Welch touts development progress at State of the City address
By Breanne Williams
Tampa Bay Business Journal
Published: Jan 30, 2024

St. Petersburg will continue to prioritize attainable housing and development that boosts underserved communities, Mayor Ken Welch said Tuesday.

Welch on Tuesday morning delivered the annual State of the City address, highlighting the progress made over the past year and looking ahead to some major projects underway, including the redevelopment of the Historic Gas Plant District with the Tampa Bay Rays and Hines.

Welch said St. Pete is not immune from the increased housing costs facing cities across the country. He said it is imperative the city continues to focus on producing and preserving homes for those who qualify for workforce and affordable housing.

“This year, we have begun the development of 282 multifamily affordable housing units with 834 more units funded or approved,” Welch said. “We’ve preserved or completed 155 units, including the Sixteen Square Townhomes, Jordan Park residences and Citrus Grove apartments. Our initiatives also include 154 non-subsidized workforce density bonus units.”

He referenced a substantial zoning change that led to the rezoning of 2,895 properties to qualify for increased housing units on single-family lots. This resulted in the completion of 43 accessory dwelling units. By comparison, 36 ADUs were built in the last decade.

Welch told reporters the city was working hard on the agreement with the Rays-Hines development team and said he believes it will be ready to present to St. Pete City Council this spring. Feedback from the community, he said, has largely been positive. Many are excited to see something happen on the site after years of failed promises to the residents of the surrounding neighborhoods.

The agreement will have to go before the Community Benefits Advisory Council, which was created in 2021 to require developers to provide community benefits for projects that receive a certain percentage of public assistance.

Only one project has ever gone before the CBAC, a proposal from Moffitt Cancer Center and TPA Group. Though the CBAC supported the project, it was ultimately rejected by Welch, who cited a lack of affordable housing for the project as the basis of his denial.

In October, city council approved a sweeping number of changes to simplify the program. The Gas Plant district will be the first project to go through the reformed CBAC process.

With Moffitt’s proposal, Welch said he wanted 30% of the overall residential units to be affordable and workforce housing. The Rays-Hines deal also falls short of the 30% mark, but Welch said it was not fair to compare the two projects.

“I don’t think those are apples-to-apples at all,” Welch said. “This is so much bigger; there are so many other components. Affordable housing is tough these days; really, any development is tough. You’ve seen market-rate developments like Orange Station have to come back and recalibrate so it’s just a tough environment for developers right now.”

Welch said the Gas Plant is “so much more than housing.” He said the project will feature economic inclusion, the promise of recreating a Black business community, office space and “the opportunity to have 45,000 people in our downtown” on a more regular basis.

“All of these things are part of the Historic Gas Plant, so the other part of that is we have a Housing Opportunities program that has a target of 8,000 units by 2030,” Welch said. “The Historic Gas Plant is a part of that, but it’s not the entirety of what we’re doing for housing.”