“The project was initially awarded in 2023,” said Rex Cole, Senior Vice President of Development for Dantes Partners, in a conversation with St. Pete Rising. “After some negotiations and paperwork with the school board, we executed the lease last summer. Since then, we decided that the path for success was to tweak the plan a little bit.”
The biggest design change: no more spanning the alley.
“Initially, we were going to vacate the alley to build one large 14-story tower behind the Tomlinson building,” Cole said. “But that was going to create a timing issue, so we did away with that plan.”
Instead, the full east-west alley will remain open, preserving the street grid, and the original 14-story tower will be split between a 13-story residential tower on the northwest corner and a standalone parking garage on the southwest corner.
The revised plan includes a total of 202 units, down from the previously proposed 225 units, with 47 apartments in the historic Tomlinson building and 155 units in the new 13-story tower.
The unit mix is roughly 20% studios, 70% one-bedrooms, and the remainder two-bedrooms.