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Park space mandate at Trop site falls short in St. Pete City Council committee

Margie Manning

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The 87-acre Tropicana Field site. File photo.

A St. Petersburg City Council committee wants to make sure there is plenty of parkland when the Tropicana Field site is redeveloped.

“I don’t want to see it slip into being a concrete jungle,” Council member Darden Rice said Thursday.

It won’t, Alan DeLisle, city development administrator, told the Public Services & Infrastructure Committee.

“The development community is on the same page. They know it doesn’t work without green space,” DeLisle said.

St. Petersburg City Council member Darden Rice

The committee discussed but did not vote on a proposal from Rice, who asked the city administration to include up to 30 acres of contiguous and open green space in documents seeking a developer for the site.

The city owns the 86 acres currently occupied by Tropicana Field, where the Tampa Bay Rays have a lease to play baseball through the 2027 season. The city has been working for years on redevelopment plans, including two conceptual master plans, one with a new stadium and one without a stadium.

The city is developing a request for proposals for a master developer for the site. DeLisle said he does not have a specific date when the RFP will be released. It’s expected to draw a lot of interest, because the Trop site is considered one of the prime development locations in the state.

The council doesn’t typically participate in the RFP writing process, but Rice, who chairs the committee, said her proposal was intended to make clear the outcome council members want.

“I submitted this not in an attempt to be overly prescriptive but to plant the flag that we want to see substantial green space — not green space like a bourgeois  passive park, but an urban, active park, like St. Pete’s version of Central Park in New York City, a park for everyone that connects and unites various parts of the city,” Rice said.

Alan DeLisle, city development administrator

The park space would also serve to acknowledge the history of the area’s African American heritage, Rice told committee members.

Green space is just one of many priorities that council members and others have said they want included in the redevelopment, DeLisle said. Other priorities are research and educational facilities, convention space with a five-star hotel, incubator and retail space for small businesses, and mixed-income housing.

“There are people who look at this and say you got it right, because you don’t have any land like this in the city. There’s a 4 percent vacancy rate in downtown right now. I’ve got companies looking for space and can’t find it. I don’t think you want that,” DeLisle said. “My best recommendation to all of you is to let the market speak to us. We will clearly identify those critical areas we have heard from council. There is no question about that, including green space.”


Related: Revamped Trop site will be a ‘Grow Smarter’ research and business park


While the committee did not take a vote, Rice asked that the discussion be provided to developers submitting proposals for the Trop site.

“I want to make sure the developers who are competing to build the next big chapter of our city are working with us and know exactly how we feel,” Rice said.

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