ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. \u2014 Mayor Kenneth Welch on Tuesday will see all the proposals for developing the 86-acre historic Gas Plant District.<\/p>\n
Ark Ellison Horus\u00a0and Kettler was the first group to file a proposal, and since then, more have come in. They are from DPZ CoDesign, the Pinellas County Housing Authority, Freedom Communities Company and the International Democratic Uhuru Movement.<\/p>\n
Welch said his team will evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of all the proposals and select a winner.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ll have a public forum where the developers will present to our community,” Welch told Spectrum News. “We\u2019ll have the community benefits process as well, and then I will select one of those developers.”<\/p>\n
When asked if the process could take a few months, he said, “Oh, definitely.”<\/p>\n
Council member Brandi Gabbard is trying to pump the brakes on the process. She has a proposed resolution which the Council will vote on at its Thursday meeting. It requests that the administration pause any action to select a developer until some comprehensive planning has been completed.<\/p>\n
Another council member, Deborah Figgs-Sanders, says the city has been planning forever, and it’s time for action.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt this point, let\u2019s get some things done,” she said. “Let\u2019s choose the best organization to actually do it, but more importantly, let\u2019s keep moving.\u201d<\/p>\n
Steve Diasio, the CEO and founder of the School of Creativity and Innovation, held a Gas Plant District design workshop for the community last November. He liked Gabbard’s proposal to slow the proposal down, saying he doesn’t want to see the property undersold.<\/p>\n
“Having this proposal to stop the process, for me, is good for business, good for evaluating the property and doing due diligence that needs to happen,” he said.<\/p>\n
Welch says the city has planned for more than a decade and that it’s time to move forward.<\/p>\n
\u201cPlanning first is great, but planning perpetually is not something we should do,” Welch said. “When I ran for office, folks didn\u2019t want to see continued planning. They want to see impact from a 40-year promise when the land was taken for economic inclusion at that site.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. \u2014 Mayor Kenneth Welch on Tuesday will see all the proposals for developing the 86-acre…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":141282,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[3140,274,2200,68610,115,596,99,29208,202,204,203,199,201,200,135,278,2032,835],"class_list":["post-141281","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-st-petersburg","tag-app-local-state-politics","tag-app-top-stories","tag-instagram-bn9","tag-john-rojas","tag-news","tag-pinellas-county","tag-politics","tag-rays-stadium","tag-st-pete","tag-st-pete-headlines","tag-st-pete-news","tag-st-petersburg","tag-st-petersburg-headlines","tag-st-petersburg-news","tag-tampa","tag-top-stories","tag-trending-topics","tag-vod"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141281","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=141281"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/141281\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/141282"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=141281"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=141281"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=141281"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}