- March 28, 2024
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BayWalk back on market
St. Petersburg's BayWalk retail/entertainment complex is officially back on the market, with an asking price of $8 million.
Colliers International secured the listing for the property, which opened in 2000 and has been in foreclosure the last two years. Only a handful of tenants remain at the 74,500-square-foot complex, including Chico's and Happy Feet Plus.
Colliers brokers believe now is the right time to find a buyer for BayWalk with the economy in recovery mode and downtown St. Petersburg improving. The 20-screen Muvico movie theater is owned separately and is not part of the deal.
Bolts attendance up
Tampa Bay Lightning hockey games are attracting more local fans this season than last, judging from two attendance counts.
Average announced attendance for games at the St. Pete Times Forum in downtown Tampa is 17,216 through mid-March, up from 15,497 in 2010. Meanwhile, the turnstile count reported by Hillsborough County through February is 13,443, up 21% from 11,081 a year ago.
Winning has made the biggest difference, with the Bolts currently near the top of the NHL Southeast Division. The team posted two sellouts at the 19,758-seat Forum during the current season, which lasts through April 9, and is making a push for its first playoff berth in four years.
Encore breaks ground
Construction will begin soon on the first building at Encore, a Tampa Housing Authority project that will replace the old Central Park Village site on the northeast edge of downtown. A groundbreaking ceremony for the seven-story senior apartment structure, named Ella, was held March 21.
Encore is one of six finalists nationwide competing for $61 million in grants by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. THA seeks up to $20 million for two other senior and multifamily apartment buildings.
The site for Encore has been vacant for the last four years and was almost shelved before getting $38 million in federal stimulus money last year. Up to $450 million worth of development is planned including apartments, retail space and a hotel.
Stonegate buys bank
Fort Lauderdale-based Stonegate Bank recently completed its acquisition of Southwest Capital Bank in Fort Myers.
Bankers announced the deal in August and valued it at $9.4 million in the all-stock transaction. Stonegate is publicly traded (symbol, SGBK; recent price, $15).
Stonegate says the deal is expected to immediately grow earnings and include annual expense savings of $800,000 by the third quarter of this year.
Besides Southwest Capital, Stonegate acquired Hillcrest Bank and Partners Bank in fall 2009, both in Naples, after regulators closed those banks. Combined, Stonegate now has assets totaling more than $750 million.
The Collection sold
A Texas investment group acquired The Collection at Vanderbilt, a 226,000-square-foot commercial shopping center in Naples, in a foreclosure sale.
The Shoppes at Vanderbilt LLC bought the $53.8 million foreclosure judgment for an undisclosed sum from lenders who had won the judgment against Woolbright Development of Boca Raton. The partnership then acquired title to the property through a foreclosure sale.
The shopping center is located at the corner of Vanderbilt Beach Road and Airport-Pulling Road in Naples. It includes nine office and retail buildings and is currently 70% vacant.
Coletta seeks reelection
Collier County Commissioner Jim Coletta says he is seeking reelection to the Collier County commission.
Coletta represents the area that includes Golden Gate east of Interstate 75, and he has been a resident there for 25 years. Coletta says his priorities include job creation and expanding infrastructure in the area.
Airport traffic rises
Passenger traffic through Southwest Florida International Airport in Fort Myers increased 4.6% in February compared with the same month a year ago.
Officials say 790,124 people traveled through the Fort Myers airport in February. Takeoffs and landings rose 3.7% in February compared with February 2010.
The top five airlines by the number of passengers carried included Delta, AirTran, JetBlue, Southwest and USAirways.
Patron gives $1 million
Sarasota philanthropist Beverly Koski, the widow of the co-founder Sun Hydraulics, donated $1 million to New College of Florida.
The gift will be used to build a bell tower next to the Jane Bancroft Cook Library on the campus, which is a few miles north of downtown Sarasota on U.S. 41. The tower will be named for Beverly and her late husband, Robert Koski. The remainder of the gift will be put toward other projects at the college, which turns 50 years old this year.
The Koskis have been involved in New College since the late 1960s. Bob Koski and a colleague at an engineering company founded Sun Hydraulics in 1970. Sun Hydraulics, lauded for its flat management structure created by Koski, has since become one of the most successful publicly traded companies in the Sarasota-Bradenton region.
Median prices fall
The tally of single-family home sales in the Sarasota-Bradenton market jumped nearly 20% in February over the same month in 2010, but the median price fell by more than 10%.
There were 886 sales in the market in February, compared to 747 in February 2010, according to data from Florida Realtors. The median price, however, fell to $137,000, an 11% drop.
Existing condo sales were similar. Total sales for the region on an annualized basis rose 26% in February, to 325. The median price fell 11%, to $126,100.