A 30-Day Window Solves Nothing
Summary
The 86-acre Gas Plant property, home to Tropicana Field, will become fully available for redevelopment in 2028 — giving St. Petersburg time to plan first and build wisely. Yet instead of leading with a citywide vision, the City has announced a 30-day window this fall for developers to submit new proposals — a move that should be stopped immediately before it locks the community into short-sighted deals.
After stopping this rushed process, the City should launch a structured, city-led planning effort that begins with public priorities — housing, jobs, education, culture, and resilience — before any developer is invited to bid. That plan should define what success looks like, guide future partnerships, and ensure that redevelopment of this public land serves long-term community benefit rather than private timelines.
Several offers are already circulating, including the Ellison/ARK proposal to acquire 53 acres for $140 million, a Pinellas County Housing Authority plan for senior housing, and ideas for a new Woodson Museum and even a convention center. Each may have merit, but taken together they reveal a lack of structure — piecemeal projects without a master plan or shared goals.
To help the City organize a thoughtful, transparent process, HomeRunsMatter is working with civic and neighborhood leaders to form the Envisioning the Gas Plant Initiative — an independent advisory group designed to help identify what matters most and ensure that planning comes before any sale, lease, or negotiation.
The full details follow below.
The Tampa Bay Times reports that The City of St. Petersburg will will open a 30-day window in mid-November for “additional proposals” to redevelop all or part of the Gas Plant site. This is difficult to understand.
A site this large — 86 acres of publicly owned downtown land — represents a generational decision. Yet the city is offering developers barely one month to prepare submissions during the holiday season. That either signals a lack of understanding of what serious planning entails or — worse — could be interpreted as favoring the Ellison / ARK proposal, whose team has already spent months preparing its bid.
Thirty days may sound like “openness.” In reality, it looks like process theater — a move that invites proposals without providing a framework for evaluating them.
The Real Issue Isn’t the Calendar — It’s the Sequence
Yes, thirty days is too short to produce anything good. But that’s not the real problem. The real issue is the sequence.
Before inviting developers to bid, the city must first define what success looks like. Only then can it evaluate proposals intelligently. Otherwise, the process becomes reactive — letting whichever team shows up first define the city’s future.
St. Petersburg has a rare chance to turn 86 acres of public land into lasting public benefit. That opportunity will vanish if the city mistakes “moving fast” for “moving wisely.”
City Council Should Step In
The City Council must step in now — before this 30-day rush turns into decades of regret.
The Council has the authority — and the responsibility — to insist on a pause.
Before any land is sold, leased, or even negotiated, the city should:
- Shop the RFP itself. Hire the best planning and advisory talent in the country. The City should not be choosing between developer proposals; it should be choosing who helps the city design the process.
- Require a city-led plan first. That means a public visioning process, not a contest of private ambitions.
- Engage outside experts at the right time. The Urban Land Institute (ULI) can play a valuable role — but only after the City and community define their goals and priorities.
- Ensure transparency and fairness. No one developer should appear to have a head start or privileged access.
A strong Council-led reset now would restore public confidence, reaffirm fairness, and ensure that redevelopment serves St. Petersburg’s future — not a single developer’s timeline.
What the City Should Be Doing
As we wrote earlier in Gas Plant: Plan First, Sell Later, the order of operations matters. Before inviting bids, the City should take time to establish its priorities and determine what it wants this land to accomplish for residents. That means identifying:
- Housing priorities – what kinds of homes are most needed and for whom: seniors, teachers, working families, or low-income residents.
- Economic opportunity and workforce development– how redevelopment can generate living-wage jobs, small-business growth, training pipelines, and local hiring partnerships that connect residents directly to new employment.
- Cultural and civic identity – what public spaces, arts, and community facilities should strengthen St. Petersburg’s sense of place.
- Environmental and resilience goals – how design can address flooding, heat, and sustainability.
- Education and youth development – how new revenues or partnerships can support after-school programs, mentorships, and job pipelines for young people entering the workforce.
- Financial strategy – how to capture land value for long-term benefit, including the option of selling or leasing portions of the Gas Plant at full market value and using those proceeds to fund affordable housing on less-expensive sites across the city, where land is cheaper and more homes can be built.
These are not details to fill in later; they are the foundation for every decision that follows. Until the City defines these priorities, any developer proposal — no matter how ambitious — is answering the wrong question.
The Three-Step Framework
- IdentifyWhat Matters Most
Start not with buildings or site plans, but with the basics of a good life: safe and stable housing, good jobs, the resources to help children reach their potential, a vibrant cultural life, resilience in the face of challenges, and overall well-being. Then ask: Where are the biggest gaps? - Build on Strengths
What brings energy and vitality to St. Petersburg today — culture, tourism, innovation, entrepreneurship — and how can those strengths help fill the gaps? - Envision the Site
Only then should wedetermine how the redevelopment of the Gas Plant and the resources it will generate can be used directly or indirectly — whether through housing, cultural facilities, green space, job creation, or reinvestment in children and neighborhoods across the city.
The site should be a tool to make life better — not just a real-estate transaction.
What the City’s Planning Process Should Deliver
If the City takes the time to lead a structured, evidence-based planning process, the results should be clear, tangible, and useful — not just another study, but a practical roadmap for decision-making.
That’s what a well-designed process should deliver:
Interim Reports and Findings
The City’s planning process should produce public-facing interim reports that guide understanding and help shape decisions. These reports can summarize community input, compare successful redevelopment models from other cities, and analyze the highest priorities for St. Petersburg’s future, including:
- Affordable and mixed-income housing — identifying the true scale and type of housing need, and whether those needs are best met on the Gas Plant site, nearby, or through citywide partnerships that expand affordability and access.
- Jobs and economic opportunity — showing how redevelopment can create living-wage employment, attract new industries, and support small-business growth.
- Education and youth development — linking project revenues and partnerships to after-school programs, mentorships, and job-training pipelines that help young people succeed.
- Culture, history, and the arts — including the future role of the Woodson Museum and other cultural facilities that honor the Gas Plant’s legacy while strengthening the city’s identity.
- Environmental resilience and sustainability — examining stormwater, tree canopy, heat reduction, renewable energy, and green infrastructure so the Gas Plant becomes a model for climate-smart urban design.
- Governance, ownership, and land-value strategy — assessing how the City can best maintain long-term control and public benefit, including whether to act as its own master developer through phased partnerships, or to engage multiple developers — and whether portions of the land should be sold or leased at full market value to capture appreciation for reinvestment in housing, education, resilience, and other community priorities.
Together, these analyses would form the foundation for a set of guiding principles — a practical framework the City, ULI, and future development partners can use to evaluate every proposal against clear, community-defined goals.
The City’s Use of the Urban Land Institute — But Only After the Vision Comes First
The Council’s plan to engage ULI is a good and necessary step — but not yet.
ULI is a respected national nonprofit that helps cities evaluate large-scale redevelopment opportunities through short, expert-led studies.
However, its work will only be meaningful after the City and residents define their goals.
If engaged too early, ULI’s study risks answering the wrong questions — focusing on layouts and feasibility before the City has articulated what success truly means.
The value of a ULI study depends entirely on the clarity of the City’s direction. Once the City establishes a shared vision through a local, inclusive planning process, ULI can help test it, validate it, and refine strategies for ownership, governance, and long-term value capture.
ULI should come after visioning, not replace it.
Why Planning Matters — and What Happens Without It
Recent events prove the risk of acting first and planning later.
One offer already received — the Ellison / ARK proposal — seeks to acquire roughly 53 acres for $140 million, or about $2.6 million per acre. By comparison, nearby land transactions have sold for many multiples of that price, depending on location and use.
The proposal also includes grand facilities — a 200,000-square-foot “Innovation Hall,” an 80,000-square-foot entertainment venue, and more — without any clear analysis of whether these are what the City actually needs, whether they would be financially viable, or who would pay to build and operate them.
There’s also discussion about adding a new convention center as part of the mix — another large, costly project being floated before the City has determined if that’s what residents or the economy actually need.
A convention center may sound impressive, but without a broader plan it risks becoming another big, underused building with little connection to community priorities or year-round benefit.
In other words, these concepts list bold features but offer no transparent understanding of long-term feasibility, cost, or alignment with community goals — exactly the questions that should be asked before deciding if any proposal truly serves St. Petersburg’s needs.
The pattern continues.
The Pinellas County Housing Authority’s unsolicited plan for an 80-unit senior housing project, and discussions of advancing the new Woodson African American Museum of Florida on part of the site, all underscore the same danger: piecemeal commitments without a master plan.
Each idea may have merit on its own. But without a comprehensive framework, even good intentions can conflict. A single, city-led plan could ensure these projects complement — rather than compete with — one another, while strengthening the City’s flexibility and ability to fund what matters most.
That’s exactly why planning first is essential. Before any sale or partnership is considered, the City and community need an independent process to define what success looks like — and what St. Petersburg truly wants from the redevelopment of this land.
Why One Developer Shouldn’t Define the Vision
The Gas Plant site is too large, too important, and too valuable to entrust to any one developer’s vision.
When a single private entity controls nearly all 86 acres, the City loses flexibility — not just for years, but for generations.
Cities that hand over vast tracts of public land to one master developer often end up with projects that look cohesive on paper but fail to adapt as needs change. They risk locking in one design philosophy, one financing structure, and one set of priorities — all driven by private timelines and investor expectations, not public purpose.
St. Petersburg’s strength is its diversity — of people, ideas, and neighborhoods. The Gas Plant redevelopment should reflect that diversity through phased partnerships, multiple developers, and evolving opportunities that grow over time as community needs evolve.
We don’t want any one developer to “envision” the City’s future for us. That vision must come from the City and its residents — through open, inclusive planning that invites many hands to shape a shared outcome.
HomeRunsMatter Is Organizing to Help
HomeRunsMatter is now working with community leaders to form the Envisioning the Gas Plant initiative — a structured, independent advisory group designed to assist the City and Council during the planning process.
The goal is for this initiative to be formally recognized by the City of St. Petersburg, much like the Marina District Advisory Committee, as a credible, community-based body that brings together civic, business, neighborhood, and subject-matter leaders.
Its purpose is not to oppose City Hall, but to help City Hall succeed — by organizing thoughtful public input, gathering expert insight, and ensuring that redevelopment reflects what residents truly value.
Envisioning the Gas Plant creates the space to ask the right questions before commitments are made:
- What kinds of housing are most needed, and where should they go — on the site or throughout the community?
- How can new buildings connect with future parks, public spaces, and the Pinellas Trail?
- How can redevelopment honor history while generating opportunity for current and former residents?
- And how can the City ensure that every proposal contributes to long-term public value — not just short-term construction?
Envisioning the Gas Plant is designed to complement the City’s technical work with a structured, community-informed process — one that brings together residents, experts, civic leaders, and institutions to identify:
- What matters most to people in St. Petersburg.
- Where the City’s biggest gaps are — in housing, jobs, education, resilience, and culture.
- How redevelopment of the Gas Plant can directly or indirectly help close those gaps.
This is not about opposing City Hall. It’s about helping City Hall succeed — by providing independent, credible, and well-organized public input that strengthens the City’s own process and builds public trust.
Advisors and Expertise
Advisors to the Envisioning the Gas Plant initiative will include individuals and organizations representing diverse areas of expertise and community insight — from business and neighborhood leadership to housing, education, and culture.
The initiative hopes to include people with deep experience in addressing the achievement gap — those who understand what it takes to help children reach their potential and how community investment can make that difference.
It will also include cultural and arts leaders, who can help identify how the Gas Plant property might strengthen St. Petersburg’s identity as a city of creativity — perhaps even attracting a major art museum branch or new cultural institution that builds on the city’s existing strengths.
In every case, the focus will be on maximizing long-term benefits for the city as a whole, channeling redevelopment toward what matters most: opportunity, equity, and lasting public value.
The Bigger Picture
St. Petersburg is not suffering from a lack of interest in the Gas Plant site. It’s suffering from a lack of structure.
Unsolicited offers — from Ark Invest and Casey Ellison, the Pinellas County Housing Authority, and others — show that the land’s potential is enormous. But until the City defines what success looks like, each proposal will simply compete for attention rather than contribute to a coherent whole.
Opening a 30-day RFP window doesn’t fix that problem — it magnifies it.
The City Council can change that by requiring that planning precede sales. Do the visioning first, involve the community, establish priorities, and then invite developers to help achieve them — not the other way around.
That’s the path from confusion to clarity and from fragmented deals to a legacy that truly serves St. Petersburg’s future.
Call to Action:
City Council should pause commitments, stop the RFP process, and require a city-led plan before any land is sold or leased — with public participation and independent community efforts, including the emerging Envisioning the Gas Plant initiative, helping inform that process.
