'The next great neighborhood': St. Pete's Warehouse Arts district expected to get new zoning overlay
By Henry Queen
Tampa Bay Business Journal
Published: Jul 11, 2024

A long-awaited overlay that encourages mixed-use development in a predominantly industrial area in St. Petersburg is one step closer to reality.

Forward Pinellas on Wednesday approved a Target Employment Center zoning overlay for a 58-acre area south of the SunRunner transit station at First Avenue South and 22nd Street South. The designation will give parts of the Warehouse Arts district and the 22nd Street corridor, known as The Deuces, the land use flexibility they have historically lacked.

"A lot of the property within this area is actually vacant land, and it has been for a very long time," St. Petersburg councilmember Gina Driscoll said. "This is going to give us the opportunity to develop it in a way that's sustainable and appropriate for the neighborhood. ... This has tremendous support from the business community as well as the neighbors around this area. I'm really, really proud of the work that has been done."

The overlay — which still must be approved by the Pinellas Board of County Commissioners on Aug. 13 — will open up the opportunity for more office and research facilities in the area south of First Avenue, east of 24th Street and northwest of Interstate 275. The Pinellas Trail runs through the middle of the district. To encourage redevelopment there, Forward Pinellas also agreed to the following changes:

Increase the maximum building height from 50 feet to up to 86 feet, or about eight stories

Allow for a floor area ratio of up to five if all bonuses are met, including workforce housing and streetscape design

Apply downtown parking standards to the area

Eliminate parking requirements for certain targeted industries while mandating minimum bicycle parking

Reduce parking requirements for existing buildings that redevelop with transit-oriented development-supportive uses

When local officials visited Atlanta to see The Battery around Truist Park to prepare for the possibility of a new Tampa Bay Rays ballpark, they also made sure to check out the Atlanta BeltLine—a trail that has already sparked over $8 billion in private investment despite not being completed yet. The trip provided some inspiration.

"There is an expectation that as the trail through this study area redevelops, it could redevelop in much the same way as those properties have redeveloped along the BeltLine," said Rodney Chatman, planning division manager at Forward Pinellas.

The planned overlay can be traced back to a SunRunner Rising study adopted in 2022, along with years of studies before that. Chatman said the SunRunner Rising study provided important recommendations but lacked teeth.

"This has definitely been a marathon," said Joe Furst, founder and managing principal of Place Projects, which owns land in the area. "But the good news about the marathon is that it really ensured the entire community ... understood the process. And the support has only continued to mount."

Some neighbors wanted the city to establish parking maximums and allow even taller buildings, Driscoll said.

The Warehouse Arts district, dubbed "the next great neighborhood in St. Petersburg" by Driscoll, is about one mile from the proposed $1.3 billion Rays ballpark, which is situated within an 86-acre mixed-use development. It is expected to grow from 1,784 jobs to 3,120 jobs by 2050.

With a base floor area ratio of 1.5, Forward Pinelas sees potential for up to 2.3 million square feet of new development in the new overlay.