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Redevelopment of Harborview site considered
By LESTER R. DAILEY
| Article published on Wednesday, March 12, 2008 |
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![[Image]](/content_images/031208_cit-01.jpg) |
| Photo by TOM GERMOND |
| The Harborview Center may be slated for redevelopment. |
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CLEARWATER – When the Harborview Center opened in January 1996, city officials hoped that it would be a cash cow. But every year, the city has had to subsidize the money-losing convention facility.
Recently, Barry Strafacci, who manages the facility for Global Spectrum Corp., gave an optimistic report on Harborview’s finances.
He reported that the subsidy had dropped from $220,105 in 2006 to $199,705 in 2007, and it is expected to decline to $180,000 this year and $173,000 next year.
But the City Council had already decided that the aging facility, in its current form, is unlikely to ever operate in the black. It has prepared a “call for ideas” from developers interested in redeveloping the site in a format that will be profitable for both them and the city.
The council members do not have any preconceived ideas of what they want on the site, although it will most likely be some type of mixed-use project and they hope to have more definite plans by July. The current downtown redevelopment plan prohibits a residential component to any plans for the site, and city officials would like to see that ban remain in place.
Citizen input, from focus groups and at least one public meeting, will be used to determine which concept residents favor. A request for proposals from developers will be issued early next year, and a developer will be selected next spring. The plan must then go to the voters, probably in March 2010, for their referendum approval. Making the deal less attractive to developers is the fact that the city wants to convey the site via a long-term land lease, rather than an outright sale.
“I’m not relinquishing the land at any point,” Mayor Frank Hibbard said.
Global Spectrum’s management contract for the facility expires in September 2009, as does Stein Mart’s lease for its department store in the building. The other tenant, the Pickles Plus restaurant, has the option for three five-year renewals of the original six-year, three month lease it negotiated in 1995. But Hibbard hopes to keep all three entities in the building until demolition begins so it doesn’t sit empty.
The redevelopment site includes the building’s footprint and at least some of the adjacent parking area. But it has not been decided whether to include only the parking area above the 28-foot contour line, for a total of 2.8 acres, or the entire parking lot, for a total of 3.18 acres.
“You heard it here first,” Councilman Paul Gibson told his colleagues. “We’re going to have a parking problem there.”
He said that the city’s main library shares the parking lot, and a new municipal marina will soon be built nearby. His colleagues agreed that any future plans should include provisions for adequate library parking.
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Article published on Wednesday, March 12, 2008
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