34-acre mixed-use project moves forward in St. Petersburg’s Skyway Marina District
By Breanne Williams
Tampa Bay Business Journal
Published: Oct 9, 2023

After a more than four-hour debate, the 34-acre Skyway Village project in St. Petersburg’s Skyway Marina District is moving forward.

The project is the latest from Coral Gables-based Altis Cardinal. It will bring more than 2,000 multifamily units, nearly 81,000 square feet of commercial space and 22,500 square feet of office space to the former Ceridian Office Campus at 3102 24th St. S. The project will be phased with the first portion bringing 119,160 square feet of self-storage space and commercial elements to the site.

In July, it was announced that Sprouts Farmers Market would be anchoring the commercial component in a 23,000-square-foot space. Delaying the process put that deal at risk, Altis Cardinal executives told the Development Review Commission members on Oct. 3.

The clock is ticking to get approval to move forward with their commitment to the location, Frank Guerra, principal of Altis Cardinal, said in the meeting.

“The lease has already been negotiated with them,” Guerra said.

He added that if they could obtain approval for the project, Sprouts would sign the deal within the next week. However, DRC members did not echo the need for haste to secure the lease, saying a short delay to address some of their concerns wouldn’t derail the grocer’s plans if they were serious about the location.

Guerra previously told the Tampa Bay Business Journal they hoped to finish the retail, including Sprouts, by mid-2025. The group aimed to build the apartments with ground-floor retail by the second quarter of 2026.

The DRC had a series of conditions to approving the site plan — including requiring multiple traffic studies as the project continues — but eventually, it agreed to move it forward in a 7-1 vote.

While several members of the DRC praised the plan for what it would bring to the Skyway Marina District, there were multiple concerns about having this density level at that specific location and the impact on local traffic.

There were also several concerns regarding the aesthetics of the proposed buildings. Altis said the group would use a different design team for each building, and the renderings provided simply showed the type of buildings they would create, not the actual representation of what it would look like.