52-story tower on downtown Tampa's Trump site a step closer to reality
By Ashley Gurbal Kritzer
Tampa Bay Business Journal
Published: Oct 21, 2015

Plans for a 52-story mixed-use tower on downtown Tampa's waterfront are one step closer to reality.

The city's Development Review and Compliance staff has decided that the plans developers proposed in July are not a substantial change from the plans originally approved for the site, which is at the intersection of South Ashley Drive and Brorein Street.

With that decision, the plans aren't subject to city council approval, and the project is ready for permitting - which means developers are likely to move forward and close on the 1.47-acre site. It's currently owned by Brownstone Tampa Group LLC, which picked up the site and the adjacent CapTrust office building for $5 million in 2011.

Larry Feldman, CEO of Feldman Equities Inc., has proposed a 576,500-square-foot tower on the site, an increase of 9,999 square feet over the original plans.

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.

Feldman's plans reduce the number of residential units from 213 to 203 and increased the non-residential square footage from 42,458 to 255,977.

None of those moves constitute a substantial change, Abby Feelye, the city's planning and development coordinator, wrote in an Oct. 20 letter to the developer's attorney.

Feldman was not immediately available for comment Wednesday morning.

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.

Brownstone Tampa Group LLC 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.

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