99-year-old Tampa building might be razed for apartment tower
The structure downtown at 601 N. Ashley Drive will be replaced with a 43-story tower with 480 units.

By Paul Guzzo
Tampa Bay Times
Published: Jan 10, 2024

TAMPA — By matching old pictures of Tampa buildings and blocks with modern ones and sharing them with the public through social media, lectures and a book, photographer Chip Weiner documents the city’s changes.

During the first week of January, he snapped photographs of the 12-story downtown office building at 601 N. Ashley Drive, which was completed in 1925.

Weiner, author of “Burgert Brothers: Another Look,” said those photos are likely the last he will ever take of it.

On Jan. 2, the building’s owner, the TLR Group, submitted a demolition application with the city. They want to replace it with a 43-story tower with 480 apartments, office space, retail and restaurants, all located across the street from Curtis Hixon Park.

Due to the age of the building, the city’s Historic Preservation Commission must first weigh in on whether the structure should be deemed a local historic landmark. That could protect it from being razed.

Weiner doesn’t expect the commission to advocate for that designation because “there is really not much left of the original design,” he said.

Nor does it appear that anything of historic significance is linked to the building.

Claudia Avalos, a project architect with TLR Group, echoed those sentiments.

“The historic character of the building has changed so much that nothing has been preserved,” she said.

If razed, it will mark yet another old building that block has lost.

In February 2023, 514 and neighboring 520 N. Tampa St., which were located across from 601 N. Ashley Drive and were more than a century old, were demolished to make room for a 47-story condominium tower.

Historic preservationists fought to save the buildings, in large part because 514 N. Tampa St. was originally Hotel Arno — where Clara Barton stayed for at least one night during the Spanish American War, when the Red Cross used Tampa as a base for efforts in Cuba.

“The whole block is changing,” Weiner said.

The tower at 601 N. Ashley Drive was the largest in downtown when it was built, according to news archives, and named The Wallace S. Building for its developer, Wallace Stovall, publisher of the Tampa Tribune.

Back then, it was a two-tower structure that included an attached four-story building that housed the Tampa Tribune’s printing operation. There were 72 tenants renting office space when it opened.

The architect was B.C. Bonfoey, who also designed Old City Hall and the Centro Asturiano building. Over the years, a Bonfoey design has been enough for a building to be considered a historic landmark.

But in the 1970s, the original look of The Wallace S. Building was changed. The lower structure was demolished, the brick exterior was stripped down and covered with stucco, and the two towers were joined into a single building.

“It has had so much remodeling, and their intent was not to keep the historic value of it,” Avalos said. “That was prior to when we acquired the building.”

TLR Group purchased it in 2021 for $20 million, according to the Hillsborough County Property Appraiser’s website. They have used it as a headquarters while leasing office space to other companies. But as working from home has become a norm, the building has lost most of its tenants, Avalos said.

The Historic Preservation Commission has until the end of the month to recommend whether they believe the tower is a local landmark. If they say it is, the Tampa City Council could then force historic designation onto it. But the City Council has never successfully done so. That decision has always been made by the property owner.

“Because of the way the building is now, I don’t really have any heartache over the fact that it might be torn down,” Weiner said. “But it would be another piece of Tampa history gone.”