Developers To Begin Construction on One of Few New Hotels in St. Petersburg, Florida
By Richard Lawson
CoStar Group
Published: Jan 11, 2022

Two developers plan to build a mixed-use project anchored by a hotel in downtown St. Petersburg, Florida — a rare occurrence in the city.

Miami-based PTM Partners, a developer specializing in federal 'opportunity zones,' and Dovehill Investment & Development are teaming up on a project anchored by a 163-room Moxy by Marriott hotel in St. Petersburg’s Edge District, an arts and entertainment neighborhood.

The project called Edge Collective also will include retail, restaurant and commercial space on the site, which is located across the street from Tropicana Field, current home to the MLB’s Tampa Bay Rays. The developers expect to break ground on the hotel in the second quarter with an opening scheduled in late 2023.

The Moxy will have an indoor-outdoor rooftop restaurant and include a nightlife venue, a brand that Marriott pitches as “playful, affordable, and stylish hotel brand designed to give guests everything they want and nothing they don’t.”

The Moxy will be one of the few hotels under construction in all of St. Petersburg. There are just two upscale hotels totaling 182 rooms under construction, representing a small percentage of the area's 11,000 existing rooms, according to Kelsey Fenerty, a senior research analyst with hotel industry research firm STR, which is owned by CoStar Group.

Beyond those, Fenerty said there are about 500 hotel rooms in the final planning stages with opening dates for 2023-2024.

The Edge Collective investors bought the 1.6-acre site that has a parking lot and vacant commercial building a little more than two years ago for $13 million. The site is among the nearly 9,000 opportunity zones created around the country by the 2017 Tax Cuts and Jobs Act that gives investors a break on capital gains taxes.

“The Edge Collective will provide an added layer of vibrancy and culture to a district that is already burgeoning, and truly is about cultivating opportunities for the overall community,” Michael Tillman, PTM’s CEO, said in a statement.

A future challenge for the hotel’s partial reliance on Tropicana Field could emerge as the Rays consider splitting its season with Montreal, Canada, and possible move to a new stadium in Tampa, if it can be built.

"While the Rays are a great attraction to Downtown St. Petersburg, we see that the area offers so much more, which is what drew us in initially," said Nicholas Pantuliano, PTM's chief development officer, in an email. "Downtown St. Petersburg is one of the most promising hospitality markets in the country, experiencing a constrained product supply market; we saw this from a consumer traveler perspective, and felt that there was a need for more hotels."

The Edge District has garnered other development over the past year. Greenwich, Connecticut-based Belpointe, which invests in opportunity zones, was approved last year to build a 254-unit apartment project that includes retail.

Local firm DevMar Development is building a seven-story apartment building with 211 furnished studios. The original plan had been a Marriott Tribute hotel, but the firm shifted to apartments during the pandemic when financing for hotels dried up, Mark DeMaria, DevMar’s CEO, total the Tampa Bay Times. The pandemic decimated the hospitality business in 2020.

For the Record

Local firm Storyn Studio is the architect on the hotel.