St. Petersburg\u2019s planned police K-9 facility has found itself at the center of an entirely different conversation.<\/p>\n
Gov. Ron DeSantis recently vetoed $350,000 that would have helped fund the project on 22nd Avenue S. \u201cThat $350,000 would have been helpful,\u201d said St. Petersburg Police Department communications officer Ken Knight. \u201cWe plan to see what other sources we can use.\u201d<\/p>\n
What those sources might be, however, is not clear. Knight explained that they are \u201cfiguring out a way to move forward,\u201d but have no confirmed source for alternative funding.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, developers competing to redevelop nearby Commerce Park are now asking the city for the very parcel where the K-9 facility was planned.<\/p>\n
SPPD wants to build the facility on roughly 2.6 acres adjacent to Commerce Park, replacing aging kennels with a modern headquarters featuring training space, veterinary facilities, indoor and outdoor kennels and administrative offices.<\/p>\n
But two of the redevelopment teams say the city could unlock far greater value by incorporating that land into Commerce Park instead.<\/p>\n
HP Capital\u2019s proposal, dubbed Corridor 22, asks the city to expand the redevelopment footprint to include the K-9 parcel. In return, the developer would purchase approximately 6.25 acres for $5 million and build 320 mixed-income apartments, a 75,000-square-foot innovation center, neighborhood retail, restaurants, a grocery store and a 25,000-square-foot public plaza.<\/p>\n
SkyView Companies offers a different solution. Rather than eliminating the police project, SkyView proposes relocating it through a land swap. Under the proposal, the city would receive another parcel suitable for the K-9 facility while freeing the Commerce Park site for redevelopment. In exchange, SkyView would construct the largest residential project among the seven finalists: 422 apartments with ground-floor retail and structured parking.<\/p>\n
The city did not always intend to build the K-9 facility at Commerce Park. Procurement documents show officials previously evaluated the Public Safety Training Complex before ultimately selecting the current site.<\/p>\n
The governor\u2019s veto now adds another variable for the city to solve, potentially making the developer\u2019s proposals more appealing. Without the $350,000 appropriation, the city must identify a new funding source regardless of where the facility is ultimately built.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"St. Petersburg\u2019s planned police K-9 facility has found itself at the center of an entirely different conversation. Gov.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":327688,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[202,204,203,199,201,200],"class_list":["post-327687","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-st-petersburg","tag-st-pete","tag-st-pete-headlines","tag-st-pete-news","tag-st-petersburg","tag-st-petersburg-headlines","tag-st-petersburg-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/327687","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=327687"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/327687\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/327688"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=327687"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=327687"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=327687"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}