meeting to order this is a council work session uh the purpose of which is to discuss uh potential development of the vacant property within the CRA and um I guess I'll turn it over to
Council Member Fernandez whose idea I think uh was the genesis of the workshop so Council Member Fernandez okay well I would like to suggest that we look into the process of putting a park area in
the open space in in the downtown area and to that end I've looked at several places and I think I'm not sure do we have a presentation or what or we have the the images you need from comparison
okay so okay so as as I mentioned at that CRA meeting there are there are several places around the state that I've been to that have a little stage area and they're basically just
rectangles and there's a little a little very informal not fancy stage area at one end and a little playground at the other and an open area of turf in between and if you
look at uh I think closer examples Sparkman's Wararf uh near Armature Works and outside of Ukulele you see if you go to these places you see how active they are and just teeming with people and Hollywood
Beach has a similar setup where they have a little stage at one end and they have a little playground and a little open space in the middle and that's obviously they have the beach in the background there but um along the sides are some restaurants and then at Fort
Meyers at the Gulf Coast Center that would be most consistent with the space we have because that's in a shopping center area and it's it's in the center and it's got restaurants and stores basically all
around it and the stage there's there's nothing fancy at all it's a concrete structure no walls you know nothing no electronics no lighting no no I mean just simple lighting so that you can
obviously see and green space in the middle and the playground at the end but it's very active so as people are there they're hanging out along the sides the kids are running around in the middle or if
there's a concert or some sort of performance they're standing on the stage and people are still running around and kids are playing on the playground it's very active i don't know anything about the space that we h the
size of the space that we have if we were to do something that there would still be buildable space i don't know um because obviously this property would come off the tax roles but I I do know that we've been struggling to find
viable uh sale you know make a viable sale we haven't had a lot of offers for that space so it seems like to me this could be a win in that it's attractive makes the area more attractive and provides
more of a destination of uh a use so I So I' I'd like to ask us to explore an option like this how do you want to do Did you want to
They have some pictures now yeah okay i think if you want to put some of the pictures up and then I'll I'll describe what you're looking at i have a couple of slides uh forgive me Greg Pauly community development director i have a couple of slides that can lead into that and it will um help uh with both
reference of the parcels that we're speaking about as well as the overall size of the parcels if I could please get the uh PowerPoint up on the screens please this first slide I know this image on the right is got a lot of detail and can be hard to read but um the following
slides will zoom in a bit we're talking uh about the southeast quadrant of the redevelopment area we have two parcels currently listed for sale remaining in our inventory um 8901 North 56 Street and 8447 North 56th Street you will see
them referred to by their numerical address throughout also for reference I've marked in a different shade the Springdale Pond and the Riverside Park for the uh planned park improvements that are uh currently
in uh in review the first parcel that's listed for sale is 1.75 acres at the 8901 property it has 345 feet of road frontage along North 56th Street which
also runs on the other side Bertha along Bertha Palmer Boulevard um it has 221 ft that run east to west on its north and south boundaries along B Street and Sea Street this um zoomed in image shows you its reference to the fountain shops to
the north as well as Waverly Terrace to the east and just out of frame is Wind Dixie to the south this is a uh an aerial uh rendering um that shows looking more kind of to the
northeast you can see the Waverly Apartments in the background and at the very left edge of the image you can see the beginning of the fountain shops the other parcel that may be of interest for today's discussion is the parcel
located at 8447 North 56th Street it is very slightly smaller at 1.74 acres it has 153 ft of road frontage along 56th Street um it is slightly obscured due to
a public transit bus stop that sits um along the northwestern corner of the property uh there is a corner parcel that is owned by a separate owner that cuts out a section of this parcel giving it uh somewhat unusual shape and it does
have 210 ft of road frontage along River Hills Drive and this is an aerial shot looking back to the east you can see where the old uh building was demolished a while back and removed um and you can kind of see how
it wraps around the corner property as well as uh it's a it's a tree lot and at this point I will refer back to council member um these are some of the uh these are some of the photos that we were referencing earlier yes okay so
in the bottom left corner is basically a picture this is the Gulf Coast Center at Fort Meyers and this this is the stage so as I said it's it's a extremely simple structure and I have actually
seen concerts there so it is um it's got the electrical outlets and things people need and then the top right is basically just a picture of some of the space as you go between the stage and the
playground and you can see there's there's people you know obviously hanging out and kids scooters and things um kids running around and then some seating along the side if people come
for concerts they bring like their own lawn seats or towels or whatever how big is that area i mean obviously that's not the whole Is it like No half is it twice that size 10 times that size how big is that
um it wasn't I want to say that it the green space is probably not much longer than from here to the trophy case and then there's a playground at one end and then the stage at the other end so okay
i did not measure it no but I mean this is kind of pretty much the whole thing it's not like this is a small portion of it yeah so this is basically this is half so here's here's the half where the the upper right hand corner is the half
where the playground ends and that previous picture was the half from the middle point to the stage um so this is basically so right I'm standing kind of right in the middle okay and then this picture on the left it's it is from
Google Earth but it's really more like an artist rendering of so it still h it has kind of the layout of being a an urban park in a shopping center but that's not actually Florida GF
Coast Park can I ask a question yeah yeah what's the anchor on the area um there's multi there are multiple now this is a this is a very big shopping center so it's a shop it is a shopping center um this
shopping center has a Bass Pro shop it has a Bells it might even have a Bells it has a lot of smaller stores and a lot of restaurants so if you're if you're looking at this picture um and you go all the way to the
edge that's a restaurant right there um right on the other side there's a restaurant there's an ice cream shop there's another restaurant so like basically the park is it's just a rectangle
you come up from there's a retention pond and a playground and then green space the stage and along the sides are restaurants and um the ice cream shop and stores tractor should be the area
there are there there I mean it it is a big shopping center that has a lot of stores in it so now this is Hollywood Beach and you can see their their stage setup is a little more extensive u but if you look
it's the same it's basically the same principle in that they've got a little stage they've got a little astroturf area and alongside the left of if if you're looking at either picture the left and right sides of this space are
restaurants And um so obviously it's very active and then you can't see cuz I don't think I h I'm not do I have Oh I do have it okay there's a little playground there that So you've
got and in in each of these settings you've got parents now I've seen concerts here as well um you've but you've got parents sitting at the restaurant they have outdoor seating and the kids are running around on the playground or in the green space and if
there is a concert um people are sitting they bring their chairs again they're not I mean we're not talking they're not booking Pink Floyd they're they're very small local bands usually but it they're
in both cases they're very active having the the the multitude of uses and it's it is a very popular type of amenity in in these locations
and I'm again I'm not I am not sure obviously which is why we want to talk about it h how much space we would be able to have available that's that is viable that still makes it viable to build and you know
obviously contribute to the overall health of the development so but I think that the these are very popular and active actively used locations this is the last slide in the
presentation council members discussion questions thoughts yes sure um so an an idea like this isn't new uh uh Newport Richie has a similar downtown
uh they have a playground there a little pavilion they have a walkway uh one side of it is the Hosienda Hotel there's shops downtown shops small mom and pop shops ice cream sandwiches some retail antique store it takes up a good amount
of room though uh on that and also if you've been to the Florida Aquarium just right out back is a splash pad that's extremely popular and it doesn't take much room it could fit inside this room so it depending on what we want to do uh
my concerns besides taking money off the tax roles is the amount of money to build something a simple playground I know Mr langfeld could throw out numbers but just a simple playground is not cheap and then the maintenance year
after year after year and like I said in goal setting if we have something that requires an event space where you're going to have different groups come in or whatever is going to require somebody to coordinate that and at some point it may require more staff so those are my concerns
my biggest concern is the fact that this this sorry my biggest concern is the fact that that uh uh our payoff structure for our debt is is is incumbent upon as much of the $2 million for this property as we can possibly
secure uh back in April I think it was 2023 when we first started talking about the uh uh uh Riverside Park [Music] um we the debt gets the debts extinguished in
2035 um but that requires the $2 million if we don't have the $2 million from that um we have to continue either funding it from TIFF which will run out in 2038 um and then which will not supply sufficient funds to to cover that so
it'll come back to the taxpayers it'll actually affect our overall millillage my concern with that not necessarily that we have to do that my concern is that we have other general obligation issues that we're trying to plan for going forward uh regarding the public
safety building and various other projects that um the concept is nice but we have to we can't encumber future in my mind we can't encumber future uh councils with that type with a $2 million hit um
without trying a little bit longer the the schedules that we had worked out took us out to 2027 2026 2027 in efforts to sell the property uh properties because there was two of them that's a $2 million for the
the BIS this one then there's another million for the uh um uh stake and nail property so uh that's my biggest concern is the impact to the debt load the debt service going forward um again as as
Councilman Chambers had indicated what's it going to cost to build the uh uh just the if I remember correctly just the sun shield alone that's on the the um uh uh uh boys and girls boys club and girls
club property was like $100,000 just for that alone so uh that's not counting any amenities and any anything that would have to go in there i'm concerned because we really don't have a significant attractor like Fort Myers fort Myers is made for that type of
situation and even North even Hollywood Beach you got the beach so I mean that's a natural attractor down there um I just hate to take the property off the market i know there's not a whole lot of activity i you know hopefully that'll change um but you know we we've been uh
working towards that for 25 years now so I mean I think it's a little too early to to give up on it if it was a um the area would if the area became a personal I mean a perpetual comes off the tax
roles I think we got a problem if it was a temporary type situation and in 2 three years we have a viable buyer that wants to buy the whole property and develop the whole thing and that could be removed very easily and sell the whole property um it might be something
that I that I feel would be doable but um yeah we got there's a there's a lot of there's a lot of um variables I think that have to come into play and to me at this point dollars and cents initially takes takes precedent over what we got
to do because we got some big project coming down the pike and I hate to encumber us too badly into the future with that council member McCra please got a couple of options here um I love the idea first of all um we could develop and sell it that's one thing so just because we
develop it now doesn't mean that we can't sell it later down the line could also develop it and rent it out treat it as a revenue generating opportunity we could do a temporary use now at almost no cost to ourselves because it's an open space put in food trucks bring in other sort of loweffort uh amenities
temporary stage for some music and then see if it gains traction and if it gains traction and there's broad public acceptance then we can build on that when we develop a permanent use for it whether that's to sell it or develop it or treat it as a park or whatever that may be
i'm sorry i didn't know you were close to being done i started writing um okay our our real estate people are here would you like to comment on this give us some your thoughts
thank you john Lockchner i'm with Florida Commercial Property Brokerage um this topic came up at the last council meeting we were we attended um we do believe that potentially this
could help the sale of 8901 as it would reduce the size and make it more attractive to developers so there is potential there but we also believe if you're looking at that concept that
8447 may be better suited for a park okay mr mayor just for clarity I believe Mr lochner was referring to uh only using half of the 8901 parcel for this type of development and selling the other half some portion whether it's a
quarter 2/3 whatever yes could you put while you're up here could you put the map like the aerial do you have one just of 8901 yes sir so I'm sorry remind me your last name
again i'm sorry lochner mr lochner her thank you Mr lochner yeah i'm I'm looking at this and I'm not a developer obviously and I'm kind of a lay person here but would it
be in your opinion desirable for development to put a row of buildings similar to what's exists on the fountain shop to the north with the backs of the buildings out towards 56th Street although it doesn't look like the
back of the building is designed so they look like everything looks like the front but the front of the building would face in towards the property would it be feasible in your opinion or desirable
to do that and have that row of buildings occupied by you know restaurants shops ice cream you know places like that and then have the majority of that remaining property be a
space that's being contemplated here now I know that the logical question which is the next question comes in as parking but I'll get to that in a minute so um parking issue aside I I in my mind I can kind of visualize how that might
look what are your thoughts on that um well first of all I'm not a developer or a designer so I want to make sure that's clear we're struggling together um I I think that could be feasible depending
on what you're trying to achieve here i understand the pedestrian corridor and how um trying to get the flow through there um it could work but the dilemma has
been um over the past few years that you can't find a developer that would want to do that because it's that size of a a building would require a very large
retailer unless it was built on spec that could take on additional tenants yeah right if that makes sense that's right okay thank you and I got a questions about the corner property sure
okay sorry so back to 8447 you mentioned that may be a better idea uh when we had the company that wanted to put the boutique hotel in and they were talking about buying the corner property that's I think still vacant right is it for sale do you know the status of that
corner the old beauty supply it is my understanding that it is for sale it's just it's off market it's not listed right now okay meaning he has a price okay so is that something that if you're
looking at I know I'm a little off topic about the playground but if if we're trying to market 8447 are you trying to say this other corner plot may be for sale to try to market the whole thing or is that not what we're doing
is not currently included in what we're discussing but we believe that if you put in um a public venue park um on the lower half of 8447 that opens up to the pond area and
makes it an open space with that new park in the area that will enhance the ability for them to develop that parcel can we see that picture back up okay but if we put a park area at the southern end of 8447 that's across the street
from the park where we we have now and then going to renovate it and the other park so just we expand the I guess expand Springdale area that is that what your concept is i mean I know you're not a developer and you're
not a playground specialist but Well when we were looking at this and we and we heard the idea of a potential uh music venue park situation and we were thinking of what best would
help the sale of these properties um the we looked at some concepts and we believe that that's better suited because that would create a better flow through all of the properties and incle and it would
actually increase the pedestrian flow and traffic for Enigma Plaza um it would probably um make the um corner parcel more developable and increase the the
flow of pedestrian traffic throughout the whole corridor so without pulling up a lot of stuff so the concept of putting something like council member Fernandez is advocating for on the southern end so against the river hillside correct along that road and is
that enough room between what could be there and enigma for somebody to want to buy that the rest of that I I think part of our concept would be that um it would only be a portion of 8447 that would be
the venue park area and then you would still be able to have a retailer develop that spot with a restaurant maybe with an outdoor seating area that overlooks the the park and the venue and then opens up on to the east to the
Springdale Park area okay council member Kravitz Mr lock i was just curious um in your expertise do you think that there would be a beneficial effect to the businesses that are currently uh clustered around Waverly Apartment/wind Dixie Fountain Shops and those other adjacent areas if
we were to build out uh some sort of an amenity in the way that council member Fernandez was suggesting that is our idea that and most importantly the the way that Enigma Plaza is situated there that this could be an open area around that
with a retail you know destination restaurant uh retail restaurant um right above the venue the the park venue so in terms of the future development of that parcel 8901
um rather than going the route of adding additional retail square footage you think restaurants would be more viable as an anchor to that space i'm not sure I follow the question on when we're talking about the 8901 parcel the one right across from the Waverly
apartments uh do you think that adding out more restaurant space there rather than adding out retail space would be more viable for that property uh commercially speaking it I don't think that's the
issue right now the issue is that it's a large space for a developer to take on with they're going to want to develop it with tenants in place they're going to have want to have a letter of intent from a tenant um to build out that space unless a
portion of it is spec so that they can undertake the the development go in a situation like that where it's difficult to get a developer because of the size or the particular arrangement of that space do you think a publicled
investment into that space to get the uh get the ball rolling would be a good idea um I think there's some a few things that could get the ball rolling um one
of one which would be that if we could um work with the developers and allow them to build some of the the space at spec that still of course had um deed restrictions in place that would you
know in in in addition to the CRA limit anything that goes in there you know so that you don't get things you don't want in the area but but as of now not allowing for
spec development we've been limiting ourselves have you uh have you received inquiries about spec development yes and uh do you are you able to call to mind any examples that you could share just so that we
have an idea about what that means um a lot of them are pure spec like they want to come in and build a another fountain shops mhm and have it all spec some are
um a like larger restaurant development with um maybe half the space as spec good so but there's been com different combinations yeah do you think a a model
where the space is developed by the city and then offered for lease to various tenants uh in smaller increments so basically uh we keep it wholesale and then rented out retail to individuals who want to operate in that space do you
think that would address the problem of it being too large and cumbersome for a single develop um I suppose that could address the problem if the city was going to take on the development responsibilities there's also the potential for um a bare land lease where
the city just leases the land on a long-term basis to a tenant for 20 30 years say and they develop the property yeah absolutely thanks that's all I got does anybody
know who owns the the common areas of Sparkman Warf is that all private property or is that city property does anybody know all right you going to try to find out okay so and I'm assuming you don't know
about these other Hollywood Beach or Hollywood i do know Hollywood Beach that area is owned by the city of Hollywood and uh they I spoke with city people there um they're actually about to remodel it um the Fort Meyers GF Coast
property is privately owned by the owner of that shopping center yeah yeah i I Yes a little bit move you around on this come on up here Mr langfield thank you
carl Langfeld leisure services director um city manager reached out to me on Friday when this meeting was scheduled and asked me to to to do some research and see what information I could I could glean about some of the areas that you had mentioned and um reach out to some
of my constituents to see what what I could find as well with regards to spaces such as this and how they could be potentially utilized um I looked at um Hollywood Beach and I spoke with a staff member from there it wasn't one of the senior guys he left a message he
didn't get back to me but what I've been able about the the Hollywood Beach Theater I believe is what it's called um is very unique in that it sits right on the boardwalk on Hollywood Beach and it's directly adjacent to a very large resort and that resort is responsible
for all of the bookings of what goes on in that now it is a city-owned facility is a city-maintained facility but there's a public private partnership with regards to its actual operation um I spoke uh to a gentleman from Fort
Meyers it wasn't the one that you had looked at but there's another place in Fort Myers called Kousa Sound yes um about what they do there and again that's a city-owned uh citymaintained facility but privately
operated privately booked and it is handled by a large hotel that is adjacent to to that facility as well um you know and and then you look at at at events such as uh St pete's First Friday um and other events like that
plant City has one City of Lakeland has one and the way those operate again are public private um partnerships where the actual event is is managed by a private entity with the support of the city to put those events on with you know police
and public works and parks and recreation and all those all those entities being involved and I kind of would I if if we were to develop a spot in in downtown like this where we're going to put a stage in and we're going to try and activate this on on a weekly basis that the smart play I think is to
partner whether it's with Chamber of Commerce or another private entity who is going to manage all the bookings and and things like that and and then we as the city would come in and provide the logistical support to make those things happen um the Councilman Kravis just to speak to
your to your comments about doing something on a temporary basis um at at that location we're going to run into challenges with that piece of property especially 80 891 and 8447 as well their
current conditions are pretty rough um and then to to try and create some sort of a temporary um or non-permanent maybe a better way of describing it uh venue would still require a significant amount of capital
expenditures upfront to make that property usable as a public space even if it's just on a temporary just to get the grounds in place to bring the infrastructure that we would need whether it be electricity plumbing restrooms etc to to get all those things in place to have them as well we're
still looking at significant dollars up front to make that type of even temporary activation happen um 8447 as we were talking about that one of the things that jumped into my mind and we were talking about that is we're going to build some sort of an
activity space there you now have Enigma in between it and any type of significant parking that we may have available unless we're allowed to use Enigma's parking for whatever type of activities we would want to put there um again just some as I'm sitting back here
jotting down notes and and research I've done over the past couple of days just kind of wanted to put my input in there so if you have any other questions for me you know fire away while he's up thank you Mr lfield Vice Mayor Mr
lner back up um pretend we don't know what we're doing up here can you give me a 30 second just pretend just pretend give me can you give me a 30 second synopsis of the spec versus nonspec where are what are we requiring now or
what are we looking for now as to what what that deva what that change would mean as far as uh subdividing the property even even further and selling this corner that corner whatever
sure I can try okay so um as we're working today we're requiring to know who the end user is of it of all space and so spec would be that a developer could come in build the shell
to of course the requirements of the CRA and the and zoning everything and then lease it out after that it it would be very similar to what Enigma is doing okay so we would want to know there's a Panera bread going in there or something
like that okay all right but you of course you could limit whoever goes in there with a contract so the alternative as as council member Kravitz is talking about how would that how would that change or you were talking about doing a non-spec how would that change that it
would just be a shell just be a building or it it could be a combination so we like I mentioned we've had some developers come in they have a concept for a portion of it but because
8901 is a large space they would like to build the remaining buildings as spec so that they could lease those out to others as they come along but they would like to get their you know their core
concept in and so we've limited that on purpose till this point is that's a general question mr polley oh I could try to address it so I I so this this goes back to the when there was a Chipotle that was proposed for the 8901
site there was some concern of the council at the time um I it was right before I got here but the looking at the video log I think the concern was that while it was a use of the property there was it was used about half the property
other half was on spec um the council itself wasn't as enamored with that concept because there's chipotles everywhere and I thought it was the notion of trying to get something that was more of a destination something more unique that would bring people here spend several hours in in the CRA not only at that one business but maybe you
know frequenting this the coffee shop and other So and that deal ultimately fell through uh from that point forward the the direction that the broker has been operating under has been trying to again find something that's a little bit more original that's a little bit more uh
again bringing people from like South Tampa it's like I've mentioned here before people from South Tampa aren't going to come to Temple Terrace to go to Chipotle right right but if there's something cool and unique they will make that trip because I know people here will go to South Tampa and go to Hide Park and etc so that's that was the
direction that the broker has been uh working under um so that that's what Mr lochner is referring to i I do like the idea about because there has been a concern about uses and things like that about if we if we could contemplate deed
restricting it in other words perhaps allowing this to be more spec based if the council wants to consider that based on some of the input here this afternoon but maybe the council comes up with some uses that maybe they don't want i've heard before like smoke shops things
like that cuz there's plenty of those you know maybe this is like this development in perpetuity these won't be the uses that be allowed you could contemplate that if that's the council's wishes that might get you to a point kind of giving them a little bit more flexibility but still get you the outcome that maybe you're searching for if I can go back to the original
question too sorry um that you asked me about Sparksman's Sparkman's Wararf the uh according to the property appraiser the property itself is owned by the Tampa Port Authority but the uh looks like the developer the controlling entity is this LLC called Channelside Bay Mall LLC so I imagine they probably
have a ground lease with them uh to develop the stores and the uh entertainment venue there okay good is that too recognized okay council coverage just on that topic with the ground lease it's a very interesting opportunity to um provide favorable terms for the ground lease
potentially on a really long-term basis and then use that as an inducement to bring a developer in to build out the space potentially partly to spec partly not um and so what we have is an opportunity there at relatively little cost to us just by offering what we
already own at uh an incentive rate to bring in some sort of development that we'd be very happy with so that to your point about a ground lease and also uh to the city manager's point uh I think that's a really good avenue to pursue and we could then reserve certain usages in certain portions of the property for
other things that would be a community amenity so for example a park small park or fountain or some sort of attraction maybe an event space and uh I'd be interested in hearing compared also just to throw that in briefly what the temporary use obstacles would be and if
those could then be um used later on in a further development of it so if we're going through the trouble bringing that infrastructure in those might be costs that we're going to have to incur either way that's all i I have a couple of observations i generally I like the idea but I have
some devil's always in the details and that's where I'm trying to figure out what the pathway would be in terms of the finances um and the and the remaining debt i I I hear what you're saying i'm I'm not as concerned about
the debt service as I as we were a few years ago i think financially the city's pretty healthy our total debt as a city is like less than $10 million at this point I believe is 9 point something I don't um which for a city with the
budget our size that's a minuscule debt ratio um so and the debt that does remain is a 2% fixed so um that that I'm I mean I'd love to be making I'd love to be debtree but we could be
debtree we could pay that off today if we decided to it just would make no sense so um I I am a little I I share your concern about taking the um property off of the tax role because it's valuable property
potentially and that that on the tax roll forever so that has a big financial implication i'm less concerned about losing the sale price um I mean it's $2 million but if we can make a downtown that's thriving and vibrant and
activated I think most people would be willing to forego the the sale price if we could do that the I'm not really a fan of using the 8447 alternate for this use it's not
it's first of all if we want to put some entertainment venue there it's now we're getting closer and closer to the residences that we're trying to stay away from that's why we didn't do that on Riverside Park or Springtail Pond Park because of the residences right
there so I I I would feel more comfortable with this type of activity center being a little further away from the the residences that are there here's I I can see this and I think it's a cool concept in my mind i can see a
Sparkman warf down there the picture you showed of um well all of them really one's in a shopping center kind of that's reminiscent to me of wire grass you know it's the same kind of it's a it's a it's a green space area but it's really about the shopping experience
it's there the other one the Hollywood Beach really I've been to that one actually it's pretty It's a pretty cool space and I I could see this concept on that prop on this property where you have you know and I think there's room
to to do what Council Member Kravitz and and Mr lochner are talking about where you know either allowing a little more flexibility with some spec buildings and then outside of that but here's the here's a problem that I can't quite work through in my mind and I don't know what
the path is forward on this is if we built the property or built buildings along there so that we had shops and restaurants and then we had this gathering area with a little stage and stuff out there i think that is a
really cool concept but where do those people park because the parking spaces that would normally be required for those shops would be used up by the green space or the the gathering area so where do those people park and
just a little rough math I did that property is 76,000 square ft now obviously some of that would be dedicated to buildings and you know so it wouldn't be whole 76,000 square
feet but that's usually on that type of activity you want 7 to 10 square ft per person for the kind of activity that we're contemplating so if you use the whole property you could fit 7,500 people there which I don't think that's really what we I mean you wouldn't have the
whole property but cut that in half i mean you could still have a couple thousand there right so just cut it down to 3,000 i mean we had just under 1,200 at the craft beer festival the other day so if you extrapolate that I think 2500
to 3,000 people is probably a reasonable size crowd cut that in half because two people per car where do those where are we going to park them and we do have some parking some of the apartment complex parking spaces are
actually ours i doubt the tenants know that they they've been parking in our spaces the whole time they live there because they don't you know we're not using them so we do have some parking there i don't but not nearly enough to accommodate 2,000 people 1,500 cars or
whatever i don't know where we parked them and that's you know if you go to Sparkman Warf or you go to Curtis Hixon Park they bleed off into the side streets there's parking garages every few blocks in downtown parking can be
difficult at Curtis Sixon but you may have to walk four or five blocks but there's parking here there isn't and I would hate to drive parking into the residential streets because there's nowhere to park so what would we do
about that um I don't know exactly and that's I mean obviously that's one of the questions that I would have for somebody who is professionally skilled in this area and that would be one that the whole reason that I I even proposed this is because we were
not getting offers on the property that we want that that we've had offers but they were not offers that were maximizing the return on the property and it is maybe people wouldn't always come
from South Tampa or somewhere else but we'd like to activate our space because that will help increase usage of whatever it it is that is built there so my I mean that would be my question would be what would
a layout look like that would be that would provide a use to help activate the space but also still leave the viable development space and parking is obviously one of those because people
are primarily going to drive up there even though there are probably many people in the city who would bring their golf carts which take up less room they you'd still need to be able to provide the parking space i don't
know the answer to that but my my only goal is to make to to see that we're creating a space that people want to come to to help activate it to help provide value for somebody who wants to
develop it um I mean that that has been the goal from the beginning of acquiring this property but the parking thing is a very real challenge that we need to figure out and
and I don't know that there's anybody with any that has any expertise that's going to create space that we know doesn't exist there's no there there's nobody that has the expertise to find parking spaces that don't exist
and the only alternative that I see which is doable if we if I mean this is a good conversation i don't know if this is what we would want to do but because now we would be taking two pieces of property off the tax roles but we could
turn 8447 into parking and activate 8901 as event space but then that leads to another question that I have and I do know from being around this redevelopment for a while unsuccessfully mostly but I agree
but um you you have to have a balance of stuff you can have even too much of a good thing is not good like I mean even that's what happened with Eors it became all alcohol- based it became like bars
and so they're trying to fix that now but it got out of balance since we had this discussion about 8901 a few years ago might have been before you were back I'm not sure that yeah we did have some similar discussion about this
8901 but since that time we've decided to develop the Riverside Park project partly because those parcels are so limited in what you could do with for anything
else so now that we're developing all of that I I mean are we just going to have like a down we don't have a downtown we have We have Central Park but no Manhattan there's nothing down there to do there's nowhere to So it would have
to be like you're envisioning where there's a row of buildings or shops or something but are we going to have enough activation down there to activate 8901 and Riverside Park that's a lot of
green space well what I'm I mean at least in my mind what I'm seeing is different and that is Riverside Park is very natural and more passive with the exception of if somebody's going to be
fishing which can be passive and then and kaying and then if we were to have a space in the more built section that that wouldn't be necessarily as passive
in that but again but the only thing I'm I'm motivated by is trying to make this development more attractive and it doesn't necessarily have to have
the the stage and the the it doesn't have to have that specific layout maybe that doesn't work for this space maybe there's a splash pad in the middle and green space around it and that makes it smaller
and leaves room for the building but yet still idea of having the stages and I mean that's a cool idea i like it so here I think between listening to what Council Member Kravitz and Mr locker and and you
said I I could see I I could see a pathway to to something here i could see us do deed restrictions or whatever i could see us making this easier for somebody to come along and make a proposal maybe we do
put some spec and say and we control the kinds of uses rather than we want to know specifically you know because I could see that's difficult you don't know that Joe's Ice Cream's going to come in because Joe's Ice Cream may not even exist today right it could be something that like oh I'm going to start a
business and put it in that building i could see a way that we could develop a concept that maybe we could go to the market and say "This is what we want a Sparkman Warf version our version of a Sparkman Warf." And maybe there
could be some public private maybe we don't have to pay to build everything maybe if they if they get some freedom to bring in some of the businesses that they want to bring in and they've got to build some of this and maybe through some incentives we could provide they
have to build some of this too maybe we could get to this the the remaining I think that's I think that's a concept that could be worked the thing I can't figure out in this and I don't see the solution the brick wall
I keep running into is the parking i I don't see I I don't see um the answer so maybe if we can figure that part out I think we got something council member Kravitz first point the only point I really have to make on that is if you go to downtown
and look around at different times of day you'll see that it's full certain times and not full at all for example in the evenings i imagine most of the events that we're discussing are not going to happen in the middle of the day when people are at work they're going to happen in the evening so as far as I can
see there may not be a parking problem i think that we should actually look at the utilization in the parking spaces that we have before we conclude that there's not enough parking especially if we're going to gradually ramp this up and if we start we're not going to have an entire downtown development materialize out of thin air it's going
to take some time and then we'll be able to measure the parking impact and then if we notice that there's no parking then we can always do something with another property or maybe find some other unconventional solution that would be my suggestion i don't understand what you mean by we're going to go into this gradually if we developed this and somebody bought it
and built these buildings and then we built the stage or the greener how's that i don't What do you mean by the gradual implementation i would imagine that it'll be done gradually especially if you have different businesses opening up at different times you see it right now in downtown already not all of the spaces
there are leased out if they were all leased out there would be more parking demand so the idea that it'll all just suddenly be complete and fully rented out isn't practical in my view so it'll be a slow ramp up no matter how you do it and we have retail space now which is empty and that's also a slow ramp up
right now we hope or it's you know hopefully going to be leased out at some point soon but no I I see what you're saying about the the the space won't maybe be 100% occupied at the beginning but when you have a special event on there yes it's you get what you get i
mean you know you that that's the Yeah it would Well I don't know that it'd even be sufficient because you'd probably have no parking on that lot if you're going to do the green or very little i mean if you you'd have to have parking somewhere even for the shops that would
be open when there's no special event but you're not going to have them parking on the green space no no so which is why I would say it this would be more a question of somebody who has developed something
similar that they would be able to say well you you could this is what we would need to have a viable commercial development and this is the parking that we would need and here's here's the measurement of your space here's what
you can have for a green space you know maybe it doesn't have the full size that of the Fort Myers GF Coast Center has or someplace you know maybe it's a a slightly scaled down version of
that i I don't I don't really know the answer yeah I don't I don't either and I I probably Greg's staff could I mean come up with some ballpark if you put buildings down the 56th street side how many square feet roughly would that be and then how many spaces
would be required for that many i mean you could do some rough calculations on that yes sir we would have to um use uh use samples because parking requirements does change they do change based on the different uses restaurants is the most
intense um current parking standards even though code does allow uh council to approve site plans that um are flexible with parking requirements for this space
because the whole idea is to increase intensity and density I'm sorry in this space uh but just um for simple numbers every four chairs in a restaurant is a parking space so you can imagine how quickly um rest a restaurant use or or
multiple restaurant uses can chew through some parking spaces quickly um really just looking at fountain shops to the north you referenced them earlier with regards to something similar and you can see how they're put together they have a mix of retail they have a
banking institution they have a a coffee shop a sandwich shop and a restaurant so you can see that uh they are built out to accommodate the full width if you will of their property um to match that uh that space with their parking um we
can do some some similar markup for this property um I'm just not sure how far we can go with those uses and how much space is going to be left well that's that's my Yeah I know that's my concern
is that how how much space if you put even minimal parking how much space is left for your green mhm that's the It's all ratios and I'm just concerned
about that yeah city manager vice mayor yes um two points number one with the parking i think the parking is a very critical issue but I think we're going to drive community development nuts trying to come up with a way to say "Okay we're going to we're three different options or three different
venues or three different storefronts and now uhoh we don't have enough parking spaces to accommodate everybody." I don't know that we could do build it as we go we have to have we have to have some firm guidelines for them to work from to to move forward because otherwise it's just a moving
target we just let's just pick it out um I'm wondering though if we're if we're if we're uh getting outrageous with it could we replat or re subdivide the parcel now and say "Okay this area is
dedicated to whatever you want to call it the band shell or splash pad or whatever." Okay and then designate certain areas that we could possibly go out and sell those individual areas instead of trying to sell the whole
thing in mass can we break it down and subdivide it you know I don't know it makes sense i don't know how expensive that would be what it would cost um to the to the to uh to to effect but um uh that way we could secure green space for
something again I'm not against the concept i'm just trying to think of all the pitfalls and and some of the uh issues i do believe financially it's going to be an issue in the future um you know we have any kind of any kind of you know property tax values are going down this year we know we're going to we
know we're going to start hitting a brick wall here soon so I I don't mean to sound like a Debbie Downer on it but it's it uh we have to be care we have to be careful um and we can't can't encumber ourselves for future other future uh financing we want to do i'm
not against the concept but maybe we could break it down smaller smaller would that be easier to market and I'm going to ask her for quite an answer and I know the city manager was I was trying actually to if I could address part partly what vice mayor just brought up
um I I I remember when I was working in redevelopment the the cardinal rule that we always went by is government should never build anything um that's not a government building because inevitably we won't we that's not our business and we we'll probably do a poor job of it so I just offer something here for
council's consideration if if we wanted to give direction Mr lochner can tell me if this is a hairbrain scheme as well would be what if council reframed a direction to ROI saying you know open up the site
we're open to some spec we're more comfortable spec we might have some use restrictions maybe we can talk about those but at the same time we want to consider potentially a public quasi public space as part of the overall development of the site and if that
means that maybe the site to your point vice mayor they don't need the whole site they don't want to pay $2 million dollar for a twoacre site because they don't need the two acres they really need one acre well maybe that's part of the negotiation maybe there's you know in their building of their site maybe they can tie in and actually build the
the public venue space as part of that development and we negotiate that in the price and the transaction and then we'd have to figure out who maintains it going forward but I think those are all details that we could hammer out if we had the right people at the table as long as we gave them you know pretty
wide latitude as to you know what how to market this thing and who who to bring i'd rather do that and not have us be the ones building anything because I think to the point that was made earlier if if we don't develop if we let the site we do the festival space excuse me if we just leave the site bare we never
sell it um yes we would never get the revenue and we we calculated that would be 15 to $20,000 a year potentially in tax revenue based on the comparable use of that site in perpetuity so we'd lose that it's really the investment to build the space ourselves that's the bigger that's when I'm scratching my head as to
how we're going to be able to pull that off with the other things we want to do like Riverside Park so if there's a way that we can negotiate it with a developer and then we negotiate that as part of the package maybe there's the price gets you know reduced in exchange
for this or that i'd rather do that and recommend that to you as a body to consider than the alternative one other thing and I and I'll shut up uh golf carts I agree with you wholeheartedly be able to get down there but we'd have to come up with an alternative way you can't get there from
the north right you cannot get in that complex from the north side of the complex you can only commit off Chicago so we have to figure out a way to be able to commit off the north and that would obviously require crossing uh Bullard Parkway at that point so that's
just you and you can't get out that way either so that'd be something we need to address thanks M i was going to say I like city manager's idea that's what I was thinking about uh opening it up i didn't realize we were putting such restrictions on the sale of that land to
open up some spec and I like the idea of one of two things either uh reduce the price of the property to get what we want but also they can set up the venue or we get the full price or something like that we build something like council member Fernandez is suggesting
and have that whatever that group coming in to to manage it like they do at other places uh the the first thing though is is opening it up to maybe some more spec and we see what we've got i didn't really realize that was uh uh
constricting the uh pool of um potential buyers i I think if we're going to do that I'm not I'm not opposed to that but I think if that's the way we want to move I think it's very important that we do figure out what things we want to disallow yeah
first because um we go out to that you know we don't we don't want a flea market i mean we don't want wig shops we don't there are certain things we don't want um one quick side issue with the current legislation that's in front of the state
regarding CRAAS does any of this activity trigger any kind of disallowance of the CRA status because I think that they're trying to throw some left left ball you know curve balls into that into that legislation that if you make any changes
it nullifies what you've got does that we have any worries with that so there's a provision um there are provisions in the current legislation precluding additional debt uh there's also the most troubling one is after a certain date this year maybe it's July 1st or October
1st for which date it is that CRAS wouldn't be able to add new projects um uh that hasn't been defined in my mind yet so I'd have to figure out what that would mean um we have to have all CRAAS have to have a development plan um
I don't think this is necessarily going to change our development plan it's still we're still selling the property like we we have been and that we're simply asking for some criteria in the sale to add a public component to it potentially if that's what you want to do so I don't think that necessarily changes um
uh I think if you wanted now if you wanted to build the f festival space directly forget the private sector component then we'd probably have to look at this and see what if the legislation impacts that specific item and and I don't know if this is going to
be if this really is something new because if you go back and look at the the massive amounts of documents that exist on when when the property was sold to VLAS there was a lot of public component in there they were supposed to
be building a a a mini convention center there there was going to be a I don't know if it was an opera house or what it was but there was there was a large public component yeah it was performing may not be considered a
change if that's you know one of the criteria that's that's going to be limiting i would just hate for this to come up and bite us in the end when after doing all this effort and then that the new legislation mess it up that's all
so yes well so I I I do like the suggestions made by the city manager and I I really would ask our realtors what they think will make the property more viable the most viable in order to
maximize the use and the return to the city for this space so I think he already told us that didn't he well I mean he he has suggested that we alter u and allow some spec as we've discussed
uh and that there is a a value to open space so I don't have any issue basically going with what our city manager suggested and and say "Hey let's let's see if somebody wants this property come
and comes to us with a a plan that would provide for building and and potentially having some open space to have it activated okay so this has been um well is that are we done with discussion?"
to the vice mayor um is the uh I'm just curious the uh tax revenue very important i understand that uh is that is that why do you is that the reason why you may prefer to sell it at a discounted rate with a public component versus a land lease at a discounted rate
because the capturing that tax revenue is essential well I mean if we have to take it off the tax rules and you you have tiff issues as just regular general property taxes but uh I I don't have much appetite for the city owning it and leasing it and managing it into
perpetuity um I I like the the the concept of of opening it up ch you know different options with with it but uh yeah I mean it it it all comes into play yeah yeah the only the only thought I have on that is that it's such a critical space within the downtown it
might be good to keep a finger in there over a longer period of time but I understand your perspective too on it okay um let me make sure that I understand where we are and what our desire is moving forward been good discussion by the way thank you for
bringing this up um so what is actionable out of this discussion we're going to what we're going to give new guidance to the broker um we're going to allow for the the
building of spec space however we need to then as a body talk about what types of things we want to disallow is that and then we want to change the listing on this to kind of
encourage some public space as part of the project well I I mean I I don't necessarily I I'm not proposing public space just to have public space uh my perspective at least is that the space
that I have seen in the places that we talked about were helping to activate the businesses around them and that is where I see the value and that would that is what I'm thinking is that any
space of that nature would the the very existence and design of it would be to help provide value to the businesses that are around did okay absolutely yeah i I That's You said it better than I did yeah so Mr b is this guidance is this
clear enough for you and Mr paulie and the broker to figure this out or I I think one thing that we just wanted to make clear is um in order for all of this to happen I think there has to been there's going to be some negotiation right now Mr probably correct me if I'm
wrong but there's a a floor a price floor isn't there for we don't entertain projects that come under if they offer us below a certain amount we don't even bring them to the council is that correct that has been the past practice i can tell you that my communications
with the broker re in in more recent months has been that my uh I believe that this council would entertain potentially lower sale price if the project was the best use of the property
right that's what I'm trying to get at so if if we if we have a if we Mr lochner nod or tell me shake your head otherwise just tell me if I'm wrong if if council wasn't okay with this we would go to ROI and we'd say listen we we'd want to market the property
differently we're we're okay with spec however whatever uses you want to limit you'd have to tell us um and but as a component we are willing to entertain projects that might include some activated public oriented space doesn't have to be public per se I think right but just open like the the wire grass or
the uh Gulf center something like that on a scale that can be a place where people could gather it'll probably obviously I would think benefit the businesses as well that that are being developed but we're not going to have a necessarily a floor i think you can't have a if you have a price floor it's
too many constrictions like this they want you to build public space and price floor so I think have them have the market dictate to us here's an idea it means I'm going to pay X for this property but I'm going to give you Y and if council likes that great if you don't
Yeah i'm all personally I don't know how the council I mean I'm all in favor of taking the floor out for things that are interesting projects that will activate the downtown i you know get shortsighted and oh we're going to lose out on a million dollars or well yeah but we're
going to get the downtown we've been trying to get for 30 years so you know yeah council member Kravitz my comment on that is I think we should invert the criteria instead of looking at the the price first we should say whoever offers us the greatest community benefit for that space and for the surrounding businesses is going to be highly
considered and then the other factors we're going to look at are the reliability and track record of the developer and also their ability to follow through and if I could just council member Kravitz so the last elements is we do have that there's this vetting process so we wouldn't change that and
Mr lockchner that'd be okay if you we still vet the candidates to make sure they've got a track record and financial stability to before we bring them to you and and past past successful projects though i think that's another important factor right we'd ask for basically a list of references for things that they've worked on and there would be
some that may have a very lengthy list there may be others maybe a little shorter list but maybe the ideas are pretty creative and again factors you may want to consider fantastic do we need to have a CRA meeting before we bring it back to council an agency meeting
the well the property you you tell me this is your area of expertise the property is owned by the city it's in the CRA though so probably the C microphone probably the CRA committee
should or the CRA anyway that um should discuss this at least briefly first and then present it to council so so while we're on that topic who should which hat should we be wearing when we have the
discussion of the types of uses we want to disallow does that need to be a CRA discussion before council takes it up since it is in the CRA then that commit I don't know i don't know whether to call it a committee or a board or what
it is but anyway that that that should be who discusses that first and then presents that to council okay okay so we would need then to schedule a CRA meeting for the purpose of giving
guidance to revise the marketing approach and also we would need to have discussion about what types of uses we would want to disallow and I I think the council would have some things that they would come up with on their own but we could probably also
use some help with that from other similar types of projects or CRAAS or cities that are trying to rejuvenate their downtown we may not think of some things um so we could probably use a
little input from staff on that and some of them are obvious we don't want hookah lounges we don't want you know but some of them are less obvious do we want a bar you know I I bless you so we could probably use a little guidance on
that okay what are we missing mr yes Mr paul I just wanted to follow up with Vice Mayor's question earlier um he did ask a question and of staff and then the conversation kind of drifted away from it um you asked a question about platting um and replatting the property
the property even though we speak of it as one property it's actually 13 much smaller parcels we sliced it years ago we we sliced it years ago for that exact purpose in fact if you recall back in the I want to say
it was around 2015 2016 we sliced them all in that area so that they could be easily divided now having said that I would like to share with the council that this property would be easily divided to biseect it with a line
running east and west because that's the way it is currently platted in other words if you wanted to cut the north half off of the south half that is a very easy division of the property however if council's wish is to cut the
property in any other direction such as from north to south and split it into two uh long narrow pieces if you will um that would definitely require a replat wouldn't that make more sense to
undertake that if we had a developer that came to us and said "Hey I'd like to buy this section and do this and this and then we would have to replplat it as part of that." But I mean if we did that now proactively we might not be lining up with what they want anyway that's
correct sir um and and I'll defer to Mr lochner for more detail on this but my belief is is that a developer is always going to want that road frontage that high traffic road frontage you remember that marathon session where we redid that where it was redone i
think Cheryl's about died trying to recite all the the the folios and stuff yeah yeah they're probably like 200t wide or something like that they're pretty narrow uh that Well the slices run east and west but the slices on this particular parcel are not more than I
think 25 or 26 ft tall oh really there's this par 8901 is actually made up of 13 individual parcels that are all um 221 ft east and west but only about 25 or 26 feet north and south
it's interesting okay one more question to Mr lochner if I could um my information about this is pretty out of date geographically and also time wise um do you know roughly speaking what the value differential would be between the roadfront property versus the property
that's toward the interior which property um talking about 8901 the one we were just discussing how it's platted in a it's platted in a way where you can cut off the bottom half and the top half that 56th Street mhm could be sold separately so if that would you say
that the overwhelming prepoundonderance of the value is in the road property or is it you know do you could you hazard a guess as to what per square foot price you might get for the part on the street versus not on the street well the way it's set up now they all
have frontage on 56 so um unless you wanted to go change that but obviously um investors and developers when they see this they're looking at frontage they're looking at traffic counts um demographics all those things play
into when they look at a partial i'm sorry brian could you please put my computer screen on the big screen temporarily if you look here you can see the property appraisers mapping of the parcel this is 8901 all of those very
narrow lots that are stacked on top of each other that is the um 220 ft wide by 25 ft tall uh slices that I was mentioning a moment ago so here you can see if we were to take the top six or
seven and cut them off of the bottom they would still have road frontage on 56th Street if we did it the other way where we had to redraw the lines running north and south then you would be bicting the parcel putting uh half of it
fronting 56th Street and the other half inbound towards Bertha Palmer thanks i misunderstood i thought it was the exact opposite or my 90° off okay so one last time to make sure we're in agreement we're going to schedule a
CRA meeting and the goals of the CRA meeting are to revise the way we're marketing the property to reflect um the ideas that council member Fernandez brought forward for some public event space to better activate the downtown and at that meeting we are also going to
discuss the types of use uses that we want to disallow from that property and we're going to get some input from staff at that meeting from on those potential disallowable uses also
does that make sense is that agreeable to everybody yes okay city manager is that sufficiently detailed enough for you to move forward or I think so if you'll allow me just Mr lochner is there anything else you need in preparation for that that you'd
want to kind of just vet here real quick before we we go down this road um I don't I don't think so okay this is we'll clarify a lot of things okay um I I think currently the CRA actually
has a lot of restrictions that you may want to discuss before coming up with the new ones because they may already be covered yes he is correct sir um the um the reciprocal easement operating
agreement has certain restrictions and obligations of the tenants in that area as well as the overall district of the CRA so what we can do is we'll we'll summarize those as part of the prep for the CR meeting bring you a
list this is what we we feel like this is already disallowed it's already disallowed and then you can look at that list and we'll do some research on some other sort of public private partnerships or in areas that are kind of around the state perhaps that we can see if they've had use restrictions and we'll we'll we'll carve something
together for you may already be covered sufficiently okay we can do that all right thank you for bringing it up um interesting discussion good discussion thank you anything else that we want to any final comments on this
okay thank you everybody for your time appreciate it we'll stand a journey [Music] [Music] [Music]
hey hey hey [Music] [Music]