Downtown Redevelopment — St. Petersburg, Florida

Downtown redevelopment in St. Petersburg is organized through three active Community Redevelopment Areas (CRAs) — Intown, Intown West, and South St. Petersburg — each operating under Tax Increment Financing authority granted by Florida's Community Redevelopment Act of 1969 (Chapter 163, Part III, Florida Statutes), as documented on the City of St. Petersburg's CRA page. The downtown waterfront core, a museum cluster, eight named commercial and cultural sub-districts, and the 86-acre former Tropicana Field site collectively define the redevelopment landscape that the city is actively reshaping as of 2026.

The scale of the transformation over decades is captured in a single figure: the Intown CRA recorded a base-year assessed real property value of $107.88 million, which had grown to $3.022 billion as of the FY2024 assessment. Against that backdrop, the city is simultaneously managing a residential construction surge, a transit-oriented development corridor along the SunRunner bus rapid transit route, and the most consequential land-use decision in its recent history: what to do with the 86-acre site where Tropicana Field has stood since 1990.

St. Petersburg operates three Community Redevelopment Areas, each with a distinct geography and focus. The Intown CRA — designated the Downtown Redevelopment District in city budget documents — encompasses 193 acres bounded by I-175, I-275, Burlington Avenue North, and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Street. Tax increment revenues generated within this district fund public infrastructure, streetscape improvements, and economic development programs in the core downtown.

The Intown West CRA extends the redevelopment framework westward from the downtown core, capturing neighborhoods in transition between the Intown district and the city's historically underserved southern corridor. The South St. Petersburg CRA was established through a joint action of the St. Petersburg City Council and the Pinellas County Board of County Commissioners: the City Council approved the plan on May 21, 2015, City Ordinance No. 175 H authorized Tax Increment Financing on June 11, 2015, and the County followed with Ordinance No. 15-27 on June 23, 2015. The South St. Pete CRA targets three focus areas — housing and neighborhood revitalization, education and workforce development, and business and commercial development — in the city's historically underserved southern corridor.

Together, the three CRAs represent St. Petersburg's statutory mechanism for directing tax increment revenues generated by rising property values back into the districts that produced that growth, rather than distributing those incremental revenues to the general fund.

The 86-acre Historic Gas Plant District site — where Tropicana Field has stood since 1990 — carries the most contested history in St. Petersburg's redevelopment record. The City of St. Petersburg's official project page acknowledges that the mid-1980s displacement of the Historic Gas Plant neighborhood, a historically Black community, was undertaken with promises of jobs, opportunity, and equitable development that, in the city's own words, 'did not materialize.' Addressing that history has become a stated element of the current planning process.

On July 18, 2024, the St. Petersburg City Council voted 5-3 to approve a $6.5 billion redevelopment agreement with the Tampa Bay Rays and Hines Development, including a new 30,000-seat ballpark, as documented in the city's official news release with Mayor Kenneth T. Welch presiding. That agreement collapsed after Hurricane Milton struck in October 2024, damaging Tropicana Field's roof and stalling stadium repair commitments. The Rays, subsequently acquired in a $1.7 billion transaction led by Jacksonville-based developer Patrick Zalupski, played all 2025 home games at George M. Steinbrenner Field, approximately 17 miles east in Tampa, as reported by CoStar.

The city is investing over $55 million to repair Tropicana Field and has launched a fourth RFP process for the site — this time without a required ballpark component, as WUSF reported on May 4, 2026. Nine proposals were submitted by the deadline, ranging from multibillion-dollar mixed-use master plans to housing-focused concepts, according to Florida Politics. Among the submissions, a consortium involving ARK Investment Management, Ellison, Horus, and architecture firm Baker Barrios submitted an unsolicited proposal in fall 2025 that included more than 3,700 residential units, a Woodson Museum as a Phase 1 component, and an innovation district component. A 500-person public comment open house was held as part of the outreach process.

Beyond the Gas Plant site, the broader downtown is experiencing a residential construction surge documented by the St. Petersburg Downtown Partnership's 2025 Development Guide: units currently under construction are projected to increase downtown residential inventory by 22%, and if all proposed projects proceed, inventory could grow by 85%. Along the SunRunner bus rapid transit corridor, the Partnership counted 33 planned projects as of the 2025 guide, illustrating how transit-oriented development has become a structuring force for downtown growth.

The Partnership's 2025 guide documents eight named sub-districts that organize the downtown's commercial and cultural geography: the Pier District, Waterfront Museum District, St. Pete Innovation District, Central Arts District, MLK Business District, EDGE District, Grand Central District, and Warehouse Arts District. Each sub-district carries a distinct programmatic identity — the Waterfront Museum District, for instance, encompasses the Salvador Dalí Museum, the Museum of Fine Arts, the Florida Holocaust Museum, the St. Petersburg Museum of History, and the James Museum of Western and Wildlife Art. Per Visit St. Pete/Clearwater, the top three visitor attractions in all of Pinellas County are located in downtown St. Petersburg, and 84% of visitors drawn to Pinellas County for arts and culture end up in the city.

One active construction project illustrates the scale of private investment entering the downtown fringe. In December 2025, Tampa Bay Business Wire reported that demolition began for Gallery Haus, a $125 million, 23-story mixed-use tower at 155 17th Street South — near the Gas Plant District — developed by LD&D and Black Salmon, with KAST Construction serving as general contractor and a $6 million site work loan from Osprey Capital. The project will add 254 homes to the downtown supply.

The defining event of the 2024–2026 period is the unraveling of the July 2024 Gas Plant District agreement and the city's pivot to an open, ballpark-optional RFP. The 5-3 City Council vote on July 18, 2024 represented the third attempt in roughly two decades to resolve the site's future, approving a $6.5 billion framework with the Rays and Hines Development, with Skanska named as the construction oversight firm, as the city's news release documented. Hurricane Milton's October 2024 landfall changed the calculus: damage to Tropicana Field's roof stalled repair commitments and contributed to the deal's collapse.

As of May 4, 2026, WUSF reports that the city is conducting its fourth RFP for the 86-acre site, this time decoupled from a Major League Baseball requirement. Nine proposals reached the city by the submission deadline, spanning a wide range of programmatic and financial approaches. The ARK Investment Management consortium's entry calls for more than 3,700 residential units, a Woodson Museum as a Phase 1 anchor, and innovation district components. The city held a 500-person public comment open house as part of community engagement. The Rays' franchise situation — acquired in a $1.7 billion deal by the Zalupski group and relocated to Steinbrenner Field for the 2025 season — remains a variable as the city evaluates the nine competing visions for the site.

Elsewhere in the downtown, Gallery Haus moved from proposal to demolition between 2024 and December 2025, and the broader residential pipeline documented by the Downtown Partnership continued to advance along the SunRunner corridor.

St. Petersburg's downtown redevelopment operates within a strong mayor-council governance structure. Mayor Kenneth T. Welch, identified in the city's July 18, 2024 news release as presiding over the city, leads the executive branch; the City Council acts as the legislative body that approves CRA plans, enacts TIF ordinances, and ratifies major development agreements. The Pinellas County Board of County Commissioners functions as a co-authorizing body for CRAs that extend into county jurisdiction, as demonstrated by the dual-ordinance structure that established the South St. Petersburg CRA in June 2015.

The broader architectural and cultural fabric of downtown St. Petersburg provides the historic backdrop against which redevelopment occurs. The Advisory Council on Historic Preservation granted St. Petersburg its Preserve America designation in December 2007, recognizing a built environment that includes 1920s Mediterranean Revival structures — the Vinoy Hotel, the Princess Martha, and the Snell Arcade — as well as the African American Heritage Trail, a self-guided tour with 19 markers documenting resources significant to the city's Black residents and history. The tension between preserving that layered history and accommodating large-scale new development is an ongoing feature of the public debate over the Gas Plant site in particular.

Regionally, St. Petersburg is the most populous municipality in Pinellas County and the second-largest city in the Tampa Bay metropolitan area, with a population of 260,646 as of the U.S. Census Bureau ACS 2023. Downtown redevelopment decisions reverberate across a county that includes Clearwater and Largo to the north, and a metro area anchored by Tampa across Tampa Bay to the east. The SunRunner bus rapid transit route — which has already catalyzed 33 planned projects along its corridor — connects the downtown waterfront to the regional transit network, situating St. Petersburg's redevelopment within a broader Pinellas County transportation and land-use framework.