New grocer, more retail in the works for downtown St. Pete
By Ashley Gurbal Kritzer
Tampa Bay Business Journal
Published: Apr 23, 2015

The site of an antiquated office building in downtown St. Petersburg will be redeveloped to include a glitzy new retail center anchored by a grocery store.

The ARC Group Inc., a St. Petersburg-based developer, filed plans with the city on April 16 to add 50,000 square feet of retail space and three levels of parking to the southwest corner of Central Avenue and Seventh Street South. The six-story office building, built in 1968 and owned by ARC, will remain on the site. (See site plan embedded below.)

The plans call for a 32,000-square-foot grocery store and 18,000 square feet of retail space below three stories of parking that would bring the total spaces on the site to 464. ARC says its proposed architecture was influenced by Art Deco style.

The residential development boom in downtown St. Pete is driving other sectors of commercial development. Retail interest is picking up - Sundial tenants are a said to be " killing it," and a new retailer announced plans for Beach Drive on Tuesday. There's increasingly interest in office space, too, as decision makers seek a corporate environment with the live-work-play dynamic the millennial workforce covets. Landing a second grocer will likely be a boon to both residential and office activity, as it bolsters St. Pete's status as a thriving urban center.

The site is across First Avenue South from where South Florida-based Allen Morris Co. is under construction on the 348-unit Hermitage, a $70 million apartment complex.

The proposed development is less than a mile from Publix Super Markets Inc.'s University Village location, a very busy store for Publix. The Lakeland-based grocer has been rumored for months to be scouting for a second location in downtown St. Pete, though a spokesman told TBBJ last week that there was nothing to report on any new locations in St. Petersburg.

The size of the proposed grocery - 32,000 square feet - is roughly the size of Publix's current urban prototype. Publix has also long been rumored to occupy the ground floor of a long-awaited apartment tower in downtown Tampa's Channel district, and a Publix spokesman recently told TBBJ that the grocer is "hopeful" it will one day have a store in downtown Tampa.

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