St. Pete is abuzz about prospects for redo of The Trop

As downtown St. Petersburg buzzes with activity from the St. Pete Pier and Bay Street to Central Avenue and the Warehouse Arts District, the Tropicana Field site that is home to the Tampa Bay Rays remains unchanged, a sprawling parking lot around a domed stadium that has more in common with Houston’s 1960s-era Astrodome than today’s modern ballparks.

“There’s a big doughnut hole right there in the middle of the city,” says Alan DeLisle, the city’s development administrator. “It has key neighborhoods on all sides and our transportation system comes to a hub there.”

Now, seven development groups are vying to win the city’s bid to transform the Trop site into a mixed-use area that connects and enhances the divergent downtown districts around it.

Jason Mathis, the CEO of the St. Petersburg Downtown Partnership, a nonprofit business group promoting economic development in the downtown, says the Tropicana Field site is a unique opportunity in not only Florida but the country.

“To have a single, publicly-owned parcel this large available for redevelopment is pretty exciting,” Mathis says. “And we’re fortunate to have a major urban redevelopment opportunity like this when we already have a growing, vibrant downtown, a burgeoning Warehouse Arts District, Deuces Live, the Grand Central District. Often, a city will have a major development opportunity because it is blighted. That’s not the case here. This can enhance what’s already going on. It’s being built on a foundation of strength, not blight.”

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