downtown construction: a short series
Like any other downtown, Tampa has more proposed new development projects than it has serious developers who will actually build what they’re proposing. Projects like the Hillsborough River Tower and Tampa Four Seasons, proposed many years ago, remain either in limbo or dead entirely—and there are many things aside from the city council that can kill a downtown project.
Take the Hillsborough River Tower for example. It was proposed back in 1997 for the land between UT and the Tampa Tribune building (that’s right, on the other side of the river. Kinda scary). Designed by Cesar Pelli (who designed the Petronas Towers in Kuala Lumpur, once the tallest in the world and featured in the Sean Connery/Catherine Zeta-Jones movie Entrapment), the tower would be the tallest in the city at 600 feet. The entire thing is to be used for office space, and there just isn’t enough demand for it. The property owners claim the project isn’t dead, but merely awaiting enough commercial tenants to make construction viable. I don’t get the impression they’re holding their breath.
Many other projects have come and gone, some heralded with great fanfare like the HRT, and some quietly proposed and just as quietly put to bed. So, even though by some accounts there are as many as 40 projects in downtown, it’s best not to get too excited about things until ground is broken and construction is underway.
With that in mind I thought I’d run down the list of current projects in downtown. But only those that are actually under way. We’ll look at one a day–and believe it or not, it won’t take all that long. I look forward to all the other proposed developments starting construction someday soon… but, uh, I’m not holding my breath, either.
Tags: development, tampa
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April 7th, 2006 at 5:22 pm
Developers of Hillsborough River Tower say it will happen someday and are still marketing the building to prospective tenants. Only trouble is that downtown office rents are still too low to support new construction (why pay over $30 a square foot when you can get it for under $25?) and there’s still plenty of space in existing buildings that needs to fill up first.
The developers are being patient because they know they won’t lose anything on their dirt, especially in Florida where real estate equals gold rush lately. Same is true for the Tampa Bay 1 project at Dale Mabry/Cypress and any number of tracts zoned commercial around here.
Condo projects are an entirely different story. Who knows how many of those proposed in downtown Tampa will ever come to pass. Pre-construction sales are all good and fine, but they don’t mean much until those cranes go up.
April 7th, 2006 at 8:48 pm
I had reason to drive down the newly opened Meridian st in channelside this week and it is kind of cool to see the concrete and girder mountiains begins to grow around you and you fly down the new road.
April 8th, 2006 at 9:13 pm
There’s going to be glut of condos in downtown tampa… You should be able to pick one up cheap in 2 or 3 years.
April 11th, 2006 at 9:13 am
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April 11th, 2006 at 2:59 pm
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April 17th, 2006 at 3:48 pm
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October 21st, 2006 at 10:01 pm
I miss the days with Connery as James Bond. So what is Sean up to these days?