St. Pete's West Central Avenue under spotlight for development
By Breanne Williams
Tampa Bay Business Journal
Published: Sep 9, 2022

West Central Avenue in St. Petersburg — from 34th Street to 66th Street — is entering a new chapter as new and renovated office buildings, multifamily housing and the upcoming SunRunner route shape a new identity for the area.

The area is near Tyrone and Paula Clair Smith, managing director of commercial services at Colliers International, said developers are quickly homing in on the potential opportunities found past the Grand Central district.

“The catalyst really started with neighborhoods,” Smith said. “You’ve got the core, which is already saturated. You have so many apartments and multifamily, and that’s the thing — it had to go somewhere. There’s always been this spread between 34th Street and 66th along Central that’s like, ‘What do we do with this?’ It’s really been an organic thing that’s happened over the past three, maybe four years.”

Smith said the former Wittner Centre “exemplifies” the transforming character of the area. The two-building office complex has changed hands multiple times over the years as the owners sought to figure out what to do with the buildings. Smith said she had placed Johns Hopkins All Children’s Hospital’s OBGYN in almost 11,000 square feet in the complex around four years ago.

That created an anchor on the site, and as ownership transferred from an insurance company to an investor, medical became very important in the “West Central” world, according to Smith. The new owner has invested in renovating the property and modernizing offerings and renamed it Pineywoods Centre.

The two-story east building is fully leased, and the four-story west building has 32,728 rental square footage.

Smith referenced other significant changes ahead, like Cushman and Wakefield’s 5.97-acre tract of land on Ninth Avenue and 66th Street that has a proposed 51,000-square-foot office or medical buildout for the site. Bayfront Health — which was acquired by Orlando Health — plans to take over the former tax collector’s approximately 4-acre site on 66th Street and put a medical pavilion, highlighting the focus on medical for the region.

She said the SunRunner and the city of St. Pete committing $11 million to streetscaping — called the West Central Avenue Streetscape Project — from Park Street East to 58th Street has put a new focus on West Central. The streetscape project will enhance crosswalks, add bike lanes and make Americans with Disabilities Act-compliant curbs to ensure the area is pedestrian friendly. Similar projects were approved in the city for areas like the Edge district, Grand Central and Central Arts.

“Whether we call it Covid, or whether we call it the built-up downtown core, this has jumped 34th Street and headed to the Tyrone area,” Smith said.

Businesses are moving from downtown to West Central as the older office buildings are renovated, Smith said. They can shave $8 a square foot off their rent and still work in a neighborhood with “the unique St. Pete charm.” Over the last decade and specifically over the last few years, Smith said there’s been a wave of successful small businesses in West Central.

Places like Craft Kafe, 6653 Central Ave. near 66th Street, and freeFall Theatre have drawn many eyes. She said slowly, the area is “creating its own unique identity” that will continue the tradition found throughout the rest of Central Avenue.

“People are driving around and looking at what other options are available in St. Petersburg, and this area is having a kind of rediscovery,” Smith said. “It’s not that far, maybe 10 minutes from downtown; it has these unique businesses. Once people get out that way, activity always creates curiosity, and people have this fear of missing out.”

There’s also an influx of residents headed to the area. Potential zoning changes thanks to the SunRunner could increase density opportunities along the route, making multifamily a priority for developers eyeing the area.

DDA Development is building Sixty90, a mixed-income project at 6090 Central Ave. The plan is for 204 units ranging from one to three bedrooms on the former site of the offices of The Edwards Group, which sold the property to the developer in December 2020 for $5.6 million. The initial plans show 142 units would be for households with incomes between 81% to 120% area median income, and 42 units would be for households with incomes between 61% to 80% AMI. The ground floor will also have commercial space.

“Business has always been about rooftops,” Smith said. “Multifamily, as land becomes available for that and the developers can pay what’s required to get the land ... it’s all going to just continue. Multifamily has never been dead in St. Pete.”