Old St. Pete Police HQ redevelopment receives final approval
By Breanne Williams
Tampa Bay Business Journal
Published: Oct 7, 2021

Orange Station, a mixed-use development on Central Avenue in St. Petersburg, has received a final round of approvals from the St. Petersburg Development Review Commission.

Edge Central Development Partners, the group developing the project, can begin demolishing the building that formerly housed the St. Petersburg Police Department. Abatement of the existing facility is underway.

Demolition will begin soon and will take approximately three to four months. The groundbreaking for the new project is slated for June 2022. Orange Station will be a phased project, and developers anticipate two phases will be needed to complete the undertaking.

Edge Central Development Partners is a joint venture between local companies Backstreets Capital LLC, DDA Development and J Square Developers. The DRC approved the site plan and the variances for Orange Station, which will be comprised of five buildings that total 103 residential units. There will also be a 590-space mechanically ventilated parking garage, 21,400 square feet of commercial space and up to 106,000 square feet of office space.

“There’s so much buzz around the Edge district generally and our project specifically ─ every step forward continues to be exciting,” Jay Miller, president of J Square Developers, said.

The buildings will wrap around a public plaza that will feature outdoor cafes and act as a SunRunner Bus Rapid Transit line station.

Building one will be 16 stories on the southwest corner of the property and will be called The Residences at Orange Station. There will be 61 residential units on floors six to 16 featuring one- to three-bedroom condos that range from 1,150 to 1,800 square feet. The penthouse-level condos will be 1,800 to 2,400 square feet. There will also be 9,500 square feet of ground-floor commercial and residential space and 50,000 square feet of office space.

Building two is seven stories and will be built on the northwest corner. It will feature 4,000 square feet of ground-floor commercial and residential space, including 42 workforce housing units.

Building three is a one-story building on the southeast corner of the lot. It is planned to be commercial development.

The fourth building is the parking garage, and the fifth is an office building on the northeast corner of the lot.

The development will also be home to “The Courageous 12,” a public art piece that pays tribute to the 12 Black St. Petersburg police officers who sued the city of St. Pete in the 1960s to obtain the same rights as their white co-workers.

A sales office led by Smith & Associates Real Estate is expected to open by the end of this year, and contracts will be available in early 2022.

Commissioners commented Wednesday that this project has been “a long time coming” and voted unanimously to approve the site plan. They also approved a height bonus and a variance to the distance between the buildings from 30-feet to 4-feet for a portion of the buildings above 62-feet in the DC-1 Zoning District.