OLDSMAR, Fla. \u2014 Oldsmar is moving closer to creating a walkable downtown after the Oldsmar City Council approved the essential terms of a proposed development agreement for 8 acres of city-owned land between Tampa Road, State Street and Washington Avenue.<\/p>\n
At the end of July, the council approved the terms and asked the city attorney to draft a development agreement. There are 31 terms, and many of them the city says will protect its vision for the site.<\/p>\n
The proposal from Stanbery Development Group includes 21,000 square feet of retail space, 240 apartment units and a public plaza.<\/p>\n
The terms say that the developer would pay $2 million for the land.<\/p>\n
The city held three public open houses before the vote to gather community feedback. According to 64 comment cards collected by the city, 75% of commenters either somewhat or strongly supported the essential terms, while 16% somewhat or strongly opposed them.<\/p>\n
Vice Mayor Steve Graber said he was encouraged by the response.<\/p>\n
\u201cI thought it was a good cross-section of the city,\u201d Graber said. \u201cYou always hoped for more turnout, but I thought I was actually excited about that amount of people. We don\u2019t know what\u2019s going to come out of these open houses, but I just thought that was a positive step in the right direction.\u201d<\/p>\n
Chad Scerbo, an Oldsmar resident who has lived in the city for decades, said the open land has been a familiar walking spot for him and his dog, Mocha.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re a tight-knit community,\u201d Scerbo said. \u201cI feel like it\u2019s old Florida here. And we all stick together, no matter the goods or the bads.\u201d<\/p>\n
Scerbo said he supports developing the land and believes the project could bring economic growth, though he said he would prefer a different plan.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just don\u2019t think it\u2019s the best plan that could be here,\u201d Scerbo said. \u201cBut, you know, if someone\u2019s willing to do it and they\u2019re stepping up to the plate to do it, then eventually, it\u2019s going to have to be developed.\u201d<\/p>\n
One of the terms requires at least 30% of the retail space to be food. The terms also limit duplicated business types, outside of furnishing, clothing and gift shops, in an effort to create variety initially.<\/p>\n
Scerbo said he would like to see more entertainment options included in the area.<\/p>\n
\u201cHaving an attraction is what I feel really Oldsmar needs,\u201d Scerbo said. \u201cWhen you say Oldsmar, people are like, \u2018Well, where\u2019s that?\u2019 Well, just because we don\u2019t have an attraction, we don\u2019t have something to put us on the map.\u201d<\/p>\n
The terms require Stanbery Development Group to complete the project within five years. If the project is delayed, the developer would have to pay more than $29,000 per month, which the city says is the amount it would have collected in property taxes if the project had been completed on time.<\/p>\n
Once the agreement is drafted, the city\u2019s planning board will review it at a public meeting.<\/p>\n
Then, the city council would hold two more public hearings to consider the development agreement.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"OLDSMAR, Fla. \u2014 Oldsmar is moving closer to creating a walkable downtown after the Oldsmar City Council approved…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":361047,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[2156,2287,115,596,135,137,136,1374],"class_list":["post-361046","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tampa","tag-growth","tag-local-politics","tag-news","tag-pinellas-county","tag-tampa","tag-tampa-headlines","tag-tampa-news","tag-tyler-oneill"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/361046","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=361046"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/361046\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/361047"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=361046"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=361046"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=361046"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}