29-story apartment tower proposed on N Florida Avenue in downtown Tampa
X Tampa would include 306 apartments and is being built by a company that lets tenants rent individual rooms within larger, furnished apartments.

By Richard Danielson
Tampa Bay Times
Published: Oct 8, 2019

TAMPA - A company that builds apartments where tenants can rent their own bedroom and bath within a larger furnished unit proposes to build a 29-story tower in downtown Tampa.

The 325-foot-tall X Tampa project would be at the northeastern corner of N Florida Avenue and E Zack Street, just north of the Le Méridien boutique hotel. It would rise next to the historic First Presbyterian Church and would preserve and incorporate the church's Mission-style building into the project.A separate company, Property Markets Group, developed the first two X Social Communities projects in Miami and Chicago. Now The X Company will develop future X projects in Tampa, Denver and other markets.

The tower would include one floor of retail space, topped by six decks of parking, then 18 floors of apartments and three floors of amenities and club space, according to a design application filed with City Hall last week. The project is being proposed by The X Company, based in Chicago

On Tuesday, X Miami offered private bedrooms with personal bathrooms within a larger, multi-room apartments starting at $1,321 a month. Studios started at $1,551 a month, one bedrooms started at $1,687 and two-bedroom, two-bath units started at $2,598 a month.

Developers say X Social Communities' rental options eliminate the bother of finding roommates, while providing living spaces that lack only a tenant's clothes and toothbrushes to become home. The communities tout their urban locations, pool decks and fitness centers, lobbies with coffee shops, co-working spaces and an abundance of programmed social events as ready-made live-work-play environments.

The rent-by-the-bedroom arrangement is seen as suitable for younger renters and also college students, a market that's driving the growth of privately financed multi-family projects for student housing. A few blocks away, at N Ashley Drive and E Tyler Street, another developer, Development Ventures Group of New York City, has started construction on a $70 million, 23-story apartment tower that's within walking distance of the University of Tampa.

"It's a business that has grown substantially over the past five to 10 years with the rest of the economy,” said Danny Rice, Colliers International's managing director and market leader for central and west Florida. "There's been a lot of very large, institutional product trading hands."

"The uniqueness is, with a typical multi-family project you've got rolling rents happening at all these different times,.

Meanwhile, First Presbyterian Church is considering where it will move when it vacates the premises, something anticipated to take place next spring. The church voted to sell its property in May and signed a contract with an unidentified potential buyer in July, according to a recent video update posted to Facebook by First Presbyterian Rev. Fitz Conner. The church has 13 teams of people, about 70 in all, looking at questions like where its interim and permanent homes will be and how the church's finances need to be arranged to handle a move.