Developers revive hotel-condo plan in downtown Tampa with Pendry branded residences
By Ashley Gurbal Kritzer
Tampa Bay Business Journal
Published: Nov 10, 2021

A South Florida developer is reviving plans for a prime property along the Tampa Riverwalk with a proposal that would plant Florida’s first Pendry Hotels and Resorts in the heart of downtown Tampa.

Pendry Tampa will be a 37-story tower at Ashley Drive and Brorein Street with 220 hotel rooms and 207 Pendry-branded condominiums priced from the $900,000s, Pendry and Two Roads Development said Wednesday. Smith & Associates Real Estate of Tampa has been hired to presell the condos. Reid Boren, managing partner of Palm Beach-based Two Roads, said construction likely won’t begin until roughly 30% of the condos are presold.

Tampa, Boren said, is a market that real estate investors and lenders are watching closely. The success of projects like Water Street Tampa, backed by billionaire Tampa Bay Lightning owner Jeff Vinik and Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates’ Cascade Investment Fund LLC, and the Ritz-Carlton residences on Bayshore Boulevard have been a boon to the Pendry plans.

Miami-based Related Group recently told the Tampa Bay Business Journal that it has presold an $11 million penthouse in the Ritz-Carlton residences, which should begin construction by the end of the year. That project is strictly branded residences and does not include hotel rooms.

“The capital markets are super aggressive now, and we feel really comfortable with where we are in terms of getting financing,” Boren told the Business Journal.

California-based Pendry, a hotel flag from Montage International, is known for its modern, design-forward approach to luxury. Tampa is the fourth city to land Pendry-branded residences; its other locations include West Hollywood, California; Park City, Utah; and Pendry Natirar, which includes 24 farm villa residences in Somerset County, New Jersey.

Boren said Pendry Tampa will include a spa that rivals the experience at the Ritz-Carlton, Naples, and that the hotel will boast an impressive food and beverage program — one that will serve both locals and tourists. The property will include 11,000 square feet of event space.

“Their food and beverage [service] makes them shine amongst their peers,” Boren said of Pendry. “They just get it.”

Alan J. Fuerstman, founder, chairman and CEO of Montage International, said in a statement that “Pendry has long aspired to have a presence in Florida as a coveted destination among our guests and residential owners.”

“We look forward to introducing Pendry’s signature style of service and innovative guest experiences to this thriving city,” Fuerstman said.

The Pendry plans for the site are the latest iteration of development plans for that vacant parcel. In 2015, Tampa-based Feldman Equities first proposed a 53-story condo-and-office tower on the site and brought on board Tampa’s Intown Group to oversee the residential portion of the tower. Intown sued Feldman in 2017; after reaching a settlement in 2018, Intown exited the deal, and Feldman announced its partnership with Two Roads.

By late 2018, the developers had scratched their plans for office space in the tower, planning to devote the entirety of it to luxury condominiums. In mid-2019, they halted pre-sales, saying they were redesigning the project. In March 2020 — the same week that much of the world shut down to slow the spread of the novel coronavirus pandemic — Feldman said it was exiting the deal, and Two Roads announced it would return deposits to condo buyers.

Prior to Feldman’s proposal for the property, it had sat dormant for years, after plans in the early aughts to build a Trump-licensed condominium tower on the site collapsed along with the real estate market in the Great Recession.