Welch ignored the resolution. And in selecting Blake, Welch is opening the door for a new campaign cudgel, even as he will no doubt pitch the selection as a win for St. Pete delivered by his administration as he asks voters to install him as Mayor for another four years.<\/p>\n
But try though he might to turn this lemon into ice cold, delicious lemonade, the situation is more likely to be sour and leave a bad taste in developers\u2019 mouths.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s where the Cathie Wood snub comes in.<\/p>\n
While you won\u2019t see her name or any of her direct business interests listed in Welch\u2019s campaign finance records, sources tell Florida Politics Wood has donated a significant amount of money to Welch\u2019s affiliated political committee. With Wood\u2019s pitch through the Ark Ellison Horus collaboration denied, you can bet that money train will head back to the station.<\/p>\n But in its place, watch for there to suddenly be an influx of cash from entities related to Blake Investment Partners. If true, the negative campaign mailers write themselves.<\/p>\n \u201cKen Welch works for developers, not you.\u201d<\/p>\n I can also hear the television ads.<\/p>\n \u201cKen Welch sells out to the highest bidder. Voters can\u2019t trust him with their tax dollars.\u201d<\/p>\n None of this even touches on the unfortunate calculation Blake seems to have made in betting on Welch. If ever the phrase \u201cwin the battle, lose the war\u201d is ever relevant, it\u2019s here. The team may have earned Welch\u2019s selection, but it\u2019s becoming more and more unlikely that his selection will not matter.<\/p>\n While Welch had hoped to finalize a development deal before facing voters for re-election, the St. Pete City Council learned in April<\/a> that a final vote on development plans for the Tropicana Field site would not happen until next Summer, after the mayoral election has been decided. With Welch trailing both in polls<\/a> and in fundraising<\/a>, it\u2019s entirely possible a new Mayor will be installed before the City Council\u2019s vote.<\/p>\n If Blake Investment Partners believes a new Mayor will stick with a development team that worked to elect their opposition, I\u2019ve got a bridge in Brooklyn to sell them.<\/p>\n Exhibit A: Welch himself scrapped development plans<\/a> for the site established under his predecessor, former Mayor Rick Kriseman. Welch never said it was because it was Kriseman\u2019s idea, but it was pretty clear.<\/p>\n And back to Wood. She\u2019s not a person you want to cross.<\/p>\n Wood founded Ark Invest in 2014. She moved the $30 billion global asset management firm from New York to St. Pete in 2021. The firm has celebrity status among the investor class and technophiles, taking on aggressive investments sometimes seen as risky bets.<\/p>\n As a billionaire running a multibillion-dollar investment firm, she also has the sort of influence that Mayors need in their corner. And for Wood, giving back to the community she now calls home is a top priority.<\/p>\n This is, after all, the same woman who included Moffitt Cancer Center as a strategic partner in the Ark Ellison Horus pitch for the Gas Plant site. Moffitt was included long after Welch scrapped plans<\/a> to bring Moffitt to St. Pete. Under Wood\u2019s pitch, Moffitt would have been part of colocation space allowing entrepreneurs and startups to encourage cross collaboration between digital health and cancer research innovators.<\/p>\n It wouldn\u2019t have been quite the same as the plan Welch had axed in 2022, but it would have delivered a win for cancer research on this side of Tampa Bay. What made the juxtaposition between Welch\u2019s scrapped Moffitt plan and the one included in Wood\u2019s development pitch most interesting as it relates to this year\u2019s mayoral campaign is that Welch killed the first plan over a lack of affordable housing.<\/p>\n Yet last year, the City Council\u00a0approved a plan<\/a> to instead build two 31-story towers with a total of 824 apartment units, none of which will be designated as affordable housing. While it was far less than the 120 affordable units Welch had sought in the deal, Moffitt\u2019s proposal had included 35 affordable units. That\u2019s much better than none.<\/p>\n Taken individually, none of these things cripple Welch\u2019s campaign. Taken together, evidence is growing that Welch\u2019s campaign is in crisis mode.<\/p>\n Wheeling and dealing with developers in politics is nothing new. But the concerns so often hurled at politicians by those seeking campaign finance reform \u2014 that elected officials become beholden to their top donors \u2014 aren\u2019t usually so well supported by a candidate.<\/p>\n Welch\u2019s actions are, essentially, saying the quiet part out loud. He got a bunch of cash from Wood and her various entities, then went looking for more. With the checks already Wood cashed, Welch can now look to Blake.<\/p>\n The pattern is becoming clear. The Welch administration makes a knee-jerk decision, then pivots after they see the writing on the wall.<\/p>\n Look no further than the start of this developer selection process last October. Welch initially opened a proposal window of just 30 days<\/a>, a time frame developers said wasn\u2019t adequate to fully develop pitches, especially not with the lack of criteria or benchmarks provided in Welch\u2019s announcement.<\/p>\n And scrapping development plans is its own pattern. Moffitt wasn\u2019t the only project to fall victim to Welch\u2019s scrutiny. Welch also canceled Kriseman\u2019s selection<\/a> to build a new municipal services center (MSC) across the street from City Hall. It\u2019s still unclear<\/a> what the future of the city\u2019s current aging MSC building is since Welch announced restarting the process in his first year.<\/p>\n To sum it all up, Welch has made a selection that will only stick if he\u2019s re-elected, which is becoming increasingly in doubt. He\u2019s made an enemy of one of the city\u2019s top boosters. And he\u2019s adding to frustration among the development community that promises made are not always promises kept.<\/p>\n All three are, on their own, easy negatives for opposition to exploit. Taken collectively, they\u2019re all but disqualifying.<\/p>\n ___<\/p>\n Ed. note:\u00a0Michelle Todd Schorsch\u00a0is the Chair of St. Pete Shines, a political committee backing Crist for St. Petersburg Mayor. Todd Schorsch is married to Schorsch, the publisher of Florida Politics.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When St. Petersburg Mayor Ken Welch officially selects Blake Investment Partners\u2019 The Burg Bid for the Historic Gas…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":326309,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[58609,67351,8121,8122,2346,202,204,18455,203,199,201,200,97537],"class_list":["post-326308","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-st-petersburg","tag-ark-ellison-horus","tag-blake-investment-partners","tag-cathie-wood","tag-historic-gas-plant","tag-ken-welch","tag-st-pete","tag-st-pete-headlines","tag-st-pete-mayoral-election","tag-st-pete-news","tag-st-petersburg","tag-st-petersburg-headlines","tag-st-petersburg-news","tag-the-burg-bid"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/326308","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=326308"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/326308\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/326309"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=326308"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=326308"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=326308"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/Sunburn_FloridaPoliticsWebsite_728x905186-scaled-e1740018793631.jpg\")
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