Rays stadium site in Carillon now slated for massive mixed-use development
By Ashley Gurbal Kritzer
Tampa Bay Business Journal
Published: Apr 2, 2015

A St. Petersburg developer who had pitched a site in Carillon Park for a Tampa Bay Rays stadium is switching gears and planning a 2.8 million square foot mixed-use development on that land.

Darryl LeClair, president and chairman of Echelon LLC, proposed the site - 12 acres at the intersection of Fountain and Carillon parkways - as a Major League Baseball stadium in 2012. But as the economy improves and office tenants and retailers are looking to expand, Echelon sees opportunity in the site for office, retail, multifamily and hotel development, one of its executives said.

"The long-term discussion with the Rays and where they end up - it's still in process and no one knows,” Mike Talmadge, an executive vice president with Echelon, said Thursday. "None of us know where they're going end up long term at this point because there's too many moving pieces.”

St. Petersburg Mayor Rick Kriseman recently proposed his second attempt at an agreement with the team that would allow it to search Hillsborough and Pinellas counties for a new stadium. St. Petersburg City Council rejected Kriseman's first agreement in December.

"Anything's possible" with the Rays and the Carillon site, Talmadge said, but Echelon at this point is moving forward with working to lure tenants to the project, which is known as Echelon City Center.

The multifamily component will likely be the first to break ground, Talmadge said. Talmadge is marketing two office towers - 20 stories and 22 stories - that will total 500,000 square feet. A limited-service hotel is also planned for the site.

A company would have to agree to occupy at least 125,000 square feet to 150,000 square feet of that before the office building would break ground, Talmadge said. While there's pent-up demand for top-tier modern office space - and large blocks of it are very difficult to come by in Tampa Bay - a purely speculative project is still considered too risky, and it wouldn't be possible to finance it.