CREATING A CONNECTION
Darryl Shaw has been buying up Ybor City property for years. Now, hes master planning close to three dozen acres with a goal of connecting Tampas burgeoning urban neighborhoods.

By Ashley Gurbal Kritzer
Tampa Bay Business Journal
Published: Jan 14, 2021

Ybor City landowner Darryl Shaw has hired a Washington, D.C., firm to master plan and codevelop the large swath of land he controls just north of downtown Tampa's Channel district.

Shaw, who is also CEO of BluePearl Veterinary Partners, told the Tampa Bay Business Journal that he officially inked a deal with Kettler shortly after the first of the year. He is on track to close on a 12-acre portion of the Tampa Park apartments property in mid- to late February and plans to combine that parcel with two others to create one large mixed-use district:

The 14-acre site between East Fourth Avenue and Adamo Drive to the north and south and 15th Street and Channelside Drive to the east and west that was previously targeted for a Tampa Bay Rays stadium

The GasWorx site, which is 7.64 acres at 1400 Channelside Drive

Those properties are viewed as a linchpin to connecting the central business district, Ybor City, Channel district, Tampa Heights and Encore. While those neighborhoods are in close proximity to each other, the city's car-centric design creates physical and mental barriers to moving seamlessly between each area.

"Holistically, this is about integrating the various neighborhoods," Shaw said. "It’s thinking about the street grid structure, bike paths, pedestrian paths — thinking through all of that and then also being sensitive to historic Ybor City."

Shaw said he still has an active memorandum of understanding with high-speed rail operator Brightline, which is interested in a potential station on his property, and his plans still take into account the possibility of a new Tampa Bay Rays stadium. While the Brightline discussions are moving toward a definitive agreement, Shaw said nothing has been finalized.

The master planning process will take at least a year and as long as 18 months to two years. A multifamily development may move forward before that, said Graham Tyrrell, a senior vice president with Kettler who relocated to Tampa in 2020 as part of the firm's ambitions to grow its presence in the Southeast.

An exact location for that project hasn't been finalized, Tyrrell said. In an ideal scenario, it would begin construction before the end of 2021.

"We’d like to get some energy and development occurring as soon as we can," Tyrrell told the Business Journal. "We would probably be looking at one parcel in such a way that it can move forward relatively quickly while the master planning process continues." In the meantime, Shaw is working on smaller projects around Ybor. At 1804 E. Fourth Ave. — a property Shaw has owned since 2015 — he's moving forward with plans to build a dog park and cafe.