A Flair and Fashion All Its Own
by Bridget McCrea

A PULLBACK ON THE NATION’S ECONOMIC ENGINE HASN’T stopped the city of St. Petersburg from posting significant gains on a number of business fronts that range from residential and industrial to retail and office. Over the last year, Florida’s fourth-largest city has also attracted a steady flow of new arts, cultural, entertainment and sporting events – the kind of events that provide national and even international exposure.

“… St. Petersburg was doing the best job (in Florida) of redeveloping its city, hands down.” – Tom Petrillo (standing) with brother Jim Petrillo, distributors of the exclusive Aveda product lines for hair and body care.

For businessman Tom Petrillo, St. Petersburg’s draw was too strong to ignore. After heading up sales, education and distribution for Minneapolis-based Aveda Corp. – a premium manufacturer and marketer of high-end hair, skin, makeup and body care products that use plant-derived ingredients – Petrillo last year began longing for a day when he could return to his home state of Florida. Deciding to step from his corporate perch, Petrillo was granted exclusive rights to distribute Aveda’s products in Florida. After scouting around the state for a possible location for a new Aveda educational and distribution facility, Petrillo says he found the perfect spot in downtown St. Petersburg. In November 2002, he and brother Jim Petrillo opened The Salon People, The Aveda Institute and a retail outlet on Third Avenue South.

Founded in 1978, Aveda’s natural products are the epitome of hair care and style. The company is among the fastest growing in the field. Owned by the Estee Lauder Companies Inc., Aveda’s innovative products are sold through distributors to professional salons worldwide, its own stores and some department stores.

As president of The Salon People, Tom Petrillo knew just how critical the right location would be for his new venture. He says St. Petersburg stood out over other Florida cities. “In my opinion, St. Petersburg was doing the best job of redeveloping its city, hands down,” he says. “They’re completely focused on the quality of life and providing a meaningful lifestyle for people and their companies to embrace.”

Originally from the East Coast of Florida, Petrillo says his 19-employee firm services 235 salons in the state and expects to add another 20 or 30 employees within the next few years. The Petrillos also plan to open several more Aveda Institutes across the state.

Standing Tall
City officials and business groups seem to have the bases covered when it comes to attracting capital investment and developers. More than 1,000 new condominiums, townhouses, urban-style lofts and market-rate apartments have recently opened or will be coming on stream, including two towers now pre-selling. A new shopping center is under construction that will help service all the occupants of the new residences.

At some stage in planning or permitting are the 16-acre Dome Industrial pilot project in Midtown, a new healthcare facility for the Mercy Hospital site and a renovation of the Royal Theater.

Outside of downtown, a reconstructed Tyrone Boulevard will pave the way for a new Crossroads Shopping Center; plans are in place to build the city’s largest library on the grounds of St. Petersburg College; the Carillon Town Center and adjacent housing developments are under contract in the Gateway area; and companies like Raymond James and the Home Shopping Network are expanding their corporate headquarters in Gateway.

St. Petersburg also is seeing its share of new and relocating firms. In 2003, First Advantage Corp., a $170-million provider of screening services, started its operations in the city. Omega Insurance Services, a firm that specializes in insurance fraud prevention, has recently expanded its headquarters in the BayView officer tower.

A 2002 study by Americans for the Arts shows the arts industry in St. Petersburg is a $92.6-million business, comparing favorably to markets four to six times its size.

Last year, Osprey Management Col. LLC of Sarasota purchased First Central Tower and plans to invest $2 million to renovate and redesign the building. When complete next fall, Republic Bancshares Inc. will lease 33,000 square feet in the 17-story building.

Also new to St. Petersburg are two companies headed up by Tom Williams, president and CEO of eLease, an Internet-based financial business leasing firm, and Jopeto, a provider of technology and networking equipment. Both companies relocated from San Francisco in June 2003 and expect to create 15 to 20 new full-time positions over the next 18 months to add to their current roster of six employees. Williams says a national search led him to St. Petersburg, where the skilled labor force is “much more affordable” than it was in San Francisco.

Innovative Activities
Several innovative partnerships and developments have been announced in St. Petersburg, including turning over the University of South Florida’s college bookstores to Barnes & Noble. Administrators expect the partnership to result in the construction of a two- or three-story bookstore on the downtown campus.

Meantime, USF is rapidly accelerating the size of its faculty and course offerings on the downtown campus. (See story on page 51). St. Petersburg College (SPC) is expanding its program offerings by leasing classrooms for evening classes within the St. Petersburg Housing Authority’s Center for Achievement. Accredited to offer four-year degrees in the fields of education, nursing and technology management, the institution will offer a College Outreach Program, dual credit options, SPC courses and SAT preparation.

That $1.2-million Center for Achievement is going into another significant pocket of development known as Midtown, which is bordered by Central Avenue, 30th Avenue South, Fourth Street and 34th Street. The Center is a platform for a business incubator, job training and college courses. On a larger scale, the city is in the process of selecting a developer for the 16-acre Dome Industrial pilot project, a mix of commercial and light industrial to be located just west of Tropicana Field (A developer was not selected at the time of this writing).

The city is spending about $7.5 million on the project, which is designed to revive the area’s business potential and create jobs for low- to moderate-income residents. The site is a federal “Enterprise Zone,” which means potential businesses will be eligible for tax breaks and incentives for redevelopment.

Another up-and-coming area in St. Petersburg is the city’s Grand Central District, an historic section that features a mixed-use urban village with retail, office and residential along Central Avenue west of downtown. A group focused on business and residential neighborhoods, The Grand Central District has implemented a Main Street program to revitalize the district while at the same time addressing issues like urban design, transportation and mobility, streetscape design, land use and zoning, architectural design and marketing.

Residential Bloom
If developer Grady Pridgen gets his way, his firm will soon be spearheading what he calls “the coolest building” in town: a 42- story high-rise across the street from the BayWalk entertainment complex. With a stable of successful St. Petersburg industrial developments under his belt, Pridgen is working to get site plan approval for Bayway Lofts.

“With almost 300 units priced at $200,000 to $500,000, our project will feature service levels that are unheard of in this area, including New York-style concierge services and an exterior elevator that will transport diners to a rooftop restaurant,” says Pridgen, adding that Bayway Lofts will be marketed to young, working people and empty-nesters.

At 42 stories, the proposed Bayway Lofts is raising some eyebrows over whether it would somehow change the character of downtown. It would be the tallest building not only in downtown but also in all of Pinellas County and would be equivalent in number of floors to the two tallest office towers in downtown Tampa. Pridgen has just begun the regulatory approval process.

Bayway Lofts joins a long list of residential developments that are either in the works, on the planning board or already completed in St. Petersburg, according to Cindy Margiotta, economic development manager for the city. She says over 825 new units either have begun pre-selling, broken ground or were completed in the past year. They range from Parkshore Plaza, a 118-unit Mediterranean-style condominium by Opus South, to Echelon’s contemporary McNulty Loft project, which was 58 percent sold out before construction even started.

“With so many quality projects, it’s obvious that the St. Petersburg residential market is hot,” Margiotta says. “Downtown is a place where people want to live because of its abundance of amenities including a waterfront park system, retail and entertainment destinations, cultural events and central location.”

New communities are going up not only downtown, but also in the Gateway area and in the south, at Coquina Key and adjacent to Eckerd College.

All this residential activity is good news to real estate brokers. Tampa-based Smith & Associates, for example, recently opened its first office downtown. And Bill Tourtelot, president of Tourtelot Brothers Inc., says his firm is building an 8,150-square-foot office on 4th Street for its 65 real estate agents. It’s all in the name of gearing up to work with the influx of “high end buyers,” he says. “We want to be well braced to serve that market in the future.”

Shopping Trends
As the saying goes, where there’s new residential, there’s a group of retailers not far behind. It’s certainly true in downtown, where a retail rebirth kicked off a few years ago with the introduction of the BayWalk entertainment complex. Since then, a variety of new shops and restaurants have opened in scattered locations. Publix and Eckerd will be two key tenants in University Village being developed by the Sembler Co.

“There are certain elements that any downtown would salivate for, and a supermarket ranks just below a residential base on the list,” says Don Shea, president and CEO of the St. Petersburg Downtown Partnership. “Publix will provide a convenient way for the emerging downtown residential neighborhoods to shop.”

Elsewhere, Tyrone Crossroads is undergoing a complete reconstruction for a new 129,000 square-foot Home Depot and other retail.

Sunken Gardens Reborn
Just a few years ago, Sunken Gardens’ future looked dim. As one of the oldest family-owned attractions in Florida, the gardens were offered to a developer who was expected to build condominiums around them, closing them to the public.

The proposal probably wouldn’t have sat well with George Turner, had he been alive today. In 1903, Turner drained a lake on his rural St. Petersburg property and began growing a garden. His green thumb turned a backyard into a commercial gardens that by the 1960s had blossomed into 50,000 tropical plants, birds and animals, becoming a popular Florida attraction until the mid-1980s. In 1999, the St. Petersburg City Council voted to buy and preserve Sunken Gardens as a historic landmark, following a favorable referendum by the city’s voters.

Since then, the four-acre subtropical gardens have been rejuvenated and the adjacent 40,000-square-foot historic building renovated. It’s now home to the Great Explorations Children’s Museum and Carrabba’s Italian Grill. Across 4th Street, another renovated building houses an Outback Steakhouse and a Panera Bread cafe.

Growing Pains?
According to Shea, the influx of residential, retail, and other business development proves that St. Petersburg has advantages that “buffered” it from the recent economic downturn. “We’re able to keep the economy going at a far better clip than the average city,” says Shea. “The pace has certainly quickened dramatically recently, as evidenced by the number of bulldozers in downtown right now, and that means people are investing money downtown as well as elsewhere in the city.”

Just how successfully St. Petersburg can digest all of the development without losing its charm is a question on some minds. “The real question is, how do you accept or modify new developments to a point that it doesn’t overwhelm you?” asks Shea.

Rick Baker, St. Petersburg’s mayor, says the key is to preserve the waterfront and those elements that have brought St. Petersburg to the point it’s at today. “We want to make sure that as we develop, we also maintain the character of what makes downtown so special,” says Baker. “That means expanding our parks system and maintaining the architectural integrity of the downtown and its many historic buildings during this redevelopment phase.”

Developer Pridgen says anyone who’s worried about St. Petersburg turning into an overpopulated metro can rest easy. “We don’t have any more land, and we certainly don’t have a situation like Pasco or Hillsborough County where there are 10,000 new buildings permits for houses in the pipeline,” he says. “Add up all of the condominium projects and apartments over the last five years in St. Petersburg … It’s a drop in the bucket.”