Patience pays off for Centro Ybor owner with Ashley Furniture ecommerce office deal
By Ashley Gurbal Kritzer
Tampa Bay Business Journal
Published: May 22, 2015

David Harvey has turned down a number of potential deals for Centro Ybor over the years.

Harvey, an executive with Chicago-based M&J Wilkow, said "a lot" of night clubs had approached him about leasing space in Centro Ybor since his company bought it in 2007. But that type of tenant didn't fit with M&J Wilkow's long-term vision for the mixed-use property.

The group's strategy was validated on Thursday, when Ashley Furniture Industries Inc. announced it would establish its U.S. ecommerce headquarters in Centro Ybor, moving 100 employees into 70,000 square feet of space.

David Harvey, an executive with M&J Wilkow, stands in the construction zone that will become Ashley Furniture's office space in Centro Ybor.

"It was not the route we wanted to go," Harvey said of the night clubs. "We wanted to create a place that was really family friendly, and this has sort of vindicated it."

The construction that will take place to make way for the furniture giant is what M&J Wilkow had always envisioned: Redeveloping the movie theater - cutting the number of screens in half - into office space. Ten of the movie theater's 20 auditoria will be redeveloped to make way for the e-commerce offices in Centro Ybor. Of those 10, eight will be demolished and two will be kept as training facilities for Ashley Furniture.

Those plans, put together within a year of M&J Wilkow closing on the property, were put on hold indefinitely by the recession. They had considered residential units or hotel rooms but had decided before the market crashed that office space would be the best fit.

With those plans tabled for years, though, Harvey said some of his partners had started to question their investment in Centro Ybor.

"I honestly have always loved this project," he said, "but there were partners of mine who kind of lost confidence."

There's about 8,600 square feet of vacant retail space in Centro Ybor, but Harvey thinks the news of the Ashley Furniture deal will generate interest in that space.

"My guess is, by the time these guys open - maybe six more months - the whole place'll be full," he said.