Sundial in downtown St. Pete to be sold to Tampa Bay developer
By Ashley Gurbal Kritzer
Tampa Bay Business Journal
Published: Feb 1, 2022

Sundial, the open-air lifestyle center in downtown St. Petersburg, will be sold to a Safety Harbor real estate developer.

St. Petersburg City Council on Feb. 10 will vote on amending the city’s parking agreement with the ownership of Sundial in anticipation of the property’s sale, set to close in mid-February, according to the council agenda.

Bill Edwards, the St. Petersburg businessman who has owned Sundial since 2011, confirmed the pending sale to the Tampa Bay Business Journal on Tuesday.

The buyer is a corporate entity linked to Paradise Ventures, a developer based in Safety Harbor. Principal Chuck Ernst did not immediately respond to a request for comment Tuesday.

The sale comes after months of litigation over a deal Edwards struck with the development team behind the Heights Public Market in Tampa’s Armature Works. Plans to redevelop a portion of Sundial into a food hall went public in 2019; in October 2020, Edwards sued his partners, alleging that the project had sat idle for months.

That lawsuit, filed in Hillsborough County Circuit Court, alleged that the developers had defaulted on their lease by abandoning the project in an attempt to “strong-arm” Edwards into selling Sundial at a deep discount.

In October 2021, those developers filed for bankruptcy under the entities tied to the Sundial project, effectively halting it.

Sundial entered a new era under Edwards. It was known as Baywalk when Edwards bought it in 2011 and poured tens of millions of dollars into renovations. When he brought the food hall developers on board, he told the Business Journal that he saw it as a way to update the property — and bring it up to the standards of the rest of St. Petersburg’s urban core.

“The city took off like wildfire, and quite frankly, we’re catching up,” Edwards said. “All of a sudden, five years later, we need to revamp. We sparked the growth, and everything took off faster than I ever expected, and now I’m behind when I used to be ahead.”