St. Petersburg is searching for a contractor that can do design and construction work for the aging municipal marina downtown.<\/p>\n
City Development Administrator James Corbett told City Council members in an email Thursday that it published a notice Oct. 28 looking for qualified firms. The city wants a company that can design and build floating docks, dock houses, fueling facilities, seawalls and other marina infrastructure spanning the north, central and south marina basins.<\/p>\n
Vendors are invited to submit their qualifications by Dec. 2. Interviews and selections are scheduled for Jan. 13.<\/p>\n
This is the city\u2019s third attempt in six years to redevelop the downtown marina. It\u2019s also on its third round of finding a developer for the Historic Gas Plant District, which includes Tropicana Field. Both projects were started under former Mayor Rick Kriseman\u2019s tenure and have yet to be resolved.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe marina renovation is long overdue, and I\u2019m glad the administration is finally moving forward,\u201d downtown City Council member Gina Driscoll said in a text message. \u201cA modern municipal marina will be yet another jewel on our downtown waterfront, complementing the St. Pete Pier and creating a better experience for boaters and visitors.\u201d<\/p>\n
The city\u2019s process with the marina is different this time. The cityplans to maintain control of the marina and keep it publicly operated. A selection committee will evaluate and rank prospective vendors using criteria delineated by the city.<\/p>\n
The plan to redevelop the city\u2019s aging downtown marina began with an unsolicited proposal in 2019. Safe Harbor Marinas pitchedoverhauling the marina in exchange for operating it. Kriseman instead chose Tennessee-based developer Safe Harbor Development, but couldn\u2019t get council support<\/a>. Many wondered why the city couldn\u2019t keep the marina publicly operated and handle renovations.<\/p>\n In 2023, Mayor Ken Welch put out a new bid request<\/a> for the job, received two proposals<\/a> and selected Safe Harbor Marinas. Earlier this year, that firm was bought out by investment giant Blackstone<\/a>, which complicated negotiations. The city moved to terminate that deal in June<\/a>.<\/p>\n This latest effort involves renovation or replacement of the ship store, fueling facilities, seawalls along each marina basin and the bridge to Demens Landing.<\/p>\n According to the city\u2019s request, there will be a separate solicitation for the commercial development at the southeast corner of Second Avenue S and Bayshore Drive, where Fresco\u2019s Waterfront Bistro is.<\/p>\n Once a vendor is selected, the city will negotiate services and come up with a price tag. Storm category ratings for the facilities will be determined as part of those negotiations. Any deal and adjustments to the total price tag would need to be approved by the City Council.<\/p>\n So far, more than 100 vendors have downloaded files about the project, according to the city\u2019s online system.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s progress. It\u2019s in the right direction rather than trying to get someone a five-year lease and put however many million dollars into it,\u201d said Page Obenshain, a member of the marina advisory committee. \u201cIt didn\u2019t work. It took from 2017 to 2025 to figure that out. This is the only way to do it and do it right.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"St. Petersburg is searching for a contractor that can do design and construction work for the aging municipal…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":41666,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[832,27636,27634,27635,27633,3302,202,204,203,199,201,200],"class_list":{"0":"post-41665","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-st-petersburg","8":"tag-city-council","9":"tag-city-development-administrator-james-corbett","10":"tag-downtown-marina","11":"tag-marina-basin","12":"tag-municipal-marina","13":"tag-rick-kriseman","14":"tag-st-pete","15":"tag-st-pete-headlines","16":"tag-st-pete-news","17":"tag-st-petersburg","18":"tag-st-petersburg-headlines","19":"tag-st-petersburg-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41665","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=41665"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41665\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/41666"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41665"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41665"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41665"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}