Unbiased advisor group HR&A Advisors was employed by the town of St. Petersburg to judge the 4 proposals within the working for the Historic Gasoline Plant District.
ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. — An impartial consulting agency employed by the metropolis of St. Petersburg has evaluated the 4 proposals for creating the Historic Gasoline Plant District and decided Sugar Hill Neighborhood Companions together with Hines and Tampa Bay Rays finest match the town’s wants.
The roughly 86-acre plot of land within the coronary heart of downtown St. Petersburg contains Tropicana Area – residence of the Tampa Bay Rays.
A companion at HR&A Advisors, Cary Hirschstein, mentioned, “It is a once-in-a-generation mission for St Petersburg. So the town administration needed an outdoor celebration to offer a extremely good deep, rigorous, and goal have a look at the proposals and retained my agency advisors to do this.”
HR&A Advisors mentioned it targeted on every proposer’s growth group and program, financial impression, monetary provide and neighborhood advantages.
“We’re taking a look at every of the event groups that had issued these proposals and their observe document,” Hirschstein mentioned. “We needed to grasp the consistency of the imaginative and prescient with what the town has put forth.”
Whereas it is unclear whether or not the 78-page analysis will affect which developer Mayor Ken Welch selects, some native teams are making their selections clear.
Bishop Manuel Skykes of Bethel Neighborhood Baptist Church and several other different Black religion leaders in St. Pete say their help is totally behind Sugar Hill.
Sykes explains Sugar Hill offered the one proposal he feels adequately honors the Gasoline Plant web site’s historical past, as soon as a predominantly black neighborhood bulldozed to make means for Tropicana Area.
“I do not need to see a plaque. When you took my home, put it again,” Sykes mentioned. “I am trying particularly for restoration as a result of it was unlawful, immoral and unethical, what they did to accumulate that property.”
In the meantime, the St. Petersburg Chamber of Commerce, a gaggle comprised of the town’s enterprise leaders, is throwing its help behind the Hines and Tampa Bay Rays proposal.
Whereas its leaders had been unavailable for an interview on Friday, in a Tampa Bay Occasions column written final week, the chamber leaders wrote:
“The financial growth alternatives within the Rays/Hines proposal will guarantee this web site has a wholesome stability of jobs, company alternatives, and small, ground-floor enterprise areas.”
With numerous voices in his ear, Mayor Ken Welch will announce his choice Monday, Jan. 30, throughout his State of the Metropolis deal with.