52-story mixed-use tower proposed for downtown Tampa's Trump site
By Ashley Gurbal Kritzer
Tampa Bay Business Journal
Published: Jul 21, 2015

A 52-story mixed-use tower is planned for the most notorious piece of land in downtown Tampa.

A development group led by Tampa investor Larry Feldman has filed plans with the city to build a tower on the former Trump Tower site, the 1.47 acres at the intersection of South Ashley Drive and East Brorein Street.

The tower could be up to 627 feet, according to the documents. That would top the city's tallest building, 100 N. Tampa, which is about 579 feet tall.

The plans call for ground-floor retail, a restaurant and bar space fronting the Tampa RiverWalk. Above that will be seven stories of parking totaling more than 600 spaces. Floors eight through 22 will be 205,000 square feet of office space, and floors 23 to 52 will be 203 residential units.

The tower totals 576,500 square feet with a footprint of 34,500 square feet.

The retail component will be 10,000 square feet, opening up on to the Tampa RiverWalk and overlooking the Hillsborough River. It is across the river from the Tampa Tribune's site, which Miami-based Related Group plans to demolish to make way for a 400-unit residential development.

Feldman declined comment Tuesday. It is the last remaining undeveloped parcel of waterfront land in downtown Tampa. Most recently, it was used as a construction staging area for the expansion of the Tampa RiverWalk.

The plans represent an incredible amount of confidence in downtown Tampa as well as a large appetite for risk. High rise construction is exorbitantly expensive, and while available office space in the urban core is dwindling, it's yet to be seen if there are companies in Tampa willing to pay the rents necessary to make the construction profitable.

It's not yet known how the project will be financed. Goldman Sachs backed Feldman's acquisition of the Wells Fargo Center, the 22-story office tower across Ashley Drive from the Trump site. Other ventures were backed by opportunity funds including Praedium Funds, DRA Advisors and TrigateCapital.

Feldman has been involved in the development of millions of square feet of commercial space in metro New York, including a 40-story office tower in Manhattan in the mid-1980s. In Tampa Bay, Feldman has made a name for himself leasing up and selling office buildings, primarily in the urban cores of Tampa and St. Petersburg.

Donald Trump had licensed his name to Simdag/Robel LLC to build a 52-story condominium tower on the site in 2005, but those plans collapsed along with the real estate market. Simdag/Robel filed for bankruptcy protection in 2008, and Brownstone Tampa Group LLC picked up the site and the adjacent CapTrust office building for $5 million in 2011.

That group is an investment partnership of O,R&L Facility Services; Owens Realty Network LLC; and Community Reinvestment Partners II LP, a joint venture investment fund of Forge Capital Partners LLC and DeBartolo Development LLC.