that a group of Tampa real estate veterans has teamed up with an Atlanta hotel developer to redevelop the five-story Kress, which was the home of five-and-dime store S.H. Kress & Co. The Tampa team includes father-and-son construction executives Sam Ellison and Casey Ellison; Anthony Italiano, a partner with the Ellisons in EWI Construction; and Tampa developer Alex Walter.

Here's what that group is proposing, according to city documents filed Monday morning:

190 hotel rooms
58 multifamily units
Up to 22 stories
15,217 square feet of restaurant space
1,354 square feet of office space
299,668 total square feet

That's a vast departure from the boom era, when the following was proposed:

401 multifamily units
Up to 27 stories
22,543 square feet of retail
40,696 square feet of office
21,665 square feet of other commercial use
560,003 total square feet

The building, built in 1929, has been vacant since 1981. It was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1983. See the application embedded below.

"The S.H. Kress and Co. department store building at 811 N. Franklin Street was one of the last major commercial structures erected in downtown Tampa, Florida, before the beginning of the Great Depression. It is, therefore, representative of the remarkable period of growth from 1885 to 1929 that saw Tampa transformed from a small frontier village into a major Florida city," according to the application.

Ashley Gurbal Kritzer is a reporter for the Tampa Bay Business Journal.