Vinik real estate team brings on urban planning guru to accelerate plans
By Ashley Gurbal Kritzer
Tampa Bay Business Journal
Published: Mar 13, 2015

A household name in the urban planning world has joined Jeff Vinik's real estate company to expedite the process of moving from renderings to reality.

Jeff Speck, author of "Walkable City: How Downtown Can Save America, One Step at a Time," has been retained as a consultant to Vinik's Strategic Property Partners, managing director Bob Abberger said Friday.

Speck is known as an advocate of new urbanism, a school of urban design theory that promotes walkability in mixed-use neighborhoods.

As principal of Washington, D.C.-based Speck & Associates LLC, Speck will work SPP throughout the year, working on the development's sidewalks, streetscapes and bike path placement. Vinik is planning to build a billion-dollar mixed-use development on the southern fringe of downtown Tampa that will include office, residential, retail and hospitality uses.

"The initial piece is to bring real clarity to our urban streetscape and our roadway plans in the next 60 days so we can get to permit," Abberger said.

Pittsburgh-based Urban Design Associates was the consultant on the vision Vinik unveiled in December.

"They did a great job of helping us create the vision plan," Abberger said, "but now I have to take it to drawings. They set the palette of what we wanted, but not at the level of design of exactly how we make it work."

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